The Start

Today I received part of an answer. I was told that now the homeroom teacher for each grade is supposed to be available to watch the students if they go to the computer lab. If that is true, then I can make an on line assignment for the half of the students who are not reading that day, and I won't have to have them in the room with me. The unexpected part of this is that the class schedules have been changed so now I have each grade twice a day. Instead of the 8 classes a week with each grade, I now have 10 classes with them. It's one of those mixed blessings. There will be more time to fit in reading, but also more empty time to fill in for the other students.

Coming Glory?

This is the first half of what is supposed to be a great story, the difficult part, without the glorious ending, yet. These two verses keep coming to me about the situation. One is Ephesians 3:20 in the NIV that says, "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us," or as the Amplified version says, " ...far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]—..." The other is Psalm 27:14 from the Amplified Bible, " Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord."

According to the Ephesians promise, there will be a glorious ending, beyond what I could imagine. Then, there is the command in the Psalm to expect and wait for the Lord to work. I will add that part after it happens, next month. Right now I am writing this with the tremulous expectation that there will be a glorious ending. My heart is not quite stout about it.

There are two things, related things, that I am praying about.

The first one is guidance on how to set up something for my classes of 15, 16, and 10 students in my room. Most of them need to be occupied so I can read with half of them in small groups on days when I don't have an adult to supervise them in the computer lab.

So far this year, I have had those classes in the computer lab, but turned off the Internet and had the students do our resident English program. The 5th grade has now finished that program and the 4th and 6th are nearly done. Now they really don't have anything to do on the computers for that time, so I will have to have them do something in the classroom.

If they don't have something clear to do, and something to fill in the times when they finish their assigned tasks ahead of other groups, they will start wandering around the classroom, picking on each other, and destroying things. The reading groups won't get finished if I have to keep corralling the others.

The Lord has provided some resources for the situation, Alphasmart keyboards for typing sentences, a listening station for 4 students on one CD, some games, and one computer with a few interactive computer games. The difficulties will be filling in the down time for groups that finish their activities before the group reading is done, making sure everyone has time to type their sentences, figuring out the group sizes, and having something for the half of the class who aren't reading on that day.

I will be praying through this and planning it out this month and then see the results next month.

The second item is the coming of the promised phonics game/program. This has been in the works for 5 months already, but nothing has shown up at school yet.

It appears that this program would be a good replacement for the resident computer game we have now. It is promised to run as a resident program, so, once again, the students will have something to do when the Internet is disconnected or unavailable. It will provide an answer to the dilemma I have about the finished resident computer program.

Beyond that, it should provide individualized help in letter sound recognition that so many of my students need, and some very critically.

It sounds wonderful, and God is putting it together, but in His timing.

This all reminds me of the story of Gideon starting in Judges 6. He faced an impossible, terrible foe 6:2; 7:12, . Then the Lord reduced his worldly chances of success even more by greatly reducing his army (7:8) just before gloriously scaring the Midianites away. Gideon obeyed the Lord in each step up to that end. He pretty much thought the whole idea of overcoming the Midianites was impossible from the start, so the crazy directions from God were really the only hopeful thing to do.

So, now I am trying to follow His guidance in each step to accomplish this not quite as impossible task and looking for that glorious answer.

God’s Odd Provision

By Jean

It could have been quite serious. A sudden stop on a motor scooter going 50 kph. The Lord allowed me only scrapes, bruises, and a hard bang to the head making a cut requiring 4 stiches. What happened to my helmet, I don’t know.

Darrick arrived the night before and I had the day off. My 90 day check in time was coming up, and, since we don’t take more than one adult passenger on our motor scooters, Gary and I decided it was senseless leave Darrick alone or take two scooters and drag him into an Immigration Office experience.

So, I was driving myself along the inner ring road toward the Immigration Office. The next thing I know I am having a kind of day dream about having the right kind of documentation.

I think, “I shouldn’t be daydreaming, I’m riding a motor scooter.”

Then I opened my eyes to find myself sitting on the sidewalk. Straight ahead of me is a pick up truck stopped on the side of the street with a flat front tire. A little to my left, on the sidewalk, is my parked motor scooter.

“Oh darn, I’ve been in an accident,” was my next thought.

A lady was there asking for some kind of identification from me, so I pulled my passport out of the papers I was taking to Immigration. I should have given her the laminated passport copy and my WA driver’s license that I had in my zipped up pocket for such situations, but I wasn’t thinking too clearly.  The ambulance people and the police were already there, so I must have been out for awhile. I am still waiting for one of those special powers to show up that people get from a good bang on the head.

Then I decided I had better call Gary. The lady talking to me figured out what I was doing and told me to tell him the ambulance was taking me to some hospital that I couldn’t understand. Gary was wise enough to tell me to tell them to take me to McCormick. That was a hospital familiar to us, and my records were there.

My injuries were minimal enough that the ambulance driver had me sit in the passenger seat up front so he could put in the back a more badly injured man on a stretcher he picked up at a local police station before going to the hospital.

Gary and Darrick met the ambulance at the hospital and took care of all the admitting questions.

The cat scan of my head showed no brain injury. They also x-rayed my chest a little later, but they didn’t say why.

When I finally got to my room, Gary asked me more about where the accident was so he could go find my motor scooter. He went there and walked around in the rain for a couple of hours, but he couldn’t find it. All the information about the insurance coverage we had for accidents on that scooter were in the seat.

Towards evening the young man who had been driving the pick up, and his friend, came to see me in the hospital. Through their Thai, a little of mine, a drawing on paper, and an English word or two from them, they told us that they had turned in front of me with the pick up. It was too hard to get a much more detailed description than that about where I and my motor scooter and my helmet went after that. The best part was when  they told us that the police had my motor scooter! 

The next morning Gary went to my school to let them know I wouldn’t be there and to have Kru Maow help him find out where the police had my motor scooter.

It turned out that a young man, Mark, with experience teaching English was there that day. He was going to help me with my classes, but he ended up doing them for me. He did very well with such short notice.

Gary finally found the police station with the scooter and was able to get the insurance information back to the hospital before it was time for me to go. It was a good thing that it took them all morning to get through their discharging procedure.

Praise the Lord, the insurance paid for all of the hospital bills.

Gary and I went straight to the police station to see if we could get my motor scooter and to give my statement to the police. They insisted they needed an interpreter to talk to me, so they called Kru Malee.

She was on her way to a government office downtown with a few other people to take care of some school business, but she finally agreed to come over. The young man who was driving the pick up came over too, after awhile. The police decided he was at fault and everyone worked out what he would pay to fix the motor scooter. One of the policemen is supposed to be fixing it.

My helmet and sunglasses were gone, though. The police said the helmet went in the ambulance. It didn’t come out with me, though.

To get home I had to ride behind Gary without a helmet on. Just as we turned on to the ring road there was a police stop checking for helmets. The policeman stopped us and said he would give Gary a ticket. Suddenly Kru Malee ran up and explained how I had just lost my helmet in the accident yesterday. The policeman accepted her comments and didn’t give us a ticket. Then we made it home ok.

The next day I went to school to give Mark some ideas of what to do for the next couple of days. Then I went home.

This gave me a chance to spend a couple of days with Darrick that I wouldn’t have had. Also, Monday and Tuesday were holidays and days to rest up anyway.

That evening, I  found my sunglasses in the bottom of my backpack.

I guess God can’t show His protection and care so much unless there is something traumatic to protect us from.

:J

The Way Through

When my classroom printer stopped communicating with my classroom computer on Saturday afternoon, I knew it was God's message to me to go home. I had finished making all the copies I needed for class the first couple of days of next week and was starting on some picture cards for the next days.

I was able to make it through all the copies I needed even though it ran out of ink part way through. However, I still had a spare cartridge from last year that I could put in. The school had bought two cartridges last year when I ran out of ink.

I was using the printer because the desktop Canon copier in the office had finally run out of black ink. It had said it was low when I started using it, but it made about 50 good copies before it ran out. It lasted long enough to get through all the pages that needed to be copied because they weren't on my computer for printing.

I was using the Canon copier because the big, main copier was out of ink. It had limped through making copies on Friday, barely making the last one I asked for. It did ok on Thursday, when I needed to make copies of worksheets for the 4 classes I learned I had when I arrived that morning. It was my first day back at the school after being gone for the 2-month break.

When I left Friday evening, I wasn't sure how any of those copies were going to be made. My computer was refusing to connect to the Internet, and that's what it seems to need in order to communicate with my printer. I also knew the main copier was out of ink.

God made the way through for me, in answer to my prayers and some others'. When I turned on my computer, it connected to the Internet right away. The main copier still didn't work, but God reminded me of the Canon.

It's another time that He has shown me that He is in control even in the midst of circumstances that seem to be getting out of control.

 

By Jean

Failure Possibilities?

by Jean

"What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" was a question posed by Robert Schuller and similar questions have shown up on little posters around the Internet. Recently I've been having some second thoughts about applying that question to my life. The question ties into Philippians 4:13 that says ,"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." (NKJ) and Proverbs 16:3, "Roll your works upon the Lord [commit and trust them wholly to Him; He will cause your thoughts to become agreeable to His will, and] so shall your plans be established and succeed. "(Amplified Bible) If Christ is going to give us the strength and wisdom to do all things, then should we know we won't fail if we are following his direction?

Generally, I tend to head into whatever tasks I believe God is directing me to with maybe too much of a "can not fail" attitude - sort of like Peter when he stepped out of the boat to walk to Jesus on the water. (Matthew 14:25-29)

I will see something that I think will be good for someone, or a group of people, and I can take some steps to make it happen. There are usually some nagging doubts about parts of what will happen if I start the ball rolling, but I pray and go ahead anyway. The vast majority of the time everything works out well in the end, especially when the goal I envisioned to start with did not involve my glorification. Most of the anxiousness comes up once I am in the middle of the project. That's when all my inabilities become clear and the possibility of failure looms large - as when Peter suddenly noticed the storm around him once he was standing on the water. (Matthew 14:30)

For instance, for the school Christmas program for this year, I really wanted to give

Caleb the chance to be the main angel that appeared to the shepherds and to choreograph a dance for himself, and then for the rest of the angels coming on to join him. Caleb enjoys expressive dancing ,is good at it, and remembers dance moves well. Also, Piewon has been an enthusiastic break-dancer in past school shows. I thought he could lead some kind of breakdance with the shepherds. I am not any kind of dancer, though, so I knew I would have to have help to have this idea work.

School this year has been more work than ever, so I had no time to work on any Christmas program. Two and a half weeks before the show was to happen our office manager wanted to know if I had any Christmas program ideas. I told the Thai teachers that I had a little bit of an idea, but I would need some help. Their help was to do something with the 1st -4th graders and let me work out something with the 5th and 6th graders. Caleb was willing to lead the angel part and Piewon was sort of willing to lead the breakdancing part. That left me to work with a third group to tie up the little story about what the shepherds did. The first couple of days the third group and the shepherds' parts weren't going well. I found out they need words in their songs in order to make up dances to them. They don't count beats, so they need the words to know when to do what.

Caleb's group was going great! Then they said they wanted to dance to another song besides the ones I gave them. That turned out to be the key. That song was a good song to finish with instead of the one I was trying to use. We reformed our groups a little, and Caleb and his group worked out that other song too, while I went to help the shepherds. Piewon and I found a better song to use for them and then the rest came together. The only hang up was when a shoe of one of the shepherds flew up when he did some sort of flip and stayed in the green cloth hanging over the stage for decoration.

There are still other things I am in the middle of that feel like they are one step or a few weeks away from disaster: finding new English curriculum for next year and preparing it for all the grades, getting the 1st -3rd grade students to finish their pen pal letters and Christmas cards, making quizzes and worksheets for the areas the students need work on. It seems like I am doing the things I would do if I knew I could not fail. The thing is, I could fail, and sometimes I do. Someone told me getting into things like this is a matter of judgment (or misjudgment?). Still I don't think I should sit down and do something like count all the hours it could take to do what I am thinking of and how many hours I have available. That would stop me from doing just about everything I am doing. Instead, I think the judgment should come from time spent in prayer asking for wisdom and meditating on the Scriptures to consider how the hoped for result would conform to them. After all, Jesus criticized Peter not for getting out of the boat (he wouldn't if he had calculated his ability to walk on water in a storm first), but for becoming frightened and doubting after he was out doing it. (Matthew 14:31)

The challenge for me then is to keep going without becoming anxious. There is plenty of scripture about that! One reference is Philippians 4:6,7 "Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and petition (definite requests), with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God.

7 And God’s peace [shall be yours, that tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and being content with its earthly lot of whatever sort that is, that peace], which transcends all understanding, shall garrison and mount guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." (Amplified Bible)

Furniture Adventures 1

by Jean

We had been looking for chairs for two days to go with the used computer desk we just bought. Sharing the ladder wasn’t working out too well. Then we saw a great price on office chairs at the Big C department store. They only had 2 left, the one on display and one in a box. Gary decided to get them, with just a germ of an idea on how to get them home on our motor scooter. I did not want to sit on the box!

We crammed my back pack, the yogurt, 2 short loaves of bread, and 6 apples in the back carrier. Then we bungee corded and string tied the put-together chair upside down on top of the carrier. I got behind Gary and put the box on my lap between us. The bungee cord was down to 3-4 strands of rubber at the stress point, so I reached my left arm back to help hold the chair on. I felt like I was going to tip over to the right most of the trip home.

We had to go about 5 km over speed bumps and then fast moving roads. Finally, we were off the main street for the last 4 blocks. Gary said if the chair fell off then we could come back and get it, so I let go. The bungee cord snapped in 1.5 blocks. The chair hung way down, but didn't hit the ground. We untied it and I started walking toward home with the box. Gary was going to try to tie the chair on the seat when Piak, a young man that’s been helping Gary at our house, came up and offered to carry the chair. He must have seen the chair slide down as we went by his house. So we paraded home, the box, the motor scooter, and the chair.

Our friend Hok and her niece greeted us at our house. I got home just in time to give the niece the English lesson I had promised to give her at 6:30 pm.

And the bread was hardly smashed.

:J

Riding a Motor Scooter

by Jean

Riding can be fun if you forget about the possibility of serious injury or death while you are out on it.  Actually, it isn’t that I’m brave, it’s more that my emotions seem to be fear resistant, so that I will do things that (at least according to my husband) are more dangerous than I realize at the time.  Hey, those people that go sky diving must be more fear resistant than me.  But, then it’s my reasonable self that puts the nix on that activity, so my emotional fear level hasn’t been tested there.

One fun part about scooter riding is the time warp factor.  I can ride somewhere on my scooter for what seems like half an hour.  Then, I look at my watch and see it’s only been 10 minutes.  I end up getting lots of places really early.  I hope that part of the experience doesn’t wear off very soon.

Of course there is the sense of being a part of all of nature when you’re riding.  There aren’t any walls to separate you from the Outside.  You can see all the sky overhead, feel the wind in your hair, the coolness and wetness of the rain, the heat of the sun, and the bugs hit your face.  All that exposure makes me feel small too.  I never felt that same smallness on a bicycle, but then I never rode a bike at 50 K per hour on a super highway either.  When I drive our Lincoln back in the States now, I feel like I am driving a tank. 

Traffic jams become a source of entertainment and sense of overcoming.  The cars are stuck behind each other, but the motor scooter drivers get to move on past them in the motor scooter lane, or sometimes weaving in and around them.  It works great until some car moves over or turns in front of you, or someone opens a door.  So far I’ve stopped in time for the moving cars and been able to get around the doors.  I think the Lord has saved me from being hit by other motor scooters when I suddenly cross their lane after getting between cars.  Most of the scooter riders here can avoid me like the fish do when you’re swimming underwater.  They have been riding on motor scooters since they were born, so they get around quite well.  The car drivers do pretty well at looking out for the scooters too, as long as they are following the unwritten rules of the road here.  They have nice little “beep beep” horns to help you learn what those unwritten rules are, too.

Even though I don’t feel fearful most of my riding time, I still prefer not to drive through rush hour traffic or to drive through down town, especially at night.  I am anticipating Gary to get back soon so I can ride on the back of his scooter while he faces those things.

:J