The school year has kicked into full gear! I teach middle
school Bible and English (Language Arts), 9-10 grade English/Literature, and
11-12 grade SAT Prep. I have wonderful class sizes: 12 students in two classes
and 5 students in the other two classes. I love teaching these subjects! Sixth,
seventh, and eighth graders take the middle school courses together. While I
can usually teach them the same material, I do have to work with different
grammar books for each grade level and create slightly different assignments
for each grade level. It keeps me on my toes! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing
the students’ personalities come out as we’ve spent time together. They’re
creative thinkers, encouraging me to build a peanut butter factory so I’ll have
my obsession at my fingertips for the rest of my life. J
Over and over, I’ve noticed that people here in Pucallpa
have a real understanding of community. Here at the school, I’ve already
noticed that the community environment makes teaching here natural and
meaningful. The students know each other well from being in a community of
missionaries together. They bring to class the context of living out mission
work as families in a community. We have a wonderful context (living out
mission daily) for discussion. On a more comical note, literally living in a
community with these people makes life different as well. I joke with students
about how they know where I live and I know where to find them since I live on
the central SAM base with some of the families. The best part: living next to
our students means we sometimes find homemade bread or other treats in our
kitchen for us. Yum! Community really is
wonderful. J
worship at the camp reunion
I’ve continued helping out at Misión TEC with the Awana club
for kids every Tuesday, and I’ve been able to connect with staff from TEC and
the church in that community. When our team from Zion Church helped here at TEC
a few weeks ago, we experienced “campamento” (camp). This past weekend, TEC
invited the youth from camp back for a reunion. We played games, worshipped, looked
at pictures, and Max shared a short message with them. I feel so grateful I am
here to experience this. Through this, I was reminded again of the fellowship
any community can share. We six who came to TEC from Zion came as part of our
church community to share in relationship from one community to another. My
team members built relationships that carry significance not only for each
person individually, but also on behalf of a community. The good relationships
that my team members built have enabled me to plug in well to TEC. I feel truly
grateful that my fellowship here is part of Zion church’s community fellowship,
which is a part of fellowship in God’s kingdom. Relationship connects us as
groups of people, and we invite others to share in the community as well. What
a wonderful picture of how life will be someday in Heaven. This sharing in
fellowship is a part of delighting in God in an eternal way.
