Community

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.