Seeing the Need

At MCS, lined up and waiting for the bus...

     At MCS, we spend the month of June focusing on missions and outreach.  Each class has the opportunity to spend half of day on a mini missions trip.  The inicial students (preschool and kindergarten) spent the day at a daycare in a very needy part of town, the first and second graders spent the day at a school for the deaf, the 5th and 6th graders planted grass at an orphanage, and my 3rd graders, along with 4th grade, were able to spend the day at Colegio Santa Rosa de Lima, a public school in a needy part of town.

 

     The third graders started out by singing a song in English, one that we had been working on for a week or so, and then the fourth graders did a short skit, followed by another song in both Spanish and English.  

     Later, our kids each paired up with a student from Colegio Santa Rosa and taught them how to say a few phrases in English, like their name, how old they are, and their favorite color.  Some of my students were hesitant at first, but after they saw me get down on my knees and start talking, they knew they had no excuse...if Miss Ward, who doesn't speak that much Spanish, could do it, they knew they had to too! 

English 101

     After a few games, we spent awhile sharing the snack that we had brought, and then piled back into the bus for the ride home.

Snacktime...

          As we rode back to MCS, I was struck by how incredibly close we live to absolutely abject poverty.  Our bus ride was no more than 15 minutes, yet it took us from one extreme of the socioeconomic spectrum to the other and back.  When we got back to school, the kids and I talked for a few minutes about what they had seen on our trip.  They observed the lack of lighting in the classrooms, bare walls, 30 students in a room smaller than ours (which holds 20), a playground that is nothing more than a metal bar and a rusty old slide.  I tried to point out to them how incredibly blessed they are to live where they live, to go to school where they do, and to have the things that they have.  More than anything, I hope that their eyes were opened, even just a little, to the gravity of the needs that exist in their own country, in their own city, less than a 15 minute bus ride away from our comfortable, upper class neighborhood.  I know mine were.

Father's Day at MCS

This year we celebrated Father's Day by hosting a Father/Child game day at the school on Saturday morning.

 

Luciana and Vania are joined at the hip most of the time.  Game Day was no different.

I think this was the equivalent of chasing butterfiles in the outfield.

Ready to win it for the yellow team!

 

Franco was so serious about the competition that he even wore a helmet.

I had the best job by far - holding Miss Janeth's 6-month-old daughter, Dai Lin, while she slept.

Cloud Nine

Today I think I may have discovered the key to my kids' hearts...music.  From the second they saw my guitar sitting in the corner of the room, they were hooked.  I had planned to teach them a worship song in English as part of our Bible lesson...we ended up singing for over an hour and never did get to today's reading lesson.  I copied out the lyrics to Phil Wickham's song "Cannons"  and gave them copies.  First, we read through the lyrics and I explained some concepts and vocabulary that they didn't know, and then I sang through it once so that they could hear how it goes.  I couldn't help but laugh when Sara said to me, with this huge look of awe on her face, "Miss Ward, you sing just like a real live High School Musical!" Coming from a third grade girl, I'm pretty sure that was a compliment.  In any case, they caught on quickly and were begging me to keep singing.  

     Just before lunch, I gave them some free time to read or draw while I listened to each kid recite this week's Bible verse.  Diego came back to my desk and said, "Miss Ward, can I practice our new song?"  I said yes and then he said, "And can I sit in the back...the girls are distracting me."  I said yes to that too and he sat down with his back against the closet at the back of our classroom.  He studied the words for a few minutes, and then I heard him start humming quietly.  A few minutes later, he was singing right out loud.  In my head, I was jumping up and down, thinking, "I have a student who wants to use his only free time of the day to sing worship songs!"  Then it got better.  After listening to a few more Bible verses, I looked over to see that three other boys had joined Diego, and were all sitting on the floor at the back of our room, singing, "You are holy, great and mighty; the moon and the stars declare who You are!" I would have been excited to see that kind of love for worship music from any of my kids, but I was particularly ecstatic about these boys' excitement because they are the very students that I struggle to keep engaged during school.  As a teacher, finding something that these boys got excited about was a victory in and of itself; as a teacher whose highest priority is for her students to love Christ, seeing these boys get excited about worship music put me on cloud nine.  

                                      
     To top it all off, they even asked if they could take the music with them to lunch, and were singing while they ate lunch.  Sara (above) bumped into a thing or two while trying to walk, read the lyrics, and sing at the same time.  These are the little things that make every day here worth it to me.
   

June Newsletter