My UKG Class

Have you ever tried to teach a class of 64 children between the ages of 4 and 8 all at once? This is my K class.  At least I am beginning to know their names now.  They really are a wonderful group of girls full of ideas and energy.  They love it when you tell them they are doing well. The hard thing is that everything takes far too long and their are not enough resources to get through all the things I need to teach.  

This morning was great. I had four helpers, ( all teenage girls who are not doing well in school who need to fit in somewhere.) They are helpers in training.  We also got two new benches so now everyone has a place to work without being super crowded at the tables.  This should alleviate some stress.  Now we need to get them all at one designated place and put their names on their tables.  Then I can label the books by table also so we can had them out all together which will alleviate more of the waiting.   

By Thursday of last week after spending three days just shouting to try to get the girls attention I was wondering what I was doing here.  Oswald Chambers  in the book; So I Send You Workmen of God: talks about why Jesus uses the analogy of fishing in the disciples quest for souls.   "Before early dawn, about four in the morning you feel so amazingly cold and so amazingly indifferent that you don't know whether you care for anything."

I could relate to this, I was just simply too tired and too frustrated to think of how things could ever get better.  We must come to the place where we are out of answers of our own  before we cry out to Jesus.  I was also feeling very homesick as I watched all the other Internationals  leave to go back to their homes.  I was thinking that I bit off more then I could chew, can I really do this I thought?  I am slowly getting better at just looking at each day and staying in prayer as I go.  

Sometimes I wonder why God seems to give us the thing we feel least capable of doing.  Things are still up and down, I seem to have help in the morning and things go relatively well, then in the afternoon my helps seems to evapourate and I am back to shouting through the session with no success whatsoever.  I am learning that I need to accept my limitations, there is no guarantee that things will go well. Can I continue to go forward when I am having one of those times when I catch nothing at all in my net?  To take the analogy further, is there a way to throw my net on the other side? These are the questions that I must continue to ask.