English teaching!
Go on the World Race my heart said. Go and seek God, and adventure, and challenge yourself in all ways possible. I knew coming, that I would be doing things that would be uncomfortable and unusual, and therefore enducing growth. This is one of the many reasons that I was drawn to leaving every possible comfort at home, and bouncing around country to country for an entire 11 months. That, and simply because I like to really put myself into situations to test my zeal and passion for life. Well that’s just what the World Race has been doing to me, and I LOVE it.
This month, our ministry has been to teach English, both to kids ages 4-9, as well as to a group of about 30 youth that we found by handing out fliers around the city near our compound we are staying at. My initial thought was “yay! This is something that I wanted to do coming on the race! It’s finally happening. Plus I am super excited to be able to really make a difference in the community in a more tangible way.” Then, it morphed into, “holy cow, I literally have no point of reference other than the fact that I speak the language, yikes! Thiiiiiis is going to be interesting…”
My team and I were informed Monday that we needed to come up with some type of lesson plan for the kids, and that Wednesday would be the first day of class. Cool. So we combined all of our awesome brains together and ended up figuring out a starting point which included going over introductions, emotions, body parts, and colors. We decided to incorporate those things into a combined lesson and a little song in English that we taught them to not only help them with English, but also to bring a little Jesus into the equation. Yay us! Lol. (if you’re curious what the song is, it goes like this… “Jesus lives, Jesus lives, Jesus lives today. He went to the cross to die for us, and rose on the third day.. HEY!” All to the tune of “Jingle bells”, I know..I know..genius.)
We started each day with a game, our song, and a prayer, and then would split off into our classrooms to go over our lesson plan for the day. The Malagasy children are so incredibly sweet and well behaved, it was seriously so cool to watch them learn, and then to hear them practicing with each other and singing our song while playing. It feels so good to be able to leave something with them, and hey, we made ourselves a little one hit wonder that will hopefully be spread to more children in the future. Our lesson plans, we have also left with their teachers so that they can continue teaching it to them and practicing with them in the future.
As for our English Club, this was a whole different story. We didn’t account for the fact that they would be much more advanced in their English speaking skills. So we had to improvise. This class, was much more conversation based, and so we ended up doing a lot of scenario based sentence forming exercises and breaking out into small conversation groups. With these guys, in the beginning, we had to sort of pull it out of them to be willing to participate. The Malagasy people are very shy as a whole. But by the end of our week with them, they were all so willing to share, and even fighting each other to read their short stories out to us and to take pictures with us on the last day. Watching the progression of their participation, and how dedicated they were to learning English and just to bettering themselves really inspired me. It makes me feel so honored to be a part of their lives even for a tiny bit of time.
That’s how the race is, you get told that you’re going to be doing something, usually like the day before, and sometimes even the day OF. But, it’s all so good because it really allows you to trust in the power of God, and also it teaches you to really understand that you can do anything if you just give yourself the opportunity to say “yes”. There have been plenty of moments during this time that I have really just sat back in awe of the situations that the race and that God has put me in and that make me just chuckle to myself. A year ago was probably one of the lowest moments of my life, and now I am here in Madagascar getting to contribute to these people’s lives by teaching them, and walking with them a little in their desire to learn the English language. It seriously feels so good, and I am so incredibly thankful that I said yes, and that you all have helped me along the way on this journey.
Thank you all so much for supporting me in this! I am still in need of funds to keep me here on the race, so please, if you are willing and able to contribute to this ministry by partnering with me financially, please donate. Anything you are willing and able to contribute is helpful.
-Mariah
