Last week was hard. Most of my weeks are hard, but this one was a grinding, exhausting struggle. Not only did I have an enormous pile of work to go through, not only was I even more short on sleep than usual, not only was there some extra things that had to be worked around, but I found out on Tuesday that there was a major problem in my classroom involving lying, cheating, and bullying. It was a pretty staggering blow to receive right the last week of school, and to find out it had been going on for a long time, but the kids kept quiet until the end of term. So, there was a lot of investigating, I got the headmaster involved right away, and the end result was repentance on the part of a few of the parties, but a situation that needs much prayer for the heart of another. On the one hand, I really wish this hadn’t come up when it did—or at all! On the other, maybe this was the Lord’s timing too. I chance to teach my students in a very practical way how to apply the very concepts we have been studying this term—craftiness, the burden of guilt, forgiveness, reaping what you sow. This was a chance to model to my students that I actually practice what I preach to them, and that when mistakes are made, the most important thing is what you do with them. I always tell my students that the real ‘test’ will come after hearing a lesson, and boy did it ever! I hope and pray going forward that my classroom will start next term off from a better place, and that this will be an important learning experience for everyone.
We continue to have heavy rain; we were afraid that the airstrip would be too flooded for the student’s flights to make it through, but God gave a dry night and safety with all the flights. Very few parents came up for end of term, so while I would have liked to have spoken to various ones, I had a chance to get a lot of work done on Friday afternoon. All this rain has meant we've had some lovely rainbows though...
Now that term is over, my first goal is to catch up on some sleep, finish my taxes and letters, and then to start working through plans for a trip to Kitwe. I am so looking forward to having a month to relax a bit, regroup, make plans, and get some solid work done on the ‘leaving well’ project. There are things that need sorting, resources to leave organized, and always all those odd jobs that just had to wait during the term. I’m hoping the rest will help a bit with my physical challenges, and I know it will help with my emotional and mental strain! Huzzah for term break, and I hope you all had a blessed Easter!
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