Katie Hughes is a student in Ghana this semester. She currently works at an orphanage called Children In Need. Here, she shares some of her experiences of working with the children.

Picture this:

It's 6:30 a.m. and you arrive at your workplace - a stone quarry - where you will be spending the rest of your day. Hoping for better luck with the hammer this morning (yesterday you hit yourself a couple too many times) you set to work, pounding with all the energy that a breakfast of a handful of cooked rice can give you.

The sun starts to beat down on your shirtless back as you load the pebbles on to a wheelbarrow, take them over to a truck and wheel back to start all over again. When noon finally rolls around, you eat your lunch of gari and beans. Enjoy it, it is probably the last meal you will eat today.

As you eat, the pit to your right catches your attention. For a brief moment, you wonder if that your friend that fell in there yesterday. It took so long to get to him as he screamed and cried ... maybe he didn't survive the night.

You make a mental note to be more careful as you work - not to fall and not to get chunks of pebble in your eyes. Blindness means no more work.

Oh, there is one more important detail. You are only 10 years old.

Unbelievable though it may seem, hundreds of children in Ghana live through similar situations each day. Some work side by side with their parents or siblings, others are orphans. They all make approximately 2,000 cedi a day - some 28 American cents.

Not all orphan children work for the quarries. Some sell bread in the markets or beg for money. Most can't count on a better sleeping arrangement than sleeping under a table.

But all these children have a few things in common.

They all want to go to school, they all want to learn, they all want to grow up. I have met some who want to be dancers, others who want to be pilots, others who want to be doctors. The list goes on.

Children In Need, a UNICEF orphanage located in Accra, Ghana, attempts to help these children. The orphanage supports 300 children throughout the community. School is paid for, so they all have an opportunity to learn while living at home.

I have been working at this orphanage for the past months and these children are the reason I get up in the morning. They ask me about America and about Calvin and my friends and I tell them stories. Besides thumb-war (a new favorite game of theirs) I have managed to share a little bit of myself with them. This, however, doesn't begin to compare with what they have taught me: these children are filled with joy.

One night when I was spending the night at the orphanage, I awoke at 5:30 a.m. to the most beautiful sound. The children were worshipping God. As I sat listening to their prayers (many people in Ghana pray out loud), I heard petitions for classmates, for friends, for families, and for us. They prayed for the Americans and for America that has been so afraid. They prayed that we would be blessed.

Finally, they prayed for themselves.

``God, I am nothing, allow me to learn...'' one of them prayed.

I have no doubt that God heard.

What amazed me most about this service what that it was their choice to have it. The children themselves organized a time of prayer and worship each morning before the chores. They needed their time with Jesus to make it through the day.

I can only sit and be amazed at my new friends' capacity to love. To me, this is Ghana, this is the life I have experienced, this is what I am going to remember.

I do what I can to help here, and I have many stories to tell about dancing and playing, crying and praying, but there is a better story. UNICEF is giving hope to the children. Thanks to Children In Need, 336 children have a reason to get up, a school to go to, and someone who loves them and tells them that they are worth something.