Mail from Malawi: Solo

"I want paper."
"What, Gift?” I can’t understand him through his mumbling.
"I want paper!" Still mumbling, but the more emphatic tone helped the decibel level of his voice.
“What do you say?” Seriously, he should know this by now…
"Paper please.”
“Okay,” I reply, pointing to the stack of paper on a different desk, “you can have a piece.”
“Paper please!” Now Gift is frustrated.
“Yes Gift, you can have a piece of paper, it’s over there.” Didn't I just tell him that he could have one? My patience is tired, and I’m getting frustrated.
“I want paper!!”
“Gift, the paper is over there, you can have a piece.” My patience is now disappearing.
“No! I want paper!”

Patience: Gone. I let him stand there until he decided he could get the paper that I said he could have. And the day had only started. Hello Thursday.

Later that day Alyssa came up to me. “Gift told me that I won’t go to heaven.” I looked into a pair of very sad six-year-old eyes. Obviously, Gift did not get the “Be nice” message I had given him not too many minutes before.

Life with this child is 90% frustration. If he doesn’t get his way, on a good day he pouts. On a bad day? He will fake cry (loudly or more softly), knock his chair around, shove things off the other students’ desks, throw his textbooks around, glare, and do everything he can to get attention.

And thus went my week. Laurel got a parasite which was causing problems and the medicine for it made her sick (yes, she's fine, no, it's not Ebola), so all week it was my solo time, with an audience of eight students, each with his or her own different needs needing to be fulfilled. Everything went fine, and I resorted to having the older kids help the younger kids, even if their work for the day wasn’t done yet. Even so, handling the lessons for the grades that I normally don’t and explaining everything to everybody, mixed in with the usual concentration problems, made the week rather hectic and long.

Julian (6th grade) and Claudio (5th grade)

“Excuse me?!” I sternly demanded, “I’ve told you ten times already to be quiet and work on your Bible assignment…. No, you don’t need to talk to each other to write a paragraph about what you think heaven is going to be like.”

And dealing with Gift didn’t help. Not wanting to sit and do something like everybody else is makes life hard, especially when he starts being noisy and distracting. My patience was wearing thin, I was tired, and ready for the week to be over, but we still had Friday to look forward to.

And Friday came.

The day started off with Gift refusing to sit in his chair during worship. Then it so happened, that I could not understand what the kindergarteners were trying to tell me, even if they were speaking English. When Gift still would not be quiet after being asked multiple times, I put him in time-out, sitting in his chair at his desk. A little while later, I found him next to my desk.

“Chair not nice.”
Excuse me? Chairs aren’t nice? Okay…. “Who’s not nice, Gift?” I asked him, wondering if I heard him correctly.
“Chair not nice.” Yup, I heard correctly. If anybody had been focusing on their work, they definitely weren’t now. This was just too good to ignore.
“No Gift, chairs are very nice!” Everybody is successfully distracted.
“NO! Chair not nice.”
“Yes Gift, chairs are nice. They don’t hit you or anything!”
“Chair not nice.”
“Chairs are nice Gift.” And round and round it went as the other students tried not to laugh out loud.
“Jesus nice, chair not nice.” He emphatically tried to convince me.
“Yes Gift! Jesus is nice! And so are chairs!”
“No! Chair not nice.”
I took Gift back to his desk and gave him something to do. And of course, I had to physically put him in his chair. As I’m getting him settled, another student pipes up, “Moral of the story is: Don’t have kids!”

Later that day, he was upset for some reason I don’t remember. Then his fingers were accidentally smashed in the door. More crying, more tears, but at least for a reason we could actually deal with this time. Even so, this Friday felt like it was going to last forever.

I oftentimes feel like the most impatient person in the world. Patience doesn’t seem to be one of my virtues. In the same way, I feel like I have no business being a teacher to my students here. I wouldn’t say I have no clue what I’m doing in the classroom still, but there are times when I wonder…
But, today I am thankful for a God who can enable me to smile at my students at the end of the day and still love them, no matter how the day went. I am thankful for the joy that He gives me through my students. And I am thankful that God is capable of doing so much more than I am, so much more efficiently. He is Good.

And the week wasn’t all bad…

Alyssa has an alphabet dot-to-dot coloring book, and needed help connecting the dots. So we sang the song. By the end of the song, the whole class was singing, “Now I know my ABCs, next time won’t you sing with me.”

“Can you write, ‘I love my teacher Talea?’”
I happily wrote it down on the paper Alyssa supplied for me. Anytime sweetheart, anytime! A moment later, she provided the same paper, asking me to write “I love my teacher Laurel” this time. Then she wanted me to write for her, “Laurel get better.”
Later that day, guess what she gave me :) This girl is SO SWEET!!!

Last Sabbath, we received a note from another very sweet student, Lillee. “To the best teachers ever! Happy Sabbath!”

Please excuse me as I go mop up my melted heart….