NAOMI House Daily Blog - Day 4

Hey guys, today is the 4th day of NAOMI House!!!! (AKA Renae’s Birthday!) We started the day off with Breakfast, and it was telly (new slang btw). :)

The first VBS had a pretty chaotic start. It took 15 minuets to get them all calmed down and focused, so the team spent hours trying to figure out how to get the kids focused. They read many research papers, watched documentaries and talked to industry professionals, until they finally figured it out; The more tired the kids are, the more they’ll pay attention 

So they started off with an outdoor activity to let out the kid’s energy, which really helped the kids pay attention for the rest of the VBS time! Today’s topic was the story of Jonah, after a couple of worship songs, then had a puppet show which the kids seemed to enjoy! :) Then, they decorated paper plates to make the big fish (from the story (iykyk)). After snack time, they cooled off with some water activities using sponges and buckets which helped with the Arizona heat. Overall, Today’s VBS was even better than yesterday’s and we are all grateful for how it went. :)

VBS went well. :)

After lots of prayer and asking God (and Rich, the facilities lead) to show them mercy, the facilities team didn’t have to wake up as early as yesterday. Lucky they started their second project after breakfast. :) Today was Demolition day, so Naoki and Dexter had the privilege to start off by destroying a kitchen island. They threw out broken tiles and junk out into the trash bin, which was very tiring work in the sun. 

The team before us started the demolition on the original NAOMI House building, so the house is opened up down to the framing. The rest of our facilities team spent the day pulling 20 billion nails out of the studs. 

Luckily we were all listening to music together, which helped the work go by fast! 

The Facilities team had a really epic day :)

Then after the demo and VBS, we had an amazing lunch comprised of tater tots, meatballs and Salad . Most of the kids made it to lunch, but sadly SOMEONE (Dawson’s best friend on the trip) got in trouble. But don’t worry, eating with the other NAOMI House kids still made Dawson very happy and they gave him good energy. 

Lunch was really yummy!

For our afternoon activity, the entire NAOMI house team with some of the kids went to the nearby high school gym and enjoyed playing sports! It was a really nice place with awesome air conditioned bathrooms . We had competitive games of basketball, volleyball, tag, and jump roping. We all had relay race where you had to run with one shoe on, and find your other shoe in the pile on the there other side of the gym (Julie and Renae were the MVPS ). Everyone had a great time and we were all very tired on the way back.

The Gym was really fun. :)

The facilities team continued working on the demolition after returning. Everyone ate chicken teriyaki with rice for dinner, which was very good. Since it was Renae’s Birthday we had a cake and sang for her. The cake was the second best dessert tonight because we also had Mango Sago. The realization that you could just make that whenever you want is so eye opening to some of us on the team. This might have to become a staple dessert for WCCC …

The Sago was so telly (new slang btw).

The 4th day at NAOMI House was really great! :)

Words by: Ai Yasumura, Dawson Wenell, Leah Ng, Eric Romero, Naoki Ikeda

Special thanks to: Noah Rivera (ghost writer)