(Pictures: One of our tour stops; The students packed into the room for graduation; Making our speech)
This past week was a big week for the school where we teach English. We have come to the end of the summer term—but not without some excitement. The English School is locally operated and self-funded and the headmasters do an excellent job
of creating a culture where learning is fun, mistakes are encouraged, and English is spoken a lot. So with the end of the term the two headmasters, we’ll call them Mr. Teach and Mr. Speak, decided it was time for a field trip. For our last class all the students and teachers piled into two buses for an island tour to prac
tice “tourism English.”
A bus ride on the island is never exactly an enjoyable experience, what with bumping and squishing, but there are certainly things to see and learn. It was the first time for us and for many o
f the students to see the places scheduled on the tour. Some of the towns have a long history stretching back to the time of European explorers and Arab traders. Each area had their own sultan—a tribal chief of considerable power and wealth. In many cases the ruins of their palaces still remain—great stone edifices beautifully built using ground up coral as cement. In the museum (another part of the tour) we were able to see old pictures of these sultans. The pictures display men of impressive stature in large decorated turbans and flowing robes each with a long ornate saber at his side. They looked as if they were taken straight out of a storybook full of pirates and sea adventure. As much of the “tourism English” was above our beginner students we found that often the tour guides were focusing on us and expecting us to provide the thoughtful questions from which everyone could learn. It all made for a long day, but we learned a good deal about the history of the island, as well as getting to experience its culture and beauty.
Then just this week we had the graduation ceremony for the students. Again, Mr. Teach and Mr. Speak made sure to make the occasion memorable. Things began over an hour late (as expected) with a sing-a-long, and continued with poems, dramas and speeches. Then we proudly watched as our students came to the front of the classroom to receive their certificates and then laughed as more dramas and speeches and songs were performed. We had been told that we might be asked to say something and when we got there we saw our names listed prominently on the schedule: “Speech – Mama & Papa Grace.” We quickly made a plan of what we wanted to say. We were greeted with great cheers as our names were announced and Grace joined us up front as we offered our encouragements, blessings and congratulations to the students. Our first island classes have come to end. We have met many new people, built some new relationships and even had opportunities to share deeper things. God bless the students!
PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our neighbor has just about finished her thesis, after many evenings of visiting and a lot of hard work put in by her and Megan. Tom has had some good conversations with neighbors, including a special day with Mhono grilling chicken and cassava outside the house. Now that the time of fasting is over many of the visitors whom we have missed during the month are coming by to visit again. Pray for our relationships with these friends to grow.
PRAYERS REQUESTED
We have been researching the many opportunities to teach English and looking to possibly teach with other programs besides the one we help with now. We are also considering starting some kind of club to meet at our home. Pray that God would give us wisdom about these decisions. We have an appointment to visit one program this week.
We had an uncomfortable and scary event outside our house with a very drunk man getting into a fight with Mhono. Although no one was seriously hurt, the whole incident was troubling. Pray that there will be no negative repercussions and that God could use this bad incident for transformation and good.
