Inspired and Encouraged

These past 10 days I have had the privilege of working with two female volunteers from the states. One of the women, Jessica, is a college student and the other woman is the wife of the BCM director from University of Hawaii at Hilo, Jennie. Their team brought 5 other volunteers (including Jennie's husband, John). The 5 other volunteers spent the past 10 days up in remote Himalayan mountain villages doing a variety of different things including serving the people by helping them harvest their wheat in their fields. Anyway, John and the rest of the team leaving for the mountains meant that Jennie (and her TWO children that she brought with her, ages 2 and 4) and Jessica would serving by themselves in Kathmandu for that time (they knew that they would be separated for a while but did not know until days before the trip that it would be for so long). Anyway, all this to say that Jennie decided that she still wanted to teach English each morning to a group of Tibetan woman even if it meant bringing her children with her and trying to monitor them while she taught (she had already brought them around the world with her so I guess she was ready for anything). She did have help because Jessica was so willing to help with the kids when she needed it but still they wanted mommy a lot and are still just kids coming up and asking mommy a question or getting upset in a way that only mommy could soothe. Each day Jennie came prepared with a backpack full of workbooks, stickers, snacks and games for her girls. She would set them up at the table next to the one the Tibetan ladies were at (often with Jessica) and they would play there. Of course there were times when they "interrupted" Jennie or times when Jennie had to take one of them (especially the 2 year old) out of the room for a minute to calm them down but as you can see from the pictures she did it...she managed to teach, to serve the women and monitor her kids. I am not saying that everything went perfectly smooth and without help (like from Jessica) it would have been a lot different but I am saying that it happened and Jennie even found ways to include her 4 year old in the teaching. Her 4 year old sang a song to the women about the months of the year when they were studying that and she even handed out stickers to the ladies when they wrote things correctly. The entire time the Tibetan women were not fazed by it at all. In many parts of South Asia children are just a normal part of everyday life no matter what is going on. They bring their kids to weddings, funerals, school, etc. and are really not fazed by what we would often see as 'distractions'. I am not saying that it was always easy for Jennie...she did say that it was hard to stay focused and there was a day that she had to cancel because both of her girls were sick but again she did it and many times she made it look easy....and certainly do-able (with a little help). I am not saying that we should all go out and start English classes and bring our kids to them (although that would be great!) but I just wanted to share this with you since I was so encouraged by it myself. I want to find more ways that I can incorporate my children into ministry here and this was a great example of one way that I could do it!

The English class. Jennie is in the red shirt. The little girl on my lap is the 2 year old daughter of one of the students (who attended class with her mom each day).

Our translator with two of the Tibetan ladies.

Jennie teaching while holding her two year old daughter and standing with her 4 year old daughter.

Teaching while holding her daughter!