You know when you completely underestimate God, think He won’t totally surprise you, or that He doesn’t want you to have fun? …And then He puts you on an pretty darn cool team, throws you on a tropical island, places you all in a home-y apartment where the ocean is your back yard, drops you off at an unreal school to teach hilarious kids day after day, and grants you the definition of “Southern hospitality” as your ministry contact? …well in a nutshell, those are my thoughts on the month as a whole. In Uganda I thought to myself, “There’s no way it can get better than this!” …then I said that at the end of Rwanda. And Ethiopia. And Montenegro. And Albania. And now DEFINITELY Honduras. Let’s just say God kees reminding me of how dumb I can be sometimes – and I think it’s hilarious.
This month we got to teach at Kingdom Bilingual School on the island of Roatan – that place out of a magazine that I never thought I’d get to spend a month at! From kindergarten to grade nine, we got to hang out with kids and youth from all different backgrounds – and might I say that my respect for teachers has sky-rocketed since being thrown into the school scene! Helping out around the couple of churches connected to the school – not to mention, our awesome host family – also helped us feel a part of the community – and off days at the beach were a HUGE gift. I LOVED this month, and am going to miss it SO much. I feel like you loyal readers have heard me say “I love it and am going to miss it SO much” SO MANY times. This time I might mean it a degree more than the last time. It’s been so fun hanging out with kids, being able to give tired teachers a rest at the end of the school year, be extra hands and feet where needed and also learn a lot about myself in the process. For example. I love kids, and some form of teaching has been in the background of my mind for the future. No longer. The camp environment is truly my favourite. Or the dance-teaching environment. The curriculum-and-discipline-thing makes it WAY more difficult to be a friend than explaining how to play the funnest game ever or having a sweet track for youth to go crazy to on the beat drop. So I’m glad I realized that one! Holla Grace. Your job’s not as easy as I thought.
Despite that realization, I’ve sincerely enjoyed the relationships we’ve built with the students at the school – especially the 5th and 6th graders (by the way, bilingual school is key too – they’re all fluent in Spanish AND English).That age where you can joke around, and they understand sarcasm, but they’re not quite old enough to be “too cool” so that they think their teacher is uncool. Love it. They crack me up. The 2nd and 4th graders are also the cutest when they’d do their dances that they’d been working on for the school performance. And though the 3rd graders were by far the most challenging class to subsitute in, they reached a soft-spot in my heart… Alrite, there’s something special about each grade that I love, I’ll admit. I’ve always been bad and narrowing things down into favourites…
But Suzie and Gary have DEFINITELY been (one of) my favourite contacts. They’ve been a real mom and dad to us, and their two kids (Kenzie – 19, and Garrett – 13) have also been fun to have around. Their story – basically unfolding since they were married a little over 20 years ago – to make their way to Honduras in the last couple years, has been so encouraging and has really tempted me to just come back and live with them. They don’t know that yet. I’ll wait till they read it in this blog… The whole theme of their story, really though, was the absence of a detailed, not-open-to-changes-type of plan. Which really is the way to do it, if you ask me. I’ve been reading Bob Goff’s “Love Does” and it reminds me of a quote, nearing the end of the book, when he talks about a time he randomly went to Uganda with a friend and they decided once they got there to start up a school that quickly grew exponentially in size and educational success. He says, “We weren’t thinking at the time about where the chain reaction would stop, and we’re still not thinking about it. I’d like to think it’s because we didn’t have a plan. We had a big idea instead.”
God’s given me the capacity for big ideas. I mean, He’s given that to each of us. We just limit ourselves by the feeble plans we create in our own heads that we think will see those ideas into fruition – which, many times, stops us from running after the potential that idea can have. Being on the water this month, I’ve really felt the Lord through the strong winds. I might be singing looking up at the stars, and a HUGE gust of wind (capable of throwing me off the roof) will hit and I just feel that it’s God saying that He’s there with me. It was ALWAYS windy there at our house. Except the last two days. It was really peaceful – but those small breezes became just as powerful to me because they reminded me how well God knows me. Sometimes He has to push me over with a gust of wind to recognize that He’s there, and other times it just takes a gentle breeze to encourage me to get up to follow that big idea, because He’s already got the plans taken care of.
I only have 2 months left on the Race. All I have to do is fine-tune the big idea now.
