May 9-16, 2011

It’s hard to believe that 4 weeks have gone by and that today was the 1^st day back at school. I got a “wake up call” this morning from one of the morning teachers saying, “you better come in now, your kids have come early!” HA..they came 3 hours early!! I guess they are excited as I am to be back! Well we are still waiting to shift to the new school building (should be moving in June) so there were no classrooms available for me to use. So I had each of the kids grab a chair and we went outside under the shade of one of the trees and had a lovely 1^st day. I love my kiddos more and more each day and am glad to see them excited to learn. It brings me such joy to see their smiling faces each day, to embrace them, to see them running up the hill to school to greet me and help me carry my bags in the morning, to have them eagerly help clean and prepare the room for class, to have them linger in my presence wanting my attention instead of choosing to go outside and play on break, to have them escort me to the road to catch a taxi and yell, “bye teacher, bye, see you tomorrow” until the car is out of site. God has really given me his heart for these kids and I am so thankful to be used by him to make a difference in their lives.

I have been struggling a lot with one pupil in particular since last term. She has had no motivation or desire to learn. She would not participate in class and all her work would be incomplete and the work she did do was often incorrect. My initial response was to become frustrated and I was thinking, “I don’t know what to do, nothing is working with her” Then one night in an almost audible voice I heard God say, “Have you prayed for her” Wow, how convicted I was that I was not doing the one thing she and I needed most! So that night I spent time praying for her in faith that God would break through and do a work in her heart as well is in my own heart. That he would give her a desire to learn and that he would give me patience and wisdom. The very next day I saw an amazing breakthrough!!! I was nearly in tears. Its like she was a new girl!! She was copying everything from the board neatly and even though there were many mistakes, she was writing everything when before she would write maybe 1-2 sentences even after I told her at least 3-5 times to keep working. I started a new thing with the kids as well this term, a weekly memory verse. I can remember in grade school that we had a bible verse for each letter of the alphabet so I had my mom send me the letter charts for the verses I learned as a kid. The 1^st one, Letter A is “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23. I explained to the kids the meaning of the verse..reminding them of the saying I have them repeat in class on almost a daily basis..ME: “Who makes mistakes?” THEM: “Everyone!!” ME: “Who is perfect?” Them: “God.” I was so excited to see their eagerness to memorize the word of God, I had them write the verse on a small slip of paper and put it in their shirt pockets to practice. One of the girls came up to me and said in Bemba, the local dialect, “I can’t read and no one in my house can read so how will I learn this? “ I told her I would help her and she can practice on the lunch breaks with the other kids. That day 4 girls stayed after to work on memorizing the verse. One of the girls was the girl I had prayed for the night before, more than anything she wanted to memorize the verse and after about 30 minutes or so the 4 of them knew the verse. As I was preparing to leave all I could do was smile because the halls and the front yard of the school were echoing with the young voices reciting Romans 3:23 over and over again, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”