A Trip in Missions, Pt. 7

If you have raced with men on foot
   and they have worn you out,
   how can you compete with horses?
If you stumble in safe country,
   how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan? 

- Jeremiah 12:5

An older brother in the faith named Brian shared this verse with me a few years ago.  I so needed it today.  Following last week's English class at the program that went really well, I came in today really excited about class!  I had my lesson plan all set out!  The sentences I had set out for the kids to translate were all verses from the Bible!

After class...so things were added and subtracted from the original, but you get the gist.

If you could have measured my excitement for the opportunity, it would have been a number with infinite digits!  Not only that, but today we started our program memory verse with the kids:

So with all of this Biblical focus, why wouldn't I expect a little difficulty?  It sure came.  It wasn't in the form of physical harm or heretical babbling.  No.  It came in the form of preteen boys.  Lol!  They came for the first time today and sat in my class.  As if on instinct, all of the girls in the class, who are normally my best students, gravitated toward them.  It didn't take me by surprise--I half-expected it.  I continued with class, trying my best to hold their attention.  Then the younger boys, wanting to be with the "in crowd," started talking with the preteen boys and girls.  Right as that happened, two teenage boys walked up to the iron gate and started talking with the "disrupting group"!  Completely missing the opportunity to reach out to the two guys I've never met, I told them that we were in the middle of class and asked them to leave...smh...  Sometimes my short-sightedness is just down right comical to me...it's like watching a scary movie and shouting out at all of the obvious parts.  Oh, but hindsight is always 20/20...

The epilogue of the story:  I've dealt with classroom disruption before...but that was when I had the English language to fall back on!  Trying to calm a class of kids and point them to the Word, all while speaking Spanish, is completely EXHAUSTING!!!  I think what bothered me the most was that I wasn't sure they fully grasped the concepts written on the board.

The thing is that this situation shouldn't have tired me the way that it did.  Don't get me wrong; it was a workout!  Lol!  Still, it's not like God hasn't gifted me to work with children.  After the program ended, I didn't have the energy to think about the next task I had to do, and I found myself wondering around repeating the program's memory verse to myself; more so clinging to it than reminding myself.  That's when the verse in Jeremiah came to mind.  Indeed, if running with people is wearing me out, then how will I compete with horses?  Likewise, if I'm stumbled when I'm only facing frustrations and tiring situations, then how will I fare when confronted with real persecution?  I definitely haven't reached the pinnacle of where God wants to take me!  I guess it's back to "business as usual"--time to get alone with my Dad.  After all, even if the kids didn't hear a single word I spoke, the verses on the board ended up written down in their notebooks.  And God's Word DOESN'T return void.  Haha, indeed...  :-)