This month my team is in Lesotho teaching at a school that was started by a lovely lady named Esther.The school was originally for girls that had unplanned pregnancies. Once these girls get pregnant they get kicked out of regular schools. It is also hard for them to make friends. The lovely lady also told us that because of their pregnancies these girls will end up marrying older men. She saw the need for education in these girls lives so she decided to open a school where they can come without judgements. As the years go by she also saw that kids that struggled with drug addictions didn’t have a place to go and learn. So now the school is for boys and girls.
The first day we were at the school, we got asked what are you good at?
Sarah what are you good at? “life skills, history etc..
Emily what are you good at? “Math!”
Savannah What are you good at? “English”
Marissa? “Math and science”
Shannon? “Bible”
Then it was my turn to answer so the teacher asked me, Sisay what are you good at? I said well.. English is not my first language but I can try to do my best! But, they needed Sarah to teach history which meant I was going to be the life skills teacher for the next month. I said, “I don’t know any life skills” but, before I went any farther with that statement my ministry host said, “everyone knows life skills” I asked the teachers if they had any books for me to use, they said, “No” in my head I thought this was going to be a disaster. I assumed I was just going to be teaching students from one class, boy was I wrong!
I walked into my first class and they have combined every class into one class room on top of that all the teachers and my teammates were also in the class. I thought, well, great the only introverted person on the team gets the most amount of people. I was supposed to teach for 1 hour and 20 minutes but when I am nervous I tend to talk fast. Because of that, I got done talking before the hour was even over. But, thank God for awesome teammates that helped me out.
The next day my ministry host gave me a book I could use to teach. The book teaches about leadership and how to become a leader. I didn’t have to teach that day so I used my free time to lesson plan.
Before we left for Lesotho we were in South Africa for a debrief with the whole squad. A day before we left South Africa two of my squadmates said something that stuck with me. One squadmate talked about doing things for the kingdom of God. He talked about how if we have a passion for the Lord, that will overflow into anything we do. Yes, I absolutely do not like teaching but if teaching English to some college students brings glory to God’s kingdom then I need to start teaching with a joyful heart. My other teammate told me “To never say I can’t, because God always can.”
The second statement especially stuck with me because so often I tend to rely on my own strength. Because of that there are days I fail miserably. Even though I spent a whole month teaching English to college students back in Myanmar I still wasn’t confident enough to tell the teacher I could teach English to high schoolers in Lesotho. But, the Lord works in mysterious ways. For my next class in life skills I taught my students about attitude and integrity. We had such great conversations. This time rather than being short on time I actually ran out of time. One of the the things the Lord has been teaching me on the race is to be confident in who He has made me to be. To know that in my weakness He is made strong.
So, for the next couple of weeks I will be teaching life skills in Lesotho. Do I know everything about life? Absolutely not! But, I am willing to share what I know with these students and allow the Lord to do the rest.
I don’t think I have ever actually used the phrase breath taking to describe something until I got to Lesotho. It is such a beautiful country. It is surrounded by mountains. There are houses like the house I was born in all around. It is so green. The people would rather spend a whole day talking to you then do anything else. That’s not because they are lazy, but because they care enough to sit and listen to you talk for that long. I keep hearing the phrase “Africans are relational people” and from what I have seen so far it seems to be true.
