Monday has come around already! Phew it was a quick weekend but an amazing one at that! God is good! Today marks the beginning of the end of summer school for us, we just have three more days of Summer School with the kids before it ends and we clean the church on Friday! We all woke up this morning really tired from our mammoth weekend.  Emily P woke up unwell today which wasn’t so good. She has a fever, was aching all over and had a headache.  So we all spent time with her this morning, praying that God would heal her.  So far she is better. She and Reti went to the pharmacy and he prescribed anti-biotic for her and some pain killers for her headache and aching bones… so hopefully in the morning she will be well again.  Pray for Emily and all of us, that our health is sustained so that we can finish strong in the task that God has given us!

Because Emily P was ill, I stood in for her today and helped Emily W with her class, she teaches Grade 2 and 3 so this was really great for me to have the opportunity to be involved in the teaching of the children again. The class were a class of 50 children and they were pretty crazy! Enthusiastic maybe the word I would use for them although crazy or mental fits the bill better! They are full of energy and it was a real Read more »

Today I saw the sun set over Israel. It was the most incredible thing. Today has really been a day of incredible things, and as it was my birthday, I couldn’t have asked for more. Firstly, I had been very ill the day before with something that no one understood, least of all me, and so the team prayed for me to be well by the morning so I could fully enjoy my birthday. I awoke at 3am (which seems to be a recurring theme of this trip for some of us) and was Read more »

Friday in Jordan is a holiday! So it’s officially the weekend for us.  We have no summer school on a Friday so today we spent time resting and cleaning.  The guys cleaned their house (supposedly!) and we ( the girls ) cleaned the base.  I had the task of making a cleaning rota for us last week so we decided to just stick to the same one again.. everyone did a great job!  Oh! And we had a chance to sleep in which was AMAZING!  I love sleep and I always find it incredible how tired we can become on team. Teaching is hard for the guys, especially in the heat. I’ve had the role of supervising along with Reti and the leaders of the summer school, so I’ve Read more »

Today marks the end of the 2nd teaching week and the end of the youth classes.  I’m sad about the latter because I have really been blessed watching my class grow in small and big ways in their use of English and just in confidence in general.  Many of these young girls (teens), come from difficult backgrounds.

My class are very basic beginners, I am sure that means they have also borne the brunt of many jokes or teasing about how stupid they are – or a common call name here is donkey, so I am sure many of them have also been called that in their lifetimes. I have grown to love them and am praying they will discover just how precious they are.

Photo my class including two Arabic helpers.

Today we are also saying goodbye to Destiny.  Her 10 days with us seem to have flown by but we Read more »

It’s Wednesday again! I can’t believe it! The days are flying by so quickly.  Traditionally Wednesday being the middle of the week is normally the day when people are tired and weak in themselves but Praise the Lord today was not like that!! Today great for the team and for the Summer School!

Reti gave me the opportunity to sleep in today which I welcomed with open arms since the past few nights I haven’t slept so good. I’ve been up for 2 and 3 hours at a time, usually just in time for the call to prayer which keeps me a awake a little longer again. So to have the opportunity to sleep in a bit longer was really excellent.  Plus I had lots of washing to complete from Tuesday. Tuesday is our washing day (or maybe I should say our laundry day – just in case you think we only wash on a Tuesday!!) I am official ‘laundry lady’ so I had the task of doing the washing for the team… I have never seen so much laundry.. so much so that our lovely contemporary twin tub decided not to work and produce a strange burning rubber smell. So I decided that enough was enough and Read more »

Another full day at school.  Every teaching day starts at 8.15am to prep classrooms and then at 8.30 we pray. By 9 when we are ready to start assembly, the children are already amassed downstairs waiting for us to open the school doors. After assembly, we had a local puppet team do a puppet show on Noah and the flood as a precursor of our bible lesson.  After the show the classes (grades 2-7 or 6 year olds to 13 year olds) were dismissed to complete their bible lesson in their class rooms.  The bible lessons went well followed by a 15 minute break before we launch into English lessons. Dan & Courtney, Rachel & George reported good feedback on their English class, however Chrissy & Emily’s English lesson did not go so well.  Their class were hyper and it’s very difficult to control 40 children especially if you don’t speak their language.  After English half the children  at the summer school (about 70 of them) went to play water games, while the rest learnt how to make lazy cake.  Everyone enjoyed that.  The older children who made cake then joined in the water fights – any excuse to cool down.  I think yesterday it was 42C/107F degrees here. After lessons we tidy our classes and then have a teachers meeting feeding back how things went, praying together and preparing for the next day.  We usually leave after 1.30.

After each teaching morning, we are invited back to a home of a church family for lunch.  We are constantly amazed at their hospitality and generosity.  Today our hostess is also Read more »

It feels like a long time since I blogged, the days are rolling into one another because we are all so busy all the time! The first week of Summer School is now over and we started our second week today. The children that are attending are older and a little more wiser! Some of them like to think they are too cool for school.. (if you know what I mean!) But these things are sent to try us so we must believe that with God all things are possible! Even the difficult children!

The children came in full of joy, excitement and happiness. It was great to see their faces and see them eager to sing at assembly and learn in their classes.  For me, I saw some of the children that were in my Grade 3 class when I was here in 2008. So this was exciting for me, some of them recognised me before I recognised them which was a bit weird but cool that they remembered me and what we did in the class. One guy said; “Aah! You were the guitar woman and the Hokey Cokey Woman!” We did do a lot of singing with Grade 3 and I did play my guitar a lot. I also taught them the ‘Hokey Cokey/ because this was a good way to get them familiar with the body parts, arms, legs, etc and with commands like left, right, in, out, up and down etc. So at least they remembered something even if it was a bit bizarre!!

During team, the second week has traditionally been known as being the week where we are open to spiritual attack.  So we Read more »

Well! We did it! We reached the end of our first week of teaching! Go team! We entered the week excited about what God was going to do in and through the lives of the children and the team and we ended the week today excited and thankful about all the many things that God did in our midst.  All in we probably had about 50 children.  We started this week with pre school (KG), KG1 and KG2.  This was different from when I was here in 2008 but it was better because it allowed the teachers to spend more time with the children as there were fewer numbers of children in the classes.  The first day of the week was a tough one, the children were just settling in to their unfamiliar surroundings but by the end of the week – today the children were really familiar with the church, the team and the teachers.  It was so lovely to Read more »

Happy Fourth of July! Being so far from home for this day was different, but since they use fireworks here for every possible celebration I did not feel like I totally missed out. A neighbour even brought us brownies so Rachel and I could properly celebrate J The team even congratulated us on our independence which was funny, my favourite was Dan saying “Well done.”

Today was our first day teaching, and it was certainly a busy day! We began our day at the church at 8:15, getting our classrooms in order and having a prayer meeting with the other leaders. It was great to get everything together as well as get in the right mindset prior to the children’s arrival. Group songs and a skit welcomed the children and then we were off to our classrooms! George and I had 8 children in our class, and they were so funny!

They were quiet, slow to warm up because we ended up with six adults in the room including us. It was a hard with the language barrier, but my main translator Lena is awesome! She is finishing up “high school,” (not sure how all the grades translate), is super sweet, and speaks English well. I already feel blessed to have her for my group – really the other teachers don’t know what they’re missing! Overall the day went well, I was glad to get Read more »

Not so great news for us girls…we ran out of water. We had done a few loads of laundry the day before and didn’t quite keep track of how much water we had left. So we couldn’t shower, flush the toilets, wash the dishes. Here laundry is usually done on Tuesdays when water runs all day. After that we have to be conservative with our water so that it lasts for the week. We also attended our first Sunday service since we’ve arrived. It was very interesting that the pastor preached on a passage (but from the book of Luke) that we had read the previous night during our devotions. It was definitely not a coincidence. He mentioned many of the points we had touched upon. It was a very powerful message and spoke to many of us.

I know it spoke to me directly since he preached on what I had written about in my journal and had prayed about the night before. We were also blessed with the opportunity to partake in the Lord’s supper with the congregation. It was very humbling to see the pastor serve his congregation by passing out the bread and drink himself.  It is a huge blessing to be able to worship and fellowship with our brothers and sisters here. They are great encouragers and examples for us.

After church, we took a trip to the car museum. We saw the many Read more »