Thankfulness

Thanksgiving was a tough day, but I am actually praising God that I still had to work! It kept me so busy so I was not pinning away missing my family in PA!

Today, I am grading my student's autobiographies. It is actually a great time! I am learning so much about their past and what is special to them.

One of my students is an excellent writer and her life story (even at the age of 10) is touching and filled with the grace of God. She has such a heart for the Lord, the story literally brought me to tears! I think I might have an author here!

But she ends with this, "My life is still short, but plentiful and i am so blessed by the Lord!"

May we always recognize how SHORT our life is here, yet how PLENTIFUL it is through the HAND of the LORD! What innocence, yet divine wisdom! This is why I LOVE teaching kids.....not so much when they are being michevious!

Africa Outfit

here is my new African Outfit! haha...so funny. But this is a typical stlye that you see here. Usually the girls wear them a bit tighter, but I asked for it to be lose.

Joelliane

I just found this...and cracked up. Thought I would share...

On one of my student's Bible notebooks they wrote an acrostic.

B- basic
I- information
B- before
L- leaving the
E- Earth

LOL! what will they come up with next!

5K FUN RUN….oxymoron??

Stupid me thought I was “in shape” and could handle running 5K….3 miles. Not to mention the 7:30 am start…to help fight the heat. But I forgot how steep the hills here, how hot the sun is, and how humid it is! Another teacher, Michelle, and I stayed together the whole race…we kept overtaking each other and then having to catch up. Man I thought I was going to die right in the middle. But afterward, I was glad I did it. Running seems to be like that. Want to start…hate it during….and feel so good about it after you finish. Lol. Good thing I don’t make decisions about when I will run again during the race.

I did make it…and even got 2nd in my age group. Got a nice cheap metal out of the whole deal! Lol. But everyone had a great time. 3 of my students did the run in just under 20 minutes!!! I couldn’t believe it. The best time was 19:20 I think. One of the gardeners names Meshack.

Lots of volunteers made this work. Here is Kate and Naomi pretending to me harsh time keepers.
One of the better points of this school: the parents, community, and anyone else just joins and in and helps out. There were a few different people who go to my church that had no children or involvement with HOPAC, but they set up shop, handed out waters, and cheered on all the kids. It was so sweet to see familiar faces at the half way mark handing me cold water!

I think mainly all the volunteering is because there isn’t much that goes on around here. Events like these seem even more exciting since they are so rare. But even more, it makes the events fun. I know so many of my parents they are now friends to me. People I could go and see help from, pop over and visit, or just call up to talk. I NEVER thought I would say that about the parents of my students.

Yea, I know how red my face is….but you have to remember even at 8:30 in the morning…IT IS HOT!

william's Village

Last Saturday I joined with the team that heads out to a village not too far from us. One of the gardeners at school is a Christian on fire for the Lord and on fire to bring change and improvement to his village. So far, they have raised some money for a church…but the first church was poorly built and has fallen down in the last year. Plus it was built in the middle of the soccer pitch….yea don’t ask…no one really knows the reason why. I think someone just said…ok…here.

Now the biggest challenge in the small villages is the Swahili. We tried to bring as many people with us as we can…and manage with the different words we all know. But we just played games in the morning. Then Michelle told a bit of Bible story (with William as translator) as we handed out snacks.

Here is one of the helpers putting on nail polish. Everyone got nail polish..boys, girls, fingers, toes, arms, faces. It was pretty funny.

As always you meet some kids that just break your heart. One little boy had some mental problems and these are not understood properly here. There is no help for those children and others immediately see something is wrong therefore treat the kids very differently. He tends to hit and bully others, but mainly because people try to discipline him with hitting. So it is not a good situation. We try to stay loving, but he is just a bad kid too. Many, many questions..

Anyway, some of the kids came out to the run our school had. It was so cool to see them interacting with HOPAC students….more about that later. The tallest girl in this picture came to the run. :-)

INTERNATIONAL DAY

This has got to be the best idea ever made. Our school takes one day and celebrates all of its countries. It was so fun! Parents, teachers, and students all put in so much work to make this day happen. Each country comes together and decorates a room with items, decorations, and FOOD from their country.

In the morning all the students come dressed in clothes they would wear in their countries. Then we meet together in the gym sitting in our country group. YEA USA! Once we’ve all assembled, they play the national anthems of each country and the people parade around in the middle. It was so neat to see all the different outfits everyone was wearing and to truly celebrate where everyone comes from. Once this is over, we split off and the kids have “passports” they need to fill in for each country they visit collecting information as they go. And of course they were eating all the food as they went.

The end of the afternoon finishes with dances, songs, skits, and anything you want to show off. The students worked SO hard on all their dances. There was even a group of Koreans who did some Tykwando. Two of my kids broke boards with their hands! I went a bit easy on them the next week…didn’t want anything on me broken too! Lol

Enjoy the pics.

Racism what?

One of my students is a muslim girl and we were hanging out waiting for our soccer game when she said the most AMAZING thing to me. I will never forget it. Just touched my little heart. I pray for her often, she is so torn between the truth that is taught at school and her Muslim family that puts a lot of pressure to believe what they believe.

ANYWAY, she was talking to some people and was saying how IST (another school we play) is a racist team and only play white people…etc. I was just sitting there and didn’t say much. But she turned me just then with a thoughtful look on her face saying, “But not you Miss Reger. You love all of us just the same.” Then she gave me a huge hug and skipped off to find her friends. Poor me, I was left fighting the tears at how she had touched my heart with her compliment.

But it was so much more than that. I was so joyful to see that SHE WAS RECOGNIZING THE TRUTH in her heart. She saw that ALL people whether, Tanzania, Irish, America, English, or Korean…whoever deserved love and to be loved the same. Sigh, it is so encouraging to see the truth of the Bible coming out from this little girl’s heart.