Hello from Siem Reap, Cambodia!
This month our team is living and working at the Agape School – teaching English, Bible and computer classes to kids ranging in ages from 5-18 years old. There are also 17 children living here at the school – they cannot live at home for various reasons (possibly an abusive situation at home, or they live too far to travel to school every day, or perhaps their parents just don’t have the resources to care for them) and so they eat, sleep and learn “on campus”. There are 8 one-hour class periods a day (multiplied by 9 grade levels) and our team usually teaches about 3-4 classes per day (on various subjects and varying grade levels).
For anyone who knows me very well, teaching small children is not my forte (or my preference for that matter). To put it bluntly, I’m the last person who wants to teach small children. But within a day of teaching here, I felt a conviction on my spirit to teach as many of the 1st grade classes as I could.
“But God, don’t you realize that I’m going to be exhausted from teaching 1st graders? Don’t you realize I have other things I need to concentrate on (like learning how to lead a team better)? Don’t you understand that I’m going to lose my cool with these kids – why would you ask me to do that?”
But despite my best arguments, the conviction was still there. So I did what any crazy person would do in that situation: I signed up for all four 1st grade classes available – and they were all back-to-back-to-back-to-back. And the revelations I walked away with after that experience were nothing short of extraordinary – in my tired and slightly delusional opinion. Allow me to present you with the list of “Things I Learned About God While Teaching First Graders in Cambodia”:
Step outside of the box for a moment and imagine if God was the teacher and we were the first graders. What might He see, feel and experience?
He might see them deliberately disobey Him – and look Him full on in the eye while doing it. I can’t tell you how many times I would tell a child to sit down and then watch them stand back up (WHILE I WAS LOOKING!) and try to walk around again. I would imagine God might see things that way when He gives us instructions only to have us acknowledge them and then tell Him no.
Or we might try and be sneakier about it and try to find a time when He’s not looking so that we can do what we wanted to do anyway. There would be many (MANY!) times where I would take away an item from a kid (something that was acting as a distraction) and tell them not to touch it on my desk, only to look over 30 seconds later and see them trying to grab at it while my back was turned. Maybe God feels some of that same exasperation when we seem to think we can get around Him by hoping that He’ll turn His back on us at some point – and He knows it’s never going to happen.
He tries to impart some kind of wisdom to us – but all we seemingly want to do is goof around or fight with each other. I can’t tell you how badly I want these kids to learn (I’m trying to teach them the alphabet) but I seem to spend most of my time just trying to get them to quiet down and pay attention. I can’t do any teaching for all the time it takes me to pull them off each other. I wonder how much wisdom we could gain if we stopped to listen to what God was trying to teach us, instead of seeking thrills and disturbing the peace.
We try to tell Him that we don’t have the right resources to do what He’s asking of us. If we would just tell Him what we need, He would bring it to us. At least once a class period, I would ask the kids to get out their paper and pencil in order to write something down. As I walked around the room to check on their progress, I would run into a child who didn’t have any paper out. Most of the time, they didn’t have any left. If they just would have asked me for some, I would have found it for them. It leads me to believe that God is just waiting for us to ask Him for whatever it is that we need to do whatever it is that He’s asking us to do.
Sometimes He might use someone else to reprimand us when He can’t seem to get through to us Himself. One class, I had a really, really naughty first grader. No matter how I asked him to stop what he was doing or how I tried to rebuke him in the classroom, nothing was getting through. So after the class, I walked him to the office and asked one of the teachers to translate for me. He ended up crying (at which point I wasn’t sure what to do) but at least I now knew that he understood without question. I will now look at rebuke received from others a little differently – like they’re translating for God.
And then we might cry too and all He will want to do is comfort us and tell us that He still loves us and He’s not angry with us and that everything will be OK. After we walked back to the class, I found myself drawn to the crying little guy and just wanting to tell him that I wasn’t upset with him and that I knew he would do better next class. God, our Father, will always want to do the same.
But through it all, He’s always willing to give us a high-five when we run up to Him and ask for one. It didn’t matter how much I had to raise my voice or how often I had to tell them to sit and be quiet – if they managed to write out their alphabet, they would run up to the front (with no regard to what I was now trying to teach) and show me their paper and put their hand in the air for a high-five. Even if we’ve been disobedient a hundred times before, God will be always willing to give us that high-five or fist bump when we’ve done it right. Because that’s just who He is.
There were moments where I honestly wasn’t sure if I could make it another minute – sitting in my “teacher’s chair” trying to take a break, my voice growing hoarse, my stomach in knots, my legs growing tired, my arms not wanting to point to another letter, running out of things to spell and frankly, my mind just feeling like mush. And then, out of nowhere and for no particular reason, one of those kids just smiles at you. So you stand back up and call out in a loud voice, “A is for APPLE”.
For His glory,
Nat
