Hi everybody. How is life? I hope all is well.
This week has been a busy one with both my jobs. I say both my jobs because it definitely feels as if we are all working two jobs. During the day we are teachers. We work and plan for hours on end to make sure we are the best possible teachers we can be. Then after school our second job comes, we work on building connections with families which will turn into deep, meaningful and purposeful relationships. So this week the two jobs rolled into one has kept me busy.
This week the teacher in me was preparing mid-trimester progress reports, setting individual education plans for my kids who are struggling, and trying to convince one very angry and very large girl that throwing basketballs in little girls’ faces is the wrong way to handle conflict. This week I learned about vascular and nonvascular plants in order to try to teach 23 children about them and also passed on the joys of conjunction junction to this country. There are now 23 children in the Sudan who can sing conjunction junction…and this makes me proud.
In the other facet of my job here this week has also been busy. I had two home visits this week both with Sudanese families. One was a visit with one of my favorite student’s mom. The visit was sweet and lovely and I am praying about whether or not it is a relationship I should purposefully pursue. The second home visit was a birthday party for the one year old brother of one of my students. While going to a party may not sound like work here it is an amazing opportunity for conversation. I ended up talking to an older Muslim woman about the differences between our two faiths (in Arabic!) for a while. It was a good week.
In other news, I have gotten an Arabic tutor. Her name is Safa and so far she is good. She is a devout Muslim so it will be a good chance to build a long term relationship also. At our first lesson we talked about the reason for fasting between our two faiths. I am hopeful conversations like this will continue to come up in our tutoring time.
Life is not all work though. Tonight our team went bowling at the one bowling alley in all of the Sudan. It was hilarious and definitely a fun time. There was a crowd of Sudanese men watching all of us which made for an awkward but laughable situation. Over all this week has been good. I am doing well and falling more in love with this country each and every day I wake up and feel God's heart for these people.
Thank you for the support and the prayers. They are needed, appreciated, and felt. Love you guys.
Peace, J
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