Saturday Post -- 17/03/12

Rebecca Chee: teaching some of Trinidad's educational
workers a few lessons

This will be the last post for a while as we have something of a break coming up. On Friday evening, all being well, we will take the overnight bus to Santa Cruz. We’ll be spending a few days there touching base with one or two friends and then, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, we board our flight to Costa Rica, where we are due to attend LAM Canada’s 50^th anniversary conference, which all LAM Canada’s missionaries are expected. We’re excited about what will be our first opportunity to spend time with our fellow workers from the LAM family. The conference takes place from the 31^st till the 4^th, so our early arrival in Costa Rica will allow us to get in a few days of relaxation. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the Andy Roxburgh statue in the main plaza.

We fly back on the 4^th but with two weeks’ leave from ministry, we’ll not be rushing back to Trinidad by any means. Anyway, I will hopefully be able to share plenty of stories and pictures when I next post, probably on Easter weekend. In the meantime, I’ll aim to keep the Facebook page updated.

It’ll be our first time away from Trinidad for nearly six months and we’re really feeling the need of a break. We’re pretty exhausted right now as we prepare for another Saturday afternoon and evening dedicated to church work.

So as we crawl towards the finish line, it’s been terrific to have some energy about the place in the shape of Amanda’s cousin Rebecca, who you’ll remember was due to land in Trinidad last Saturday. Rebecca is expected to report back to her university in early April with 90 hours of educational work under her belt, and she’s so far acquitted herself with aplomb. In the mornings, she’s mostly prepared lessons while accompanying me to my R.E. classes. But the afternoons are where she’s really proving her mettle.

Through one of the FT workers, who teaches afternoon school (schools have two separate sessions here for two different groups of students), we had arranged for Rebecca to teach a 6^th grade class. I accompanied Rebecca on Tuesday, her first day, where, lo and behold, the class teacher, unbeknownst to us, had disappeared to attend a training session. Rebecca was very much in at the end marked ‘deep’. I daren’t even think of how I would cope in such a farcical situation. Alarmed but unfazed, Rebecca simply reached for the chalk and started teaching a maths lesson. Immediately, her positive attitude shone through and the kids, though largely clueless as to what she was teaching them (a reflection on the poor standards of maths teaching here) were very quickly eating out of her hand. With my own classes to teach back at the Foundation, I left Rebecca to it, but she stopped by in the evening to tell us all about her day, which later included taking an impromptu basketball lesson when the P.E. teacher didn’t show up.

She got through the week in much the same vein and today she’ll be taking her educational skills to church, where she’s helping out with a Sunday School class, and leading one of the segments at the youth group tonight (where Amanda is chairing and I’m doing the teaching). Due to our upcoming excursion, we won’t be here to see Rebecca finish her three-week stint, but I have no doubt she’ll do herself proud. We’ve really enjoyed having her around this week in the evenings, Amanda particularly relishing in the chance to catch up on the family gossip. All is well. 

Prayer

•  For safety, rest and encouragement on our upcoming travels.
• For Rebecca’s final two weeks here.

 Praise

• For the positive attitude which Rebecca has demonstrated since arriving.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda