Saturday, October 01, 2011
Dear Praying Friends,
Wow! What a week we’ve had! On Monday, 23 students arrived at 9:00 ready for a week of camp. They are from this school, so they walk here from their classroom. After orientation, we don’t have a class until the afternoon, so we worked in the office all morning and stopped every 40 minutes to play with the children at break time. Our first class declared to us that we had a long week ahead of us. Not only did we have a wide range of English knowledge. God had seen fit to entrust us with several difficult children. We had decided to do small group teaching this week, and God knew exactly which students would need what kind of teachers. It was amazing!
On Tuesday, we have four classes, but I only taught two and a half, as the other were large group classes. This is the get-to-know-you day, where we just try to break the ice with the kids. We also do a few pages in their books with their required lessons. The Tuesday night class is a blast- usually the review and games night. It ends with a video and questions on respect.
I didn’t want to get up on Wednesday. It felt like Friday. -And it wasn’t just me. These kids really took a lot of physical and emotional energy. Amazingly though, the more we gave, the more grace and strength God poured out on us. Wednesday is another four classes. Between preparation and prayer, we have English teacher meetings and break time with the kids. By this time in the week, we know how the kids will act here at camp, and usually are full swing into character-based praise and character-based correction. This is usually where I feel the language barrier the most. (Friday’s before the kids come, all the CEI teachers have a meeting and go over personality and health issues. However, many times, kids will act differently here at Character camp because of the different atmosphere.)
Thursday we usually teach three classes. I taught a lesson on “See a Need, Fill a Need.” The goal was to get them to see past themselves and plant a desire to help others. Although the English is advanced, with a translator, most of the children understood. In fact, one of the girls on my team did extremely well translating on her own. After the power-point, I asked the kids to write down three helpful things they could do when they go home. It was neat to see them really thinking through their decisions.
Friday, the kids have to be ready to leave by 1:00. About 10:30, we have the English presentation. The kids sing the songs they learned during the week for the Chinese teachers, and then the English teachers do a skit for the kids and show them a slide show of pictures from the week. The skit is our highlight. Four people have candles, shining their character in the world. Then, the “evil one” (me) comes and reminds each of the candles of their failures, telling them they can’t shine, so they should give up. However, the last candle tells of how they made mistakes, but then they made it right. They go and show the other candles that they always have a second chance. One character mistake does not mean that they have no value. Always try again. This is a very big deal here in Taiwan, for they are VERY achievement oriented.
After the kids received their certificates and left, the CEI teachers went out to eat. We had a giant goodbye party for the Chiayi team, which left Saturday morning. Many of us were crying. We are a family, and we will miss the Chiayi team very much. The Yunlin Chinese teachers had put together a slideshow of picture memories. What a month we have had together!
I am tired this weekend. It took so much energy to keep track of the kids and keep them listening that all of us are zapped this weekend. Next week we have 3 classes from 3 different schools coming, and it will be just the Yunlin team teaching. I am looking forward to meeting the 22 children.
Happy in the Service of the King,
Barbara
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