January and February

January and February:




Desi joined our team from Germany for 3 months. She will be helping me once or twice a week going to the schools.

Life has been hard in January. I had stopped writing in my journal and my devotional life has been unfulfilling. I had no desire to do my ministry and I don’t know why I was feeling this way. I was in a rut and it had to stop. It was hard to get myself mentally prepared, but I just had to do it because I had no choice. Once you are at the bottom you just have to pick yourself up and persevere. It’s like a song I used to teach my students. The lyrics goes like this, “I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.”

Mama Ivy, the principle, is helping prepare the walls so that we can paint her walls.

Got Sunday School students and teachers to help paint the preschool walls.

In the last two weeks of January I went to visit all the schools and just observed them. It was quite depressing because I realized I had a big job ahead of me and I felt I was all alone. There is so much to do and so little money and time. Most of the schools have nothing, literally nothing! No toys, tables, chairs, food, toilets, electricity, and especially love and kindness. I feel so sadden by the state these schools have become. I then started to plan for the month and decided to paint part of each school to freshen it up and make a circle area for them. I then proceeded to make and buy materials so that they can have a decent circle time (make a calendar, weather chart, and many more things) I had to be very creative because they have so little resources. I also got a paper company to donate recycled paper to all the schools. That is definitely a big praise item because they now can least do a drawing each day for an art project.

Taught them how to make playdough

About 1 to 2 teachers from each school came to do the teacher's training.

In February I had my first teacher training session on Saturday Feb. 9^th and 10 out of 14 school showed up. I taught them how to start a circle time by doing a morning dance, greetings, calendar time and weather time, bible story time and how to do an art project with the recycled paper. I also taught them how to make playdough.

During the next few weeks in February I will visit each school twice to show by example how to do a circle time, paint and update their schools and to start building relationship with the teachers.

My 12 students from a grade 4 class and Beauty my translator. This is the grade that they learn how to read English. They wanted me to teach 40 kids altogether, but I only had resources for 12 children.

Last Tuesday I started my reading program with 12 grade 4 students. It was refreshing to do something different and it was great to be teaching again. I didn’t realize how much I missed teaching. The class went really well and the students were really receptive in learning how to read English.

In regards to my car this past month I replaced the radiator and the exhaust pipe. I've decided to sell it, but I am basically getting nothing for it. Pray that I can sell the car privately for a better price and that I can get a better car. Also pray that I learn how to drive a manual asap.