Prayer, Guests, Interviews and a Kids Party!

Prayer in the Classroom- About two or three weeks ago, there was a change in the morning routine at MIRACLE.  Now we only have school assembly on Monday and Friday, which means that on the other days, class teachers go to their classes a bit early and have prayers with them and then take attendance and have general announcements, as usual.
            I am a class teacher for the second year hotel/catering students and I LOVE this change in format!  We created a schedule and the students are rotating who leads prayer for the class.  Because we’re a smaller group, students are more attentive and in general the reflections seem to be more sincere and simple.  In general, here at MIRACLE, I’ve really enjoyed sharing my faith with the students and staff. 

As I continue my time here I am always questioning what my purpose is here and lately I’ve been more intentional about sharing faith.  Since MIRACLE is a Christian (Marianist) school, all of our students are Christian and faith is not the taboo topic it is in the States.  I’ve been really challenged by my faith here and I definitely don’t live up to my beliefs as often as I’d like, but I think that is what’s great about our faith- it’s always asking more of us- to love more, give more, share more, etc.  Just being here isn’t enough, it’s never enough to just be…
 

Unexpected Guests- Last weekend we had some unexpected guests staying with us.  They were patrons of the drama club from a school up in Chitipa.  Two male patrons stayed with us while one nun stayed with the students, but took her meals with us.  We were given virtually no warning that we’d be hosting them and that really frustrated me, but we had to move past that and welcome these guests into our house.  I actually really enjoyed the challenge of it and of course, it turned out to be a great weekend. 

On Friday night, Matt and I stayed up pretty late with one of the teachers just chatting about different things.  He’s the girls’ football coach at his school and a BK (Bible Knowledge) teacher, so he had some things in common with us and was a really nice person.  On Saturday night we sat around singing and playing the drums with them and the two Germans.  I continue to be reminded of all that we can learn from simple conversations with other people and since I love to chat, that seems to work out pretty well for me!

 

Interviews with the Best WBGs- Last week, we invited our best Women’s Business Groups (WBGs) to the office for interviews.  We had four groups come on Friday and we’re expecting another three this week.  The interviews have gone really well so far.  I’m planning to create a short video, using clips from the interviews to share with my boss and our board of directors and maybe (eventually) with donors, etc.  Hearing how the loans our office gives affects these women’s lives really helps to motivate me to work harder and try to make the program better.  If I’m able to create the movie and upload it to youtube I’ll be sure to let you all know!

 

Kids Party! On Sunday we invited all the children of all the teachers at Chaminade Secondary School to come over for a kids party and it was a BLAST!  We had coloring, football, netball, ping pong, limbo, dancing and singing… it was great!  A lot of fun to play with little kids, fun to get the chance to try out some of our Chitumbuka (although it is still so so so limiting), fun to have all our housemates involved in hosting people at our house and funny to watch these kids.  We had a couple little kids pee themselves before I remembered that we needed to show them where our pit latrine is and then we had a conga line to the toilet with Chris leading us in a wonderful rendition of his first song in Chitumbuka- Chimboozi (that’s how you say toilet here).  We had all the kids singing about the toilet and basically thinking we were nuts… but what else is new?  Other highlight of the afternoon was when they were doing the limbo and one kid (who was too short to need to worry about limboing at all) just fell backward as he attempted to walk under the limbo stick.  I learned a couple more kids names and just had a great afternoon with them all!  I hope we’re able to have another kids party during my time here! :)

 

So those are the updates from the past two weeks… hope things are going well for all of you!  Again, it’s always great to hear from people so feel free to send an email or a letter!