Life as I see it...

I'm so thankful for people who can see beyond life as I see it. I'm thankful for the people who see beyond the day-to-day stuff and can see a bigger picture than I see most days as I live out the normal, day-to-day routines. I'm thankful for the random surprise notes in the post office box that say "You are making a difference" or "We're praying for you" or "God is using you". It is such a blessing and an encouragement to me to hear that. Why? Because many times it's so easy to get stuck missing the forest for the trees.
It strikes me funny sometimes the way life is. I don't even feel most of the time like I'm living in another country because it becomes so normal after a while. Someone commented to me the other month, "You have such an interesting life!" It is interesting. I can't deny it. I love living in Peru. I love my life. I love the opportunities to walk on history, squeeze on public transportation, blunder my way through a sentence in Quechua and wash bananas in jungle rivers. But I feel like most of the time, life in Peru is just...well...life with a little more spice and interesting additions than normal. Not that life is boring by any means - not in the least! But there are a lot of things that are just a part of normal life and don't feel too spectacular or glamorous or interesting. Most days just fly by in a mad rush of grading homework, teaching classes, planning lessons, making up worksheets, washing dishes, doing laundry, paying bills, trying to figure out the best way to teach my kids, making up games for school, eating lunch, trying to remember to drink enough water, doing paperwork, discussing some issue with someone, or going downtown to buy some necessary item. It's easy to get caught up in those things and miss the big-picture things, how God is moving and what God is doing through and in spite of me. Which is why I'm thankful for other people who have an outside perspective and open my eyes to see it too.
So thank you to all those who help remind me of the bigger picture, of the grand adventure I really am a part of, of the beauty of God's work that surrounds me. Thank you for those who remind and help me to look at the beauty of the forest and stop concentrating on the individual trees. And mostly, thank you to God, who is the author of it all and, in the midst of homework, schoolwork and housework, is working greater and grander things - things, like the author of Hebrews says, "not yet seen".

The Case of the Stranded Documents

It was a bright and sunny afternoon in Lima, Peru in January, 2011. I was accompanying John Kreider, fellow missionary, to take my residence card and passport to the offices of the National Evangelical Council of Peru (CONEP) to get my residence card stickered to make it legal for the next year. We took it there, dropped it off, grabbed some ice cream to beat the heat and went back to the hotel where the entire missionary team was staying on retreat. And that is when the great mystery began.
Several days later, we received a call that my residence card could NOT be updated for the next year, because, according to Peruvian immigrations, I have been in Bolivia for the past two years. To clear up any confusion, I was in Bolivia two years ago for vacation, but I most definitely DID come back and I HAVE been here for the past two years, very much living in Cusco, Peru. Mystery number 1: Why does Peru think I am in Bolivia? Answer number 1: They don't have any record of me re-entering Peru, though I'm sure I gave it to them at the border... Mystery number 2: Why was this not a problem last year? Answer number 2: I have no idea...
My case: Upon entering Bolivia the first time, 2 1/2 years ago, I did not want to pay the $130 visa fee for Americans. Therefore, having Peruvian residency, I used my residency card to pass the border and escaped paying the $130 fee. No one said anything and I innocently rejoiced in the great savings. Entering Bolivia again 4 months later, I did the same thing. Apparently, I'm not supposed to go anywhere without using my passport because then the record of my travels on my passport and my travels on my residence card do not match up. I don't understand what the big deal is, but whatever.
I needed my documents in order to fly back to Cusco, so we returned to the CONEP offices for them before leaving Lima. Upon returning to Cusco, I promptly sent my documents back to Lima and waited. And waited...about a week. Finally, CONEP responded to my inquiries by telling me that they were going to do some kind of a "regularization of migratory movement", annulling the last time I went to Bolivia. Then after that, they should be able to update my residence card with no problem. I rejoiced in the good news and answer to prayer.
Then I learned that the Peruvian government now requires all power of attorney letters to be notarized (brand new law). I needed to get one legalized so that the CONEP people could do all my paperwork for me.
Problem: you can't get anything notarized in Cusco without either a passport or a valid Peruvian identity document. All of my stuff was in Lima. So I had to ask CONEP to send me back my passport so I could notarize the letter and send the whole works back to them. They did and I did. And then I waited again. And waited.
Finally, last week I got another email from them. Apparently, immigrations in Lima had to talk to immigrations in Puno (where I left the country to go to Bolivia), in order to do this regularization of migratory movement. And apparently, immigrations in Puno has not responded to immigrations in Lima yet. So CONEP has to file a formal complaint with immigrations in Lima because they are taking so long.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I know. I am praying for favor with the government and praying that my documents can get miraculously saved from the black hole of government offices in Lima so that I can buy plane tickets to go to the States this summer. I'm praying it can all get resolved quickly and that in the end, everything would work out. Please join with me in prayer for my stranded documents to be liberated and to return to Cusco safe, healthy and soon.

Jungle Adventures, chapter 2: Bananas 101

They say better late than never, so here's installment two...

Early Tuesday morning, we were awakened by Meche's sister Doris informing us that their brother Rony and his wife Noelia had gotten through the river okay in their truck, coming back from Cusco, and were waiting outside to take us to a native village called Shintuya because they had a load of passengers to take. They have an interesting job. Their job is to transport bananas to Cusco in their truck and then bring back food staples, passengers, and whatever else other people request from Cusco to the jungle, because you can't get a lot of things in the jungle. But when it rains a lot and the river gets really high, they sometimes have problems getting through. Everyone was relieved to hear they'd made it okay. So we quickly got dressed and hopped in the back of the truck, in the drizzly remnants of the previous night's torrential downpour. The truck was covered with a thick canvas so the rain didn't get in, but it was rather chilly for the jungle anyway. After the drizzle stopped and we passed all the police points, Rony stopped his truck, put a mattress in the little basket over the cab and Meche, Lisi and I hopped in. It was like going on a safari riding on a giraffe. We were about 10 feet off the ground and had a beautiful, unobstructed view of the jungle and the scenery around us. Except for the chilly wind and the bugs implanting themselves in our faces, it was perfect and I realized it was probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that not many people can say they've had! :) We rode this way about an hour until we got to the native community of Shintuya. "Native" actually means "civilized native". There are real native communities in the Peruvian jungle (a lot of them, actually), but these natives were clad and lived a bit more like the rest of Peruvian society. We didn't stay long there, but we did stay long enough to see a family of natives heading to the hills barefoot to go hunting for several days or weeks. And we got to see their canoes and things. It was an interesting little visit. Then we headed back to a village called Mansilla, along the banks of a river. In that village is where most of the bananas that Rony and Noelia transport are grown. They get a lot of their bananas from church members and then bring things back to Cusco for them and others. While they sold their merchandise from the back of their truck, we wandered down to the river to wait for them. It was shallow and crystalline. We found a rock filled with clay that we used to paint our faces like natives (or at least like we thought natives would paint their faces). And we found a clump of mud that we used to do our own mud facials. So we found plenty to do while waiting for Rony and Noelia. In the afternoon, we headed back to Noelia's family's house in Salvacion and hung out with them for the afternoon. We headed home and enjoyed a quiet evening at Meche's sister's house. Wednesday morning, we were supposed to meet Rony and Noelia at Noelia's family's house so that we could go back to Mansilla to have the adventure of picking up bananas with them. It ended up that plans changed and we were going to go to Noelia's family's banana field in the afternoon. So we cooked lunch to take with us and then headed out in the truck for the banana field. When we got there, we ate lunch, then headed down to the field. Rony and another guy from the church were cutting bananas to take to Cusco and we headed out with a machete to find what we could find. Before we went down into the field, they were telling me I was going to have a rough time of it. I'd washed my only pair of long pants the night before by hand and they were still considerably wet. Plus, I thought we were going to the river, so I wore capris. In the end, Noelia's mom had an extra pair of old socks that she cut the toes out of. So I stretched them between my ankles and knees and was able to enjoy the afternoon. Ah, the grace of God found in the most unexpected places! :) We ended up finding a bunch of papayas that needed harvesting. So I had my first jungle fruit harvesting course. Papaya harvesting 101:

1. Find a long stick with a fork in the end.

2. Make sure you have two people with something big like a blanket that they can hold between them.

3. Stick the forked stick on the stem of the papaya and push till the stem breaks.

4. Catch the papaya in the blanket and put it gently on the ground, being careful to not touch the sap, which apparently makes your skin burn.

Hacking our way through the undergrowth with a machete, we eventually found their cornfield also. I was quite excited to see small-kernel corn and was hoping it was American-style sweet corn. I carefully brought an ear home with me in my bag, cooked it and eagerly bit into it. No such luck. Field corn. :( Meanwhile, the guys were hacking down heavy bunches of bananas with machetes and carrying them on their backs up a fairly steep, muddy slope to the waiting truck. We finished mid-afternoon and went home for a MUCH-needed shower before the Wednesday evening church service. We wanted to teach them some of the songs we know from church, so in between showering, we copied 6 of them down on big chart papers and taught them to the church. After the service we celebrated the birthday of one of the church members with Coke and crackers. Apparently, he doesn't really have family to celebrate with him, so it was fun to help be a part of that.

The next morning, we woke up bright and early in more rain to head back to Mansilla to pick up a load of bananas for Rony and Noelia to take back to Cusco. Thus began the course I like to call Bananas 101. We ended up having to wait all morning because of the rain and because the special truck that can go up the river to collect the bananas was not available. Around 11 it came and we left to head up the river in the truck. Lisi stayed behind with the truck (and to nap a bit), but Meche and I had quite an adventure dodging branches that wanted to slap us in the face as the truck literally went straight up the river. It was not a deep river, but the truck was designed to go straight up it. After driving about half an hour or so, we got to where the church people and their bananas were waiting for us along the river. They found it quite entertaining to hear me conversing in my semi-butchered Quechua. These brothers and sisters grow the bananas in their fields, then cut them down and haul them carefully to the river. If they are not careful, the bananas will get bruised and mushed and they won't be good anymore. While we were there, about 15 bunches of bananas (okay, not little bunches like you get at the grocery store, but imagine about 20 of those bunches on a huge, thick stem). This is one way that they can provide for their famillies. The truck filled up with bananas quickly and Meche and I ended up walking back to Rony's truck down the river, following the banana truck. Once the banana truck got back to Rony's truck, the bananas were carefully unloaded into the river. The big, thick stems that support all the little bunches of bananas make it difficult to fill Rony's truck to max capacity, so we spent all afternoon cutting the bananas off the stems. We made a dam with the stems of bananas which kept the individual small bunches from floating away. The only problem with washing bananas is the bugs. Big spders and cockroaches love to live in bananas and I caused consternation on several occasions by letting out little screams when they found me. I had to remember the stories my high school history teacher told about his adventures unloading bananas in the States and finding spiders the size of his hand. Those stories were never far from my mind. And then I discovered something else - stinging ants.

All of a sudden, while I was rinsing the sticky sap off the bananas and getting them ready to head back to Cusco, burning pain shot through my finger. It quickly moved up into my biceps. Being out in the middle of nowhere in the jungle, not knowing what it was exactly, hearing stories of biting spiders and ants that cause instantaneous fever does not exactly make for warm fuzzy feelings. Meche, Lisi and I were all a bit concerned until Noelia was able to diagnose it. The sting hurt like crazy for an hour or two and I stopped washing bananas and turned instead to supper detail with Noelia. By this time, it was getting dark and we still needed to finish washing the bananas and then load them to the truck. I started helping again after supper and we finished by around midnight. We then drove back into Mansilla, about 2 minutes away, and collapsed on blanket-mattresses on the floor of the community room. Between the thought of what could be crawling over my face while I was sleeping and the hard cement floor beneath me, I didn't exactly sleep like I would have had I been in my bed. We awoke early on Friday morning, planning on heading back to Salvaciion pretty directly. However, there were more bananas to be collected, so we ended up leaving mid-morning. Back in Salvacion, we took our time getting showers and decided we'd go later to check about getting tickets to go back to Cusco that afternoon. I had to be back quickly in order to leave again on Sunday morning for team retreat, so we needed to make sure we got going that day. We found tickets for an 11:30 bus that would take us about an hour to where we could get another bus to Cusco. So that's what we did. We waited around all afternoon at a restaurant in Pillcopata, where the first bus dropped us off, then boarded the other bus in Pillcopata to go back to Cusco. I was warned before we left not to accept any bags or anything from strangers because they'd be coca leaves (the basis from which cocaine is made). And really, we stopped at a police checkpoint in the middle of the night sometime and they found a whole feed bag full of coca leaves that they confiscated. It was a pretty crazy scene - police yelling, people yelling, mass pandemonium on the bus. But we made it through, made it through the holes in the road, through the swaying bus, through even more rain, through a long night of traveling and arrived back in Cusco the next morning around 6:30, exhausted but having enjoyed our many, many adventures in the jungle. It was an unforgettable trip, educational, fun, exhausting, exhilarating, difficult at some points, but totally, totally worth it all.

Here's a link to my photos on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=273110&id=610351019&l=702ee172ce

Jungle Adventures Chapter 1: Who told the pastor I'm the visiting preacher??

Ever since the end of last year, I'd been talking with Lisi and Meche, two of my good friends from church, about taking a trip into the jungle. That's the one part of Peru that I hadn't explored yet and I had an itching to go (I still have an itching....but now it's from mosquito bites!) Meche has a brother and a sister who both live in the jungle, in a town called Salvación, so we had contacts and somewhere to stay. We had a bit of confusion as to when we would leave. We were hoping to be able to hitch a ride into the jungle with Meche's brother, but he ended up leaving almost a week later than we wanted to leave, so we decided to take a bus in. 5:30 PM they said the bus left. So I got there around 5. I began to worry a bit when people began to say that we shouldn't take a lot of weight, that the roads were bad and that it wasn't safe. I'm used to traveling adventures in Peru, so I wasn't too surprised, but it was a little disconcerting. I met up with Meche's sister Doris and we began our trip. Meche and Lisi said they'd meet up with us in Huacarpay, since the bus was going right past there anyhow. We stopped in San Jeronimo (where I live) to eat supper. They said we'd have half an hour. We decided to go for chicken and fries (very typical). We were just eating our chicken when one of the other occupants of the bus, an acquaintance of Meche's sister, came in and was like "The bus is about to leave!" So we asked for bags for our chicken, got another order of chicken for Meche, and ran back to the bus, only to sit there and finish our chicken before the bus left. Hurry up and wait. We finally left Huacarpay around 7:00 and began our journey. By this time it was dark, so we weren't able to see much and we were tired, so we tried to sleep. We were awakened by our arrival in Paucartambo, the last main town we passed through and a popular tourist destination, where we took a pit stop around 11 PM. The rest of the night after that we were not able to sleep because the bus was lurching back and forth, bouncing and jouncing over potholes and sounding very much as if the screws holding it together were going to come unscrewed. At one point, they turned on the lights, said "Everybody off the bus" and we had to walk around this one big hole in the road. The bus went through minus passengers and we all got back on on the other side. Actually, the road was not too bad for our trips in and out. It could have been worse. We could have gotten stuck or rolled over or something like that. Both have been known to happen. But we made it, safe and sound, after having crossed a shallow river in the bus, at 6:30 Saturday morning. After a basically sleepless night, we were all tired, so we took a short nap in the morning and a longer one in the afternoon. We made lunch for ourselves and Meche's sister and brother-in-law. When we gathered for lunch, they had coconuts for all of us. Coconut milk is okay, not my favorite, but definitely drinkable. They say it's very good for you. That evening, refreshed by our napping, we helped to make bread to sell to the local stores. That is one source of income for Doris and Wilbert, Meche's sister and brother-in-law. It was fun to see how the bread is made, though we could tell we weren't professionals. Our bread turned out large, small, flat, puffy, heart-shaped, you name it. Wasn't too bad for our first time though. Sunday morning we got up and got ready to go to church. The church in Salvación is a small, cement-block structure with no windows, doors, or sound system. Doris said there are about 50 people in all who attend the church, though we only ever saw about 30 at a time. The service was fine, but the really funny part came after the service, when the pastor walked home with us. He looked at me and said "So, you're going to bring the word tonight?" I stared at him, rather stupefied. We had plans to go to a lake that afternoon, so I checked with the girls whether they thought we'd have time to go and come back. They did, so I told him I would. It was kind of hard to say no when I could tell he was expecting me to say yes, though I didn't particularly want to preach and felt a little strange that he had asked me specifically and not all three of us. We spent the afternoon at Machuwasi Lake, where we saw lots of beautiful jungle scenery and some birds as well. It was a fun afternoon. We got back home just in time to shower, change clothes, and head to church. There is no public street lighting in Salvación, so we went to church by flashlight. I preached on 2 Cor. 5:17-21, what I'd been studying in my own devotions. It went fine, though nothing super spectacular or anything. I don't think I'll quit my day job and become a pastor. Monday morning we decided that at the Wednesday service we wanted to try to teach the church some new songs, since they'd sung basically the same songs in the morning and evening services the day before. So we spent the morning thinking of songs we'd like to teach them and writing down the words. It was a long process, but fun. Then it was time to make bread again. After all that heat and work, we were ready for a swim. So we went down to the river - cool, clear, beautiful water rushing over smooth, colorful stones. Yeah, it was pretty beautiful. The river wasn't deep, so Meche got a creative idea. Why not put rocks on each other's backs like they do in a spa? I was first. Then Lisi put rocks on Meche's back. Then I got up and put rocks on Lisi's back. It WAS relaxing laying there in the water, cooling off, with little colored rocks on our backs. We stayed there until it was getting dark and cool and then went back to the house. I was glad for the chance to relax. Little did we know all the adventures we'd have in the next few days...

For more pictures, follow this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=267051&id=610351019&l=cb87e7538f

Merry Christmas and Happy 2011!

I guess you could say an unofficial (because I've never written it down or anything) New Year's resolution is to blog more. Hopefully it will help to have Internet all year this year... :)
So I guess that means I need to tell you what I've been up to! Well...
School ended with a bang. The last day of school was Wednesday, Dec. 15, followed the next day by an 18-hour workday making report cards (till 1:30 AM), followed the next day by the closing program of the school year, followed the next day by the first PROMESA sixth grade graduation. Needless to say, we were all QUITE ready for summer vacation, after all that! The next day was Sunday, and I got a new roommate. Her name is Mary and she's been a blessing and quite a lot of fun the last few weeks. The next week we were finishing up grades and final paperwork until Thursday. Thursday afternoon, we celebrated Christmas with Marga here at our house. Friday was Christmas Eve. Mary and I went to the annual Santurantikuy Christmas Eve market in the Plaza de Armas downtown that morning. Despite the drizzle and the huge crowds, it was quite enjoyable. That afternoon, we headed out to Huacarpay and "helped" (mainly just watched) cut up an entire lamb to make lamb soup for the service that evening. The service was fun. There was a short message and time of worship and then it was opened up for special numbers, which included a lot of dancing and singing and lasted till midnight. At midnight we ate the lamb soup (very yummy!) and gave everyone hugs, then went home to sleep. Christmas Day, we were in Huacarpay for the morning, waking up and eating breakfast. We got home around noon and got ready to go to the missionary Christmas dinner. That was delicious! Then, in the afternoon, I left to talk to my family and go to Marga's house for a bit. I felt very blessed and surrounded by many loved ones. The next week was filled with different social activities - birthdays, cookie making, game nights, etc. New Year's Eve, we headed back out to Huacarpay for the birthday of some friends' mom. Then we went to the church in San Jeronimo for a New Year's Eve service filled with all kinds of music and some really fast Quechua that I had a hard time keeping up with. And of course, food. Nothing in Peru is complete without food. That is literal. Rice, salad, chicken cordon bleu, some traditional desserts, and the oh-so-yummy and very traditional fruitcake and hot chocolate. We went to Marisol's house stuffed and spent New Year's Eve with Mari and her family and Norminda playing Uno. At midnight, we all went out to the street and watched the fireworks lighting up San Jeronimo like multi-colored fireflies in a field on a summer's night. After wishing everyone a happy new year and praying blessings over the year, we went back inside and watched the first part of Inception, till we got too tired. We finished in the morning, then went back home. The new year began on a delicious note (can you tell there is no shortage of food in my life here?) with a major grilling session with Rolando, Francisca and Christian (the owners of our house and their son), Mary, the Kreiders and I. Chicken, beef, kebabs, sausages, garlic bread and veggies, plus dessert, all on the grill....delicious!
Christmas Eve, as I looked around my church, I realized that these are my Christmas presents. These people, these relationships, these memories, my family worldwide - these are the blessings of Christmas, the blessings that I have been given in abundance.

On that note, I posted some pictures on facebook of my Christmas celebrations and a bit of the craziness. :) For those of you not on facebook, here is the link to the album. Enjoy and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from me to you. Blessings!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=255426&id=610351019&l=b63b1161eb

Things I love about summer vacation!

We are now officially done with the school year, after the closing program on December 17 and the first elementary school graduation ceremony on December 18. Report cards are done. Grades are handed in to the Dept. of Ed. Classrooms are cleaned out. Desks are washed. And I am not going to school every day anymore. So in celebration of summer vacation, here is a fun post highlighting some of the things I enjoy about summer vacation, not in any particular order of importance or anything.
1. Sleeping past 5 AM!
2. Good time to spend with God.
3. Time to be social without the pressure of schoolwork bearing down on me.
4. Watching movies and playing games with my roommate, Mary, just because we have time to do so.
5. Christmas!
6. Time to work on schoolwork that I want to get done for next year at my own pace (yes, I know....I'm impossible!)
7. Vacation....time to travel. I'm planning on going to the jungle.
8. Time to scrapbook....at least in theory, because I haven't gotten to that part yet.
9. I don't have to wear a suit twice a week!
10. Catching up on some emailing.
11. Laughing and destressing! I do this during the school year too, but it's more pronounced during summer vacation.
12. Seeing my kids randomly and them telling me that they miss school, 2 weeks after they were so excited for summer vacation! That cracks me up!
There's only one thing I don't enjoy....the water pipes for the area of Cusco where I live were installed years ago and the population has grown a lot since their installation. That means there is no longer enough water to go around and my water in the mornings is very on-again-off-again (case in point, I just washed my breakfast dishes 4 hours after using them). Oh well. It does make me feel more like the typical missionary!
Before I was a teacher, I saw a mug somewhere that said "There are three reasons to be a teacher: June, July and August". I couldn't understand it and thought it a little rude. If teachers were so dedicated and enjoyed so much what they did, why in the world would they be so excited for summer vacation?
I love my kids, but now.....I understand. :)

Huayllar

For the last few months, I've been walking to Huayllar with some of the other youth and young adults from my church to have a kids' club with the children of this neighboring village. Many of the families in this village are involved in the roof tile-making industry. A number of the families are also involved in the church. However, most of the children who come to the kids' club are not from families involved in the church. They have shown a keen interest in the Bible and in the stories we have been telling them. My good friend Lisi is in charge of the group, but I've been helping her out lately with telling Bible stories. I continue to realize with doing this that I love to tell stories. It's great fun to dramatize the crossing of the Red Sea or the 10 plagues, for example (we just did a series on the life of Moses). We also usually have a time of playing games and sports (jump ropes, baseball, frisbees, soccer, volleyball, dodgeball, etc). It's a fun time and is starting to show some fruit in the lives of the children. There are several in particular who have shown a lot of interest and even some who come regularly to church. I enjoy being involved with this ministry and it has been a blessing for me. Here is a link to some pictures on facebook that I just posted of our times in Huayllar. Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=255415&id=610351019&l=998b03b595

Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room

The other day in fourth grade was one of those "worth it all" days. It started out crappy. The kids were talking and they would not be quiet and pay attention. We always start out by saying the date, saying and singing the monthly memory verse and then choosing someone to choose a song for the whole class to sing. The entire time it was noisy and I felt like we weren't getting anywhere. It was Jafet's turn that day to choose a song and he, in the spirit of the season, wanted to learn a Christmas song. So I "randomly" chose Joy to the World, since it's pretty easy and fun to sing. We sang it through once, with the participation of about a fifth of the class. I got frustrated and told them to all sit and put their heads down on their desks. That apparently did the trick and, after a bit of down time and me talking to them, they were ready to work. So we sang Joy to the World again, this time with the participation of the whole class. Then we talked about what it meant. The line "Let every heart prepare him room" got special attention. We talked about how the innkeepers in the story of Jesus didn't have room in their inns for Jesus. I dramatized it. They had fun saying "No!" When I asked if there was room. Then we talked about how lots of people today don't have room in their hearts either, how some people just want to drink or work or study and they don't want to go to church or read the Bible and they don't care about God. We talked about how we all have a door in our hearts, a door that can be open or closed, a door at which Jesus knocks and asks if he can come in. I asked them if they wanted to be like the innkeepers and say there was no room. I also said that Jesus won't just open the door and say "Ahem! Attention please! I am now going to live here in your heart, like it or not!" We have to open the door for Jesus. And we talked about how Jesus knocks on the door of our hearts and says to each one of us, "May I come in to your heart?" I ended the day by praying with them if anyone wanted to open the door of their heart to Jesus and talking about how when Jesus is in your heart, He tells you what is right and wrong, what is true and not true and how to live and He tells you that God loves you. As they scampered out to recess afterwards, I was talking with some of them and had the distinct feeling of "Wow, this is worth it!" It was exciting and I thought that was the end of it.
The next day they wanted to sing the same song again. They really liked it. After we sang it and were all sitting down again, Sebas had a question. "Profe", he asked, "how do you know when Jesus is talking to you?" That's not something I'm always completely confident about either, but I gave it my best shot. "Well," I said, "sometimes when you're in Bible class, did you ever think 'Wow, I think what the teacher is saying is true' or 'That makes sense'? That's God talking to your heart right then. And sometimes when you're reading the Bible and you think 'Wow, if God could help them, He can help me too', that's God talking to you. And even sometimes when you have peace in your heart, that is God giving you that peace." Then we got into a discussion of peace and I shared with them the saying "Know Jesus, know peace; no Jesus, no peace". It was fun because they were able to understand the humor in it, even though it was in English! And then I shared with them a riddle that my friend once shared with me: "What's greater than God, more evil than Satan, poor men have it, rich men need it and if you eat it you die?" (nothing) They got that too. So we ended up talking about God things for the better part of two classes and mixing that with English and they were having fun and learning about God and learning English at the same time! Yes!!!!! It gave me an idea for a permanent English bulletin board in the hallway for next year, to try to get the students playing with and interested in English by putting games, puzzles, etc there. But more than that, it was encouraging just seeing how God took that crappy day and turned it into a great day and a very fun day and a day that, I trust, will plant seeds in the hearts of my students. Praise God for those "worth it all" days!

9 more days!

We are counting down the days till the end of the school year at PROMESA. As of the end of school today, that makes 9 more days. Please pray for a strong end to the school year and for renewed energy for the last few days.
A special prayer request is for fifth grade. Lately their attitudes have been very bad and they have not been respecting their teachers, particularly me. I'm not quite sure what has gone wrong, but it is extremely difficult to have class in that classroom right now. Today I talked to them about things for the entire 90 minute class. And I felt like I was talking to a brick wall. So I am quite frustrated with them right now and yet really wanting the last few days of school to be good ones and positive ones, for all my classes but especially that class. But I feel a bit hopeless. And I feel completely unmotivated to do anything in or for that class. Please pray that I can show them God's love even when I'm very frustrated.
On a positive note, I had a very good day with fourth grade, mostly. Started out rough, but then the end was pretty amazing. We learned the song "Joy to the World" and talked about preparing room in our hearts for Jesus. They were very interested and we prayed at the end of class if there was anyone who wanted to open their heart to Jesus. So that was the high point of the day.
I continue to need God's grace for each day. Please pray for the end of the school year. Thanks!

Project Read More English!

Does this image look familiar?
Have you ever looked at a stack of magazines like this and thought there was no hope for them?
Well......think again! Why not send all those dust-collecting magazines to Peru?
I have recently discovered that my students really enjoy reading kids' magazines. The difficulty I've found is that while my students' interest level is that of a normal 4th-6th grader, their reading level is much lower, since English is their second language. Therefore, it's difficult to keep their attention with traditional books in the classroom (Note: I am talking in this sense of free reading books that they can read in their spare time, when they get done early with something, in reading groups, etc. I do use books in my class as well!) While they are ready in thought to tackle a Chronicles of Narnia-sized book, they can feasibly independently read a simple chapter book. This creates a bit of a difficulty. And this is where magazines come in. They're not the answer for everything, but they are cool, appropriate for my students' age level and formatted in bite-sized chunks that are not so overwhelming to read as a thick novel. And yet they're still reading, which is what I want them to do...
So that's where you come in. I'm posting this to ask for any back issues of magazines (particularly kids' magazines) you want to get rid of. Magazines geared to adults are nice to cut up for pictures and things, but for reading purposes, kids' magazines are much more attractive to and easy for them. Possible titles could be (though NOT by any means limited to these): Highlights, Club House, Zoobooks, Kids Discover, National Geographic Kids, Ranger Rick, Weekly Reader, Spider, Cricket, etc.....
If you have any magazines you would like to donate to the cause, please contact Angela Kline or I (see email addresses below). Thanks so much and blessings to you all!
Bethany

kline_angela@yahoo.com
betania129@yahoo.com