La Palma Girl

Last week, I took a few days off to avoid burning out while I'm here. I think its important that when you work every day (except for those lovely days when you are too sick to get out of bed) that you take a few days to yourself to re-energize and come back ready to hit the ground again.

I went to San Salvador and I loved it. It was just what I needed. It was a very relaxed day and included McDonalds and Pizza Hut and a trip to the Cinemax.



This week has been an interesting week. One night, we thought we had an intruder at the school. I was at the Lalli's house and for me to get home would mean walking past the school. We thought it was probably nothing, but had the police do a walk through just to be sure. The police were great, not only were they very nice, but they had their guns out and did a legitimate search. It was almost like watching COPS: El Salvador (although I dont believe they have that show).



We have a team scheduled to come down in a few weeks so I am very excited to see some familiar faces.



In my 3rd grade class this morning, one of my students tripped and landed on his arm that he broke back in March. He was very upset and his arm looked like it was broken again. I took him to the directors office and had him checked out. They determined that it most likely wasnt broken (praise God) and wrapped his arm in a bandage. Brave kid.



As most of you know, my brother is in Afghanistan. I'm working on a little surprise for him and could use your help. If you would like to, send me a picture of you and your family with a home-made welcome home sign/poster. Im making a photo book of pictures of friends and family and people of La Palma all holding Welcome Home signs. I'm hoping it'll be a nice welcome home gift that he will keep forever. AND I'm a little heart broken that I wont be there when he gets home, so this is my way to feel involved.
This is Ulises after getting his arm wrapped up. We had some extra time today after the kids finished their test so I asked them to help me with my Welcome Home project. Any excuse to color and get out the markers? These kids were all for it!


Thank you for reading!

My prayer request for this week: Ephesians 6:19.

Love,

Teresa

Living Water.

Water has been on my mind a lot lately for several reasons. I'm fairly certain that I haven't been drinking enough of it and have been borderlined dehydrated for several days. Tonight I poured myself a giant glass of water and it was so refreshing. Much better than a bag of soda.


Last week, our water stopped working on Wednesday. Thursday it came back long enough for a quick shower, and then stopped again. It returned Saturday and has stayed on until tonight, when it shut off again. We aren't exactly sure what is causing the water issue but we are hoping to get it fixed quickly.

Friday, in the middle of our water crisis, I kept thinking of the Accapella song, "Living Water." Specifically the part where the child sings, "Give me water from the well that never runs dry and I will thirst no more." I started studying the story of the women at the well. She asks Jesus to give her this "living water." so that she will never again be thirsty again. I can relate to being thirsty and I can relate to the woman at the well. What concerns me much more than my physical dehydration is my spiritual dehydration. Friday evenings we have a womans class. Typically, we study one woman a week from the Bible and discuss her story. When we were told to open our Bibles to Juan 4, I knew exactly what women we were going to be looking at. The woman at the well.

Tonight, I'm studying a Beth Moore book, trying to work on this spiritual dehydration, when I get the call about the water being off again. After realizing theres nothing we can do tonight, I came back to the study. Beth Moore takes me to Psalm 63. The first verse of this psalm says, "Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water."

Here in La Palma, we meet as a church every day but Saturday. We are always coming together and encouraging one another. Sometimes though its easy to get caught up in the work and miss out on the relationship with God. It would be easy to focus on the differences in culture, what I do or don't have here, and the other insignificant details. I don't want to spend a year here and leave feeling like I majored in Bible with going to classes night after night. I want to build a genuine relationship with my God. A thirst for His word and for a relationship with Him.

Please pray for me as I try not to drown in the details but to instead drink in the richness of God.

Todays blog is all about super heros.
A few weeks ago, one of my second grade students ran off of the playground. If you know anything about second graders, you know this is highly unusual. So I went to the classroom to check on him. He was starting to cry, so I asked if he was hurt. He said he wasnt. I asked if everything was ok and what had happened. He started sobbing and saying something very fast in Spanish. I have no idea what happened that day on the play ground, but I held him until he stopped crying. Afterwards he was so thankful that someone had payed attention to him and noticed him on his bad day that he gave me this:

It is handmade of construction paper and appears to be wearing a cape. When he ran up to me with a huge grin on his face and delievered me a handmade super hero? Thats exactly how I felt. Like a super hero.

This week in my other English classes, we've been talking about what special powers we would have if we were super heros. I had them write "If I was a super hero, I would...." My class yesterday participated and were a little creative. My class today was not creative at all. Out of five students, only one person even wrote anything. So we had to use my super hero as an example. If I was a super hero, I would make it rain cake. I would have a Patience Wand that could bless people with more patience and I would have a peace gun that would shoot peace at people. My class thought I was crazy. Heres the picture of Super Teresa and all of her cake:

Ok, so maybe my students are right. Im a little crazy and lacking in artistic ability. I asked if they had ever heard of the movie or book "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." I would really like to have both. If I had the book, we could read it a page at a time, discuss sentence struture, and vocabulary. It doesn't matter to me whether its the new edition or the classic edition. Also, I would really like to get all of my students together and have an English movie night. This movie would be perfect. The characters dont have thick accents making it fairly easy to understand. Also, it has so many different types of food, I think seeing gigantic pancakes landing on schools will help them remember their vocabulary. Also, it might help to spark some of their imagination. Because, really, whats the point of being a kid without imagination?

If anyone coming on the September trip has room to pack a DVD and a childrens book, I'd GREATLY appreciate it and even reimburse you for the costs. (not the cost of flying, just the cost of the movie and book) :)

This is a quote my brother found for me. I feel its appropriate for this blog:

"I am fairly certain that given a cape and a tiara, I could save the world."

And an even more relevant quotes:

"I can do all things through Him who stregthens me." Philippians 4:13

"...if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20

Miss you all and God Bless,

Teresa

This week has been fairly unproductive.
Monday I woke up very very sick. It was miserable. Everyone was very helpful though and brought me gatoraides, saltines, and medicine. A group from church even came and prayed for a speedy recovery. Tuesday I was better, but still had to take it easy. I was very dehydrated and exhausted. No classes Monday or Tuesday of this week.
Today, I have my first classes of the week. So far so good, Im still trying to rest in between classes and drink lots of fluids.
Also, apparently, whatever I had, my computer caught because it is not working. At all. Thankfully, theres an extra computer I can use till I figure out what my game plan is.
Today is Normas 25th birthday! We are throwing her a surprise party in her house complete with friends and cake. As of right now, she assumes we have all forgotten her birthday! I cant wait for it and will hopefully be able to post pictures soon! But no guarantee since I do not have a personal computer.
Love to you all
Teresa

A serious picture with me teaching, and a not so serious picture with me drinking soda out of a bag. Or as my preacher back home likes to call it, "coke in a bag."

I have been very busy this week. Last week I had 80 students. This week I have more than 90. This week was definitely tiring, but good. Sometimes I really miss home. Everything about home. OK, mostly the people and the food. But then I have an amazing day here or something small happens that just reminds me that I'm where I want to be and I love it.

For example, in my class this morning we had only two people come today. The other students had other obligations today. Since it was a small class, I thought we'd try something different and fun. I taught them the song, "Here I am to worship." I love this song. Its really great to teach them too because its repetitive and slow. We worked on the lyrics and sang it a few times. (With the help of itunes.) Other students came and joined the class or stood at the door just to hear the song. They asked if we could learn this song in their next class too. It's so exciting to watch them learn and to see them get excited about what they are learning. Most of my classes last about 45 minutes. This one lasted 90 minutes. It was great.

The Other Americans

The other Americans are here! They have arrived safely and are trying to get settled into their new environment. I know it was very hard for me to back up all of my things and figure out what to take and what to leave. Putting it all in a few suitcases was difficult, I can't even imagine the preparation they have had to do to bring a whole family. I'm excited to get to know them better and work with them over the next several months.

Thats all for today, Much love to all of you and a special birthday shout out to my brother! Happy Birthday Tim, You will be home sooner than you know it! :)