Rich

I can't watch videos or look at photos anymore of the children of friends and family without noting the stark comparison between the love lavished on their kids, and the shocking deficit of love experienced by our students.

Think about the million little things you do for, say to, or think of your kids every day.  There is NO ONE doing that for our students on a consistent, parental, never-failing-always-there-unconditional-love basis.

A Nasty Fall

    I took a nasty spill down the unfinished, concrete stairs at school, and look who came to my rescue!  Third-grade English Class!  They were SO enamored of the blood and gore!  

    My heroes!

Phew!

Cristofer giving you the thumbs-up!

    Phew!  Classes are done!  And a certain two teachers you know and love are feelin' pretty done too!  We still have two weeks of in-service, but at least things are a leeeetle more laid-back.

    And now that I'm not stressed to the max, I feel like I can really appreciate moments like these.  I actually got to sit and just chat with kids for about a half an hour yesterday between tasks.  And the day before, I got to sit and paint nails with some of the older girls - fun time that I almost never get to indulge in, and, by the way, one of the reasons we decided to STAY THROUGH THE SUMMER.

    That's right.  The decision has been made, and we will be staying here in Shell.  We're hoping this will help round out the "fun side" of our relationship with the kids a bit, as well as save us some cash and buy us some time on policy-writing for the upcoming school year.

Possible change in plans... thoughts?

Hey everyone, pray for us, and also feel free to give your opinion. 

We're *considering* NOT going home for the summer and trying to do all our fundraising online, so that we could spend more down time with the kids in the summer, provide more consistency of relationships for them, and work on school policies for next year.

This would be a challenge as fundraising is MUCH easier face to face, BUT it would be more in line with our ultimate goals here, and it would be more financially practical, assuming we can still raise the funds we need for this year. 

Thoughts?

Losing Everything, Gaining All

I was listening to a sermon by Tim Keller today on self-control, and this true story really hit hard.

The sermon is available here, if you'd like to purchase and download it.  I highly recommend it.  It's worth every penny.  And Tim Keller has many, many free sermons available as well.  I haven't listened to a one yet during which I didn't want to throw my computer across the room because it stung so bad.

http://sermons.redeemer.com/store/index.cfm?ParentCat=6&fuseaction=product.display&product_ID=18806

“I remember some years ago there was somebody I knew who was a man, who was a professing Christian, and who also was very respected, very well-known, very admired, very acclaimed because he was so competent and so skillful at all he did.  But there was actually a secret addiction in his life.  And because of that secret addiction in his life, when it finally came out, he lost everything.  When it was made public, he lost everything.  He lost his job.  He lost everything. 

And when I talked to him, it was actually some time after this, and he was starting to rebuild his life.  And he was poised.  There was a peace about him, and he actually found that he had licked all those areas in which he had lacked self-control.  And I remember he said this to me, and it has haunted me.

He said, ‘You know I’m a professing Christian, and I always said, what matters the most is what Jesus thinks of me.  But that’s not how my heart really operated.  My heart operated on two functional principals.  And those two principals were this.  1)  That by my competence and my hard work, I could control what people thought of me. And 2) What people thought of me was all that mattered.’  He said, ‘I said what mattered to me was that Jesus valued me, but my heart was saying that what really matters is that people value you and you can control that by your incredible performance.’

And it was as a result of that that he actually got into the addictions to keep himself going.  But when it all fell apart, he said, ‘You know what?  Not too many people, but some people, have been in my shoes, and that is… I finally arrived at a place where nobody loved me, nobody respected me, nobody valued me, nobody admired me, nobody – not even me, not my wife, not my kids, once they realized what a hypocrite I was.  No one but Jesus.  And when you get to the place that the only person in the universe that values you is Jesus, then finally, finally, you start to build your life on that.

‘I just couldn’t seem to do it until I lost everybody else’s admiration, but Christ’s.  And I knew that God loves me in Christ, and it was the one thing I could build my life on.  And as a result, when I started to build my life on that, and not care what anybody thought, and not care about anything but that, I lost all my need – to do all those awful things.  I lost all my need to control what people thought of me.  I lost all my anxiety.  I lost all my addictions.  I lost all my driven-ness.  I lost them.’”

Our Decision

After much thought and prayer, Rick and I have decided we're coming back for the next school year at Casa de Fe!! Details soon....

Out of Whack

Gosh! You know something's out of whack when you're thinking, "Vacation! Perfect time to catch up on office work and fundraising!" ... And you're thinking it at 8am. I might just have to pull the plug on my computer.

 Still, I can feel the muscles in my body slowly relaxing one by one. One great perk to this high-stress job is that it makes vacation taste so deeelicious!

I think they'd go well with a nice Pinot Noir

Erica saw a bunch of these ants on her porch this morning. This afternoon we ate a few fried.

This Cheered Me Up!

One of my old students from Taiwan just posted this video, and said she missed me.  It made me so happy and so sad at the same time.  *sigh*

Nice Night

We just walked home in the dark after taking Ana out for her birthday, surrounded by jungle and the sounds of crickets and the river rushing, and the smell of rain on the air.  And for some reason, I just felt so content and peaceful for the first time in a while, like I didn't have to worry about all the stuff I didn't get done today or had to do tomorrow, and could just hold Rick's hand and smile.

Cristofer on Racism

(This story collected and shared by Cheralyn Post.)

Cristofer: *gasps and grabs my arm!* What happened to your arm?
Me: Um.... what do you mean? Nothing happened to my arm.
Cristofer: No, something's wrong with your arm!!
Me: No, really... nothing's wrong with my arm. What are you talking about?
Cristofer: Your arm! Your skin is white!
Me: Um... that's okay, honey, I was born that way.
Cristofer: Oh... wow... I am so sorry that happened.

Forgotten post from Thanksgiving

   I’ve been reading what everyone is saying they are thankful for, and I didn’t know what to say.  So I did something I tell my kids here to do.  I sat down, stayed quiet, breathed deep, and waited and listened for my heart to tell me what it was feeling.  Here’s what surfaced:

  I’m thankful for my friends, both those who share my faith and those who don’t, who’ve been keeping up with what’s going on with us here, and have been giving support and friendship through it all.  You have no idea how much even littlest encouraging comments have been helping me through the days.  And for those who’ve stayed even closer and know more, I couldn’t do this without you.

  I’m also more thankful than I’ve ever been before for my parents.  Every day I’m here, I realize more and more how much they gave me, how much they loved me, how much they made me who I am.  Thank you for being the parents God wanted you to be.  And thank God for giving you to me.

Word to the Wise

While on a short-term mission trip, please do not tell children that you want to be their mom/dad and take them home with you.  It's totally understandable if you *feel* that way.  It's almost impossible not to.  But please express those emotions later when you're not around the kids.  It's very confusing for them to hear things like this and puts their little hearts in quite a state.

Love Hurts

"In love's service, only the wounded soldier can serve." - Thornton Wilder

“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.” ― A.W. Tozer

"Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning." - Psalm 30:5

Introducing Cris!

From an email to my cousin:

This kid's name is "Cristofer."  He's about 2.5 years old.  He's usually a really calm, quiet, sweet kid.  Well, he had his version of a tantrum yesterday.  He just sat all the way in the back of the class by himself in a tiny, plastic arm chair, sipping pretend tea from a toy tea cup with his legs crossed, looking on disdainfully at the rest of the class as if to say, "You peons!  Your petty attempts at coloring puppies and smearing play-dough on your faces BORE me."  Meanwhile the rest of the class is still working on potty training.

Showing love to little people who are deathly afraid to love.

This is the hardest job I've ever had.

It's like everything that was supposed to happen in their little histories in the way of love and connection, never did, or happened all wrong in the worst of ways.  So now, they're all wired backwards.  Joy can come out as anger.  Excitement can come out as tantrums.  If you're only with them for a week, they fall in love with you, but if they know you'll be there a year, they push you away and treat you nastily so they don't have to lose you.

Everything I loved about teaching - connection, discovery, mutual creation - it's all absent.  Or it comes in such scant little moments that I feel like I'm parched in a dessert, licking up some tiny drop of water I've found somewhere.  Or they hide it from you because they don't want you to know you've touched them, and sometimes, you find out through the grapevine that something you said or did was meaningful, and that tiny little glimmer is all you have to keep you going for days or even weeks of dark.

Yesterday I was reading a little quote book that I kept of funny things my kids used to say in Taiwan.  I was laughing out loud.  They were so fun and whimsical.  They soaked up any love you gave them and used it power their little minds through the learning process.  They loved to find ways to impress you or make your laugh with the way they used their new vocabulary words.

"My elbow grows on an elbow tree."  ~ Jerry, low level English student

"He didn't want to talk about what happened at the zoo, because he feel in the monkey cage, and the monkey made him her baby."  ~ Jolin, mid-level English student

"That man is raking up pieces of human flesh."  ~ Thomas, a macabre, high-level student :o)

But here... well... I just can't see that ever happening.  It's like they're allergic to learning, because they're allergic to engaging.  And they're allergic to failure, so they don't even try.  There are bright spots, but they are like a match someone strikes that goes out almost the second you look at it, rather than the super nova that my former students gave me.

I wish I could say I was strong enough for the matches to be enough to keep me going.  But I don't know if I am.  I just don't know.

The hardest job I've ever had.

中文課在孤兒院

嗯... 我今天教我的第一堂中文課。好像學生很喜歡。我教兩個
學生。五分鐘後，再三個來請我也教他們。

Changing Perspectives

Viviana sporting a blue tongue

photo by Rick

Today, Rick and I did "story time" after school for the second and third grade.  Rick read a book about a crocodile that thought he was a duck.  Martin was *not* pleased.  He had on his angry face and he wouldn't walk by himself and kept mumbling, "Why we no play legos?"  And then, after about two pages, he was hooked.

While I was sitting, pretending it was the most fascinating story I'd ever heard in order to get the kids invested, Yajaira and Viviana, the twins climbed up on my lap, one on each leg.  Now, these girls aren't tubs are anything , but they. are. solid. All muscle those two.  It was like I had two baby giants on my knees, and I felt so small and petite by comparison, even while I'm no lightweight myself.

My thoughts wandered back to a different time in Taiwan a few years back when I signed up for an aerobics class with a bunch of young Taiwanese women.  I was trying to lose weight at the time, and was succeeding.  Every morning, I would take a shower and then look at my belly in the mirror and think, "Today. Today!  Today I will not feel HUMONGOUS compared to those beautiful wisps of women."  And then I would walk into the class with three walls of mirrors, surrounded by teeny, tiny, petitist-of-petite ladies, and look at my big German-English frame fumbling around to the salsa moves and think, "I'm an AMAZON!"

It was funny to feel the perspective shift.

Dramatic Compliments

So, out of the blue in third grade theatre class today, came this dialogue...

Alondra:  Miss Rebekah, you look so pretty today!
Anita:  Yes.  Your socks are so pretty.
Alondra: And her hair. I like her hair!
Caila: And her skirt is so pretty!
Alondra: And her earrings!
Estefania: And her shirt is so pretty!
Anita:  And those socks with those shoes....!
Wilson: Why you have bruises on you leg?
Rebekah: I don't know.  I bruise easily.

I did wonder if they were buttering me up for something (except Wilson, who was just being Wilson), but I honestly didn't care.  These kids can be so moody and tough sometimes, I felt so happy just to hear them practice using kind words.

*Sigh* I'll never change my clothes again.

CONGA! at Casa de Fe

Stayed for Zumba after school today. This was the cool down. Wild times!  

By this point, I had danced for an hour straight with kids taking turns on my back.  I was drenched!  And at one point, there was this one tiny, little dude up dancing on a table.  Ha!  I didn't even know that dude could walk.  They learn early at the foundation.  Otherwise, they just get left in the dust!