What a blessed night my Elianna and I had! We are officially finished with school and are on summer break!!! I told her that since she's now through with 3rd grade she is an official 4th grader.  To mark her accomplishment, we attended Alliance Girls tonight for her first time.

Alliance Girls is a ministry at our church for 4th-8th grade girls. The purpose is to learn about missions, hear missionary speakers, learn about other cultures, pray, and support missionaries. We loved it! Tonight a precious saint who served in Irian Jaya (now West Papua New Guinea) for 20 years shared her testimony with us. As she encouraged the girls to seek someone to disciple them and what that means, I felt like I was being discipled by her right then and there!

We had a yummy traditional dinner that the Dani tribe would eat. It would traditionally be cooked in a pit lined with banana leaves with hot rocks. Layered into the pit would be sweet potatoes, green beans, sometimes corn, spinach, and to top it off a whole split pig! This would be covered with more banana leaves, sprinkled with water, and covered with more rocks. It would be left for 3-4 hours and then uncovered and eaten! Obviously we didn't have ours cooked in a pit, but it was delicious anyway. Oh! The fun part was HOW we ate it. We sat on the floor as the Dani do (except we were on a plastic table cloth), used napkins for our plates instead of banana leaves, and ate with our hands! It was a unique experience watching 8 girls and 5 women eating on the floor with their hands! Loved it!

My sweet girl and I look forward to this new chapter in her young life and I'm tagging along for sure!