Thursday, March 18, 2010

Andrea # 3

Panamanians   J   2010        3/17
“Another day shall commence!” cries the announcer on her megaphone at what feels like 5 in the morning! When actually it was Christine’s sweet face telling me we must get up at 8:15. But it felt like 5 in the morning!
We taught preschool after having our delicious breakfast by our wonderful cook Veronica. (Or as we have nicknamed her, Vana. If you don’t know who that is watch Wheel of Fortune.) The kids are great, full of energy but good! We then get back to Delores’s house and ate a wonderful lunch of Spaghetti and meatballs. (Notice there is no Spam! Much to the boys disappointment.) We then ran off to Edwin’s school at 2:00 where I have my first basic class. However nothing truly hilarious or exciting happened today, unless you think learning nouns, prepositions, prepositional phrases, verbs, subjects, and objects is fascinating….then have at it!
I however find this story particularly funny. I have a reader named Shamyr, she doesn’t know hardly any English. And I mean practically zero English!! So I was trying to teach her the word Bitterness, and how you can get rid of it, which is of course, with forgiveness. So I was on the ground stooped over holding the “marker of bitterness” which was basically just that I was holding a marker that represented bitterness. And I would keep holding more and more “markers of Bitterness” and asking her, “So how do you get rid of all of this bitterness?” And after a long pause….she replied with a very serious face and tone, “Well, I would add more fruit.” I just stood there for a moment thinking, “seriously she thought I was talking about the taste!?” And I had literally spent 15 minutes trying to explain bitterness, and all this time she answered with FRUIT!! I laughed!! And then tried to explain the feeling of bitterness. That was definitely the funniest story so far!
Even though I am supposed to be teaching students, they seem to be teaching me! Including how to get rid of bitterness, now this is real gold, fruit is the answer! But really I loved it and have enjoyed every minute of this trip! Please keep praying for us as we continue to try and follow God’s guidance one Panamanian step at a time!
Love you all!
God Bless!
~ Andrea

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

More truth to that than not...right?

How do we get rid of bitterness?
Fruit! Galatians Fruit!

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control..." Galatians 5:22,23

Seems like a lesson we all could learn and remember :-)

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a GREAT day Andrea!!!

Love the story you shared about Shamyr. Emotion-Bitter, I can see where that could get interesting:)

Hug everyone for us. You are all in our prayers constantly. God is soooo GOD!!!!

Kari

Anonymous said...

Andrea, I'm so proud of you!!! I wish I was a fly so I could see your classes!!! Tell Jack, Veronica, Christine and Dad that they are doing great and we are praying for all of them. Enjoy it all!!! NO SPAM!!!

Mami