I just spent the last month on a mountaintop in Swaziland at a beautiful orphanage called El Shaddai. Despite the amazing view and the wonderful kids I spent much of my month being frustated.
You see I had been placed in a school as a teacher for fifth grade, what my degree will be in once I finish my student teaching next spring. I have alot of training in this area and I was super excited to begin ministry that month. As I began at the school I saw many things that need to be changed in order to help both the staff and the students. As I realized I only had a month there I began to be overwhelmed with the task of teaching these students who were behind, as well as wanting to make a lasting impact.
I thought God had put me there to change everything. I thought God had put me there to inspire the teachers and somehow get the entire school on track in a month. How prideful is that? And oh how wrong I was.
I spent the majority of my month doing lesson plans, talking to the principal, and teaching kids. Day in and day out becoming more and more frustrated with the lack of progress I saw in my students and in the school as a whole. I began crying out in anger to God “Why do you have me here? What am I supposed to do in a month?” His answer came very quietly. “Just love them.”
DUH! That is the first rule of being a teacher. In all of my education classes they have emphasized loving the students over any individual lesson you could teach them. Once I remembered that everything began to change. I stopped trying to cram two grades worth of progress into one month and began to just love on the teachers and students. When I did that everything fell into place. The teachers began to open up about the challenges they were facing in the classroom and ask for my advice. They began to respect me as a colleague not just another random volunteer in their school.
Once that door was open God gave me one of the desires of my heart. Me and two of my other squadmates that are teachers put on a professional development day for the teachers. We were shocked at how active and involved they were in what we were saying. As defeated as they had seemed all month we hardly expected them to hear what we had to say and want more from us.
We may not have changed the entire school, we may not have fixed everything, but what we did was love and love well. We gave the teachers the extra bit of encouragement they needed to keep going and continue to love the students when we left. We helped the students begin to think creatively and taught them that their value to us is more than just their grades. We taught them Bible stories that showed God’s love for them and that even when they don’t feel loved, as many of them came from broken or abusive homes, that God loved them.
We didn’t change the school in a month, but I think what we did was even better. We showed God’s love to people that needed it. We may never know the full impact of that in this lifetime but nothing that is done in the name of Christ is in vain. God uses everything to his glory and as I continue to pray for El Shaddai Primary School I know that the Lord is beginning a mighty work there and he will not stop until it is completed.
