Wednesday, June 1, 2011

For the teachers!

Most of us have a favorite teacher or two from our school days. Someone who inspired to you keep trying! Never give up! Someone who encouraged you and helped you believe you could do anything! and Or maybe you have a favorite movie about teachers that moves you??
Mr. Holland's Opus? Lean on Me? School of Rock? (lol) and My personal favorite: Dead Poets Society... What's yours? What would our world be like without our teachers. I have quite a few friends who are or have been teachers. And I admire their love for children and their life's work to mold the minds of the future.
Imagine, attempting to teach a class of children who are special needs, most of them deaf & cannot speak with no supplies, no activities, no resource room to run to... no standard sign language... and getting paid less than the average person a day, when the average person is struggling to survive (If you get paid on time at all). Or what about cooking in a shack and walking food to the school in the rain? Trying to take care of a bathroom and clean with no running water? (For special needs children!) How many people do we know who wouldn't even show up? Most would quit... give up... never look back!
I met some amazing teachers and a small staff of people who LOVE, LOVE the children at Hosetta School. Real love or they wouldn't be there!
They just blessed my socks off! (well literally my shoes...)





















Monica, Alex & Isatu are three wonderful teachers at Hosetta. Susan the Administrator, Margaret the Secretary and the Sweet cooks! & Edna who just takes care of everybody! I was drawn to the love that God has placed in their hearts for the kids. I spent almost every moment at Hosetta with them. My son's preschool and one of my 'teacher' friends had donated some school supplies for Hosetta. When I passed them out to the teachers, quickly I realized that the small amount I had taken were the only supplies they had. I took one wooden puzzle... just one. In my home my preschool age kids have more in one cabinet than this entire school has to teach with! The boys who I had just taught the sign language for "more" kept bringing it to me... begging for more with signs. Heart broken I told them, my friends are coming back in a few weeks, and they WILL bring more!



I made a special bond with sweet Edna! She lives on the school grounds in a shack with her family. Some of the children stay with her during the week if they live to far away to travel back and forth. Her Grandson Bernard reminded me of my son Levi! On the last day I had been passing out shoes to some of the children and I looked down and noticed that she was barely wearing 2 flip flops that didn't even match. Before we left I took what I had been wearing that day down to Edna. I told her how her love for the kids spoke to my heart and that I wanted to give her my shoes. She hugged me, broke down and cried. I hadn't seen many tears from the African women I had met, their hard lives has hardened their hearts. But my heart broke that day watching tears fall from sweet Edna's face.


I've been asked since I've been home ...


What do you feel like God said to you? What did He teach you while you were in Sierra Leone?


well... I'm still working on my answers and He is still teaching me, but


Love & Love deeply... I have to believe if we follow that command correctly than the world will see God in us! Chains will be broken and hearts will be changed.


In my favorite 'teacher' movie Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) leans in, to his class... giving the most famous speech of that movie while the boys are looking at pictures of people who had come and gone before them. He tells them "Their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable?" and then he says the famous quote "Seize the day boys" but everyone forgets the actual quote is... "Carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary."


Make your life extraordinary! We know their only Hope! I don't want to wait and reach the end of my life here on earth and wish that I had done it differently? I want an extraordinary life. don't you? What makes life extraordinary? my car? my house? or my love?


Deut 4:9 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.


Since I have been home I have been struggling with the comings & goings of everyday life, so much of what we think is important ---is really just meaningless. What is the the most important thing I can teach my children? Somehow the finding the 'best' school, wearing the 'best' clothes, or spending crazy amounts of money on soccer camps just isn't really important. Is it?
I pray that I won't forget the things I've seen, that I will continue to allow them to teach me about God's Heart! I pray that my heart will break for what breaks His! That He would give me a heart to love deeply, with His truth. And show me how to share it with others.

1 comment:

  1. a note for all my teacher friends... yes I know you cringe when you read my misspelled words and my poor gramar, but you love me! :) lol

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