Today our little village school went through a bit of a transition. Andrea who has been doing the school went home to London and Jared the photographer went to South Africa. That leaves me and Nasimo, my 16 year old translator/teacher to take care of the school. Jun, a visitor from Korea is helping me out too. There’s lots of challenges, especially in lesson planning, language, teaching supplies and discipline. If anyone has tips on how to discipline wily villagers I’m all ears. I have to say that for it’s challenges there are certainly real blessings. There’s a boy named Jonny, 13, who used to be very difficult to have around much less to teach. He sat quietly and at the end of the day said “Edwardu, I like studying with you.” It’s amazing the range of student that come there’s about 9 that are consistent some of them can do multiplication while others haven’t quite figured out writing. Last week Nasimo asked what the first bible story I told was (from weeks ago) and they remembered. Sometime I wonder if they listen even when they’re being crazy, and apparently the answer is yes. One of the boys even put the biblical principle into action (this was after the fisticuffs).

I’ll run our unofficial little summer school until January when the official school goes into session then I’ll help the kids in our class get signed up there. We just found out yesterday that the school here on base is the top school in the whole province of Cabo Delgado. Please pray for me, Jun and Nasimo as well as our students.

Update: I don’t usually take a camera to school because it’s distracting but I caught a few moments on my iPhone so you can get an idea of what school looks like. Enjoy!

Update II: Friday the class peaked at 25 students which was a bit much. The upside is that about half of them understand the concepts and methods of subtraction well enough to subtract numbers in the millions although a riot almost broke out when I tried explain the concept of “borrowing.” They calmed down after I explained it. The downside (or the other upside, depending on your goals in life) of a class that size is that we had our first classroom fire.

My Village Class

New shirts would be good - Makes me realize how much our kids on base have