Finding God's Hand

On Friday night, I had a long conversation with Shawney about how you can see God’s hand on a daily basis, meaning, no matter how good or bad your day is, God was a part of it. We then decided to verbalize a list of all the ways that we “saw” God in that day. I love this concept so much, so be prepared to hear more about it!

The conversation began because on that day, Shawney and I observed a few English teachers at a local school. We went in with the mindset of seeing how our units and lessons that we’ve spent all week working on could be incorporated into their classroom. What we found instead was an extremely humbling experience. The Pratom 6 (6^th grade) teacher handed us a copy of her lesson plan and we watched in awe as she took full control of her classroom. Although different from what we’re used to, I could tell that these students loved and respected their teacher and, most importantly, they were learning exactly what her lesson plan had laid out.

Upon this realization, I was frustrated and disappointed. All of this work that we had done was, in my eyes, for nothing. Afterwards, we spoke with two other English teachers and, exasperated, asked them how we can help other than the teaching that we’re already doing (because at this point, I wasn’t sure what else I could do). Their response was something like, “Help with vocabulary… with pronunciation… help with getting my students to love English. It’s very difficult and they don't like it.”

That’s when the light bulb went off. I know I’m not world’s best teacher, but I also know that I can make lessons fun. I asked if they wanted us to come up with songs, games, crafts, and activities for their already wonderful lessons so that the students are having fun during English and still learning. The faces of these women lit up and they practically jumped up and down with excitement. That's the moment when I saw God’s hand as I could see just how beneficial my trip here could be to these two women and to their students.

So, Shawney and I are now archiving all of the units that we created for the HELP team next summer. Now, we’re devoting our time to teaching on Monday’s and Tuesday’s, and then sharing with these teachers various ways to make learning fun for the rest of the week. I’m looking forward to this change in plans and am thankful that we were guided in the right direction sooner rather than later.

As for elephants, we put that on hold until more volunteers could join us. Instead, we did some shopping in Fang this weekend, had an AMAZING dinner at a Thai barbeque restaurant (below), and went tubing down the river this morning. More updates about the work week to come soon! Until then, may you find God's hand in your day, no matter if it's good or bad it is. :-)