Day six in Panama

Today was bittersweet. It was filled with feelings of homesickness, but also feelings of great great joy. But before I talk about today, I forgot to mention something amazing about yesterday. On our short break in between students, Terry and Taylor thought that it would be fun to walk across the street to get a snack. They came into where Sarah and I were sitting and asked if we wanted to go. Sarah and I hesitated only because we just wanted to sit and relax, but I said, um let’s go. Why not… its an opportunity in Panama and it will help to kill time. So we all went. When we crossed the street, Taylor looked down the sidewalk and saw a little authentic fruit stand and wanted to see what they had. So instead, we decided to walk over there. This man walks up to us at the stand and starts speaking to me in Spanish. I said “no hablo espanol” and looked at Taylor, cueing her to speak in Spanish to this man. Come to find out, this is the father of one of my students, Joy! He said that Joy brings his book home everyday, excited about what he learned from me. He says that all he can talk about are the discussions that we have about Jesus. We also found out that this family is of the Assemblies of God denomination, just like my college. His father was telling about all of the street ministries that they do here in Panama, and it was really neat to hear. I communicated to the father that Joy was a very good student and he loves to learn more about becoming like Jesus. His father was very pleased. When we walked away, I felt the biggest encouragement from God. It was like he was showing me the fruits of my efforts. I can not believe that Joy goes home and shares about our time together with his parents. If I decided not to go get a snack with Terry and Taylor, I would have missed this encouragement from God’s messenger. If Taylor had not wanted to walk down to the fruit stand, we would have missed Joy’s father. God is good. Si? Si! That encouragement gave me enough energy to get through the rest of the day. Yesterday was filled with what Mike Crowley would call, Divine Appointments. Now on to my day. We woke up this morning and heard a great devotional from Terry from John 7:14 that talked about Jesus’ teachings. He related it to our teachings and our purpose here. It helped to refocus our hearts and minds to our mission here in Panama. On our way to the school, it was pouring down rain like the rain in Mississippi. Even though we were in the car, I did not stay dry. How? Because the window on my side was broken and would not stay rolled up all the way. Once we would get it up, it would slip right back down again and water would spray me in the face. It was quite comical. We made it to the school, and Terry was so nice to have dropped us girls off in front of the school so that we wouldn’t have to walk in the rain. I only had 4 students scheduled for today, all of which showed up. Friday’s are set aside in our schedule for the advanced students of the school that are already taking English classes. Most students come either mon/wed or tues/thurs, but these students come only on Fridays. This means that I will only see these 4 students twice, this Friday and the next. My second student came in, and she really stood out to me. Her name was Keren Tejada. She came in the door with an adult. It could have been her mom, or maybe just one of her teachers I’m not sure. But when the teacher began to leave, Keren felt very nervous. She tucked her head into the shoulder of the adult and began to say in Spanish, “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go.” She was very quiet and shy when I took her into the room. I asked her if this was her first time and if she was nervous or scared. She confirmed to me that she was. I took some time to comfort her and tell her that it was ok. From then on, Keren was a chatter box and giggled after many things that we talked about. When our time was up, she said, “Is it ok if I stay longer?” I decided to say yes, even though it was time for my lunch break and my stomach was growling. We worked for about 30 minutes more. I said, “Ok I will see you next Friday, yes?” She said, “Is there any way that I can come to work with you more often?” This amazed me, because this was the shy girl that was so scared and not wanting to attend her English lesson. I thanked God for her refreshing spirit. During one of my lessons with the students, Joy walked in. I was confused because Joy comes only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Joy took aside special time out of his day to bring me a website that would help me learn Spanish. He said, “I wanted to bring this just for you!” He had a huge smile and my face, as did I. I felt so special knowing that Joy thought of me and showed me his care today. I turned back to my student when Joy left, and found that I could not stop smiling. As the day went on questions started filling up my mind. None of Sarah’s students had showed. Only one of Taylor’s showed up, and only 2 of Terry’s showed up. This seemed to be reoccurring. Their students have not been showing up, but all of mine have. Its not like I can say that I’m better with the students, because the ‘no shows’ are students coming for the first time. It is not Sarah’s fault, Terry’s fault, or Taylor’s fault that their students are not showing up. They have discussions daily of how discouraging it is having no students to teach. Yet I have so many, that everyday I am exhausted. For me its always go go go. Right when one student leaves, the next student walks in. So why is this? Why is God giving me experiences like the ones I have with Joshua and Joy, but not giving experiences like this with the others? Maybe he is. I don’t know. I’m still working through that thought. I know God has a plan. I know that God needed to show me His power through Joshua. God wanted to strengthen my faith and understanding, as I knew it was lacking. When the day was done, I felt homesick. I was so very exhausted and my brain was no longer working. I was mumbling all my words. I held back feelings of impatience from wanting to be home quicker. It helps to look to God. He truly does renew strength. We stopped by the store on the way home because tonight was Party night! Every Friday night, we throw a party for all of our readers. We play pictionary, have fellowship, and eat food. Sounds perfect to me! So we went to the grocery store to buy some brownie mix, ice cream, and soda. We decided that pizza for the meal would be easiest, so we decided to order it, which is a whole different story. Anyway, when we got to the house it was 5pm and the party did not start until 7. So we had some down time. I decided to take Part A of my final for geography. Its all essay questions and I had an hour to take it. I spent time over preparing for the exam while I was on the airplane so that I would not have to waste time here in Panama to study. All of the essay questions that appeared on the test, I had already written. Thank goodness because the moment I started the exam, a very very VERY loud group of people went into the street and started bumping their music. My heart was rattling with everybeat, as were the windows. I couldn’t even hear myself think. That’s Panama for you. So I typed up my essays and submitted them. Piece of cake! I think that I did really really well on it and it feels so great to be done! Maybe on Sunday afternoon I will take Part B of my exam. When I finished, the door bell rang. It was the pizza guy. But here’s the problem. We didn’t ask for delivery and Terry and Taylor were already on their way to pick up the pizza with the money. I went and got Delores because the pizza man obviously did not speak any English. I tried calling Terry, but for some reason the call did not go through. The pizza man ended up dropping off the pizzas without us paying and said that he would come back after he delivered his others. When he left Terry and Taylor walked in the door already laughing at the situation. The pizza guy came back and we eventually paid. Unfortunately we ended up having to pay for the delivery, which is what we wanted to avoid. But that’s ok! It all worked out. It got to be 7:30 and still no one had showed up. We were starting to get bummed, but reminded ourselves that people were on “Panama time.” Meaning everything is an hour later than you say it is. We were right. Everyone showed up just before 8. We SO enjoyed each other’s company. This was a moment that I wish all of you could have experienced with me. This party brought me the most joy and I truly wish that all of you could have joined. Words cannot describe the amount of healthy laughter that came from this party. We played pictionary, but made a rule that everyone had to guess the word in English. You can just imagine! And oh the drawings… these were so funny. We played boys against girls and let me just tell you that the girls won by 10 points. The boys came up with a theory that we could all read each other’s minds because we would draw something so terribly and so unrelated to the word, and somehow we would happen to guess it. Some of the funniest moments were when our readers were drawing. The word was veterenarian, but Raul’s daughter, who was drawing thought that the word said vegetarian. So both teams were yelling out completely different things and we could not figure out what was going on. We decided to do a rematch when we found out that the girl misunderstood the word. But the same thing happened. She thought the word meant caffeine, when really the word was coffin. She was drawing coffee cups and soda and the other team was drawing a coffin. I will never forget Raul calling out, “That’s my daughter!” He is always so proud of her. Everytime she would guess a word correctly, Raul again would say, “That’s my daughter.” Also during the game, Raul’s wife, who is a first grade teacher turned to me and said, “I can tell you’re going to be a teacher. And a great one, too. Its in your blood. I can see it.” That was so encouraging to me. Then Christian, my student brought his guitar to sing and play for us. Wow, this guy really has talent. I recorded him playing and was so proud of him. When he started playing the guitar, he could hear the room go completely silent because of the music’s beauty. It was almost as if not only the room went silent, but people’s thoughts went quiet as well. But when Christian was done, the noise came rushing back just as loud as it was. This party was soooo loud. Everyone was talking at the same time. Everyone repeated themselves, while shouting, at least 5 times in order for someone to hear them. It was a fun night. As Christopher, my other reader, Christian’s brother, was leaving he stopped to give me a hug goodbye. He squeezed me so tight that I though my bones were going to break. This was the bored, stubborn, closed-minded Christopher from the first day of reading lessons. Now, Christopher is my brother. It was neat to see Christopher give me a hug like that. I felt like family, and again felt from God the signs of His approval. When everyone had left, we cleaned up the house, hand washed all of the dishes, and are now getting ready for a weekend that is so needed. Tomorrow morning we will wake up and get to go see the Panama Canal. One of the 7 wonders of the world! Now it is time for bed so that I can rest up for all the excitement tomorrow. Buenas noches.