Wisdom

Being a missionary is sort of like being an acrobat. One is walking a tightrope of time and boundaries while juggling and riding a bicycle… well, at least that’s the way it feels for me. Most mornings I’m up a little before seven, sometimes earlier if Holy Spirit wants to talk to me. I get ready for the day and go to Masterpeace Academy where I prepare the devotional and start the day with the students. I then teach English, and then it is time for Mr Tony to teach science, and during that time I run various errands, pay bills, buy supplies, call parents, e-mail, work on the news letter’s, and any kind of administrative work that only I can do. 

Then I come back and I teach Social studies, and then we have Math. Most days I teach Math together with Amber, and Amber teaches English to the younger students, and then on Mondays, we have a foreign Language. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we’ve got specialists coming in for Art and Music and Theatre and that provides the opportunity then for me to get some more administrative work done and maybe even get an hour or two of exercise in. 

In the afternoons I have the girls (from Avian Park), or the girls and boys from Riverview and now that Maria is gone, that requires that I prepare a meal for the girls immediately after school. The older girls like Salome and Susan and Zelda and Henrietta, and then prepare the meal for all the girls when they come. Because we are also now short on drivers, I also have to now drive to Avian Park and fetch the girls, bring them back to their home, and I have no one helping me teach so I also teach the girls. Then I get back in my car and I drive them home. Typically when I am in Avian Park I try to put out some fires, help babies that don’t have pampers, people who need to get to the clinic and haven’t gotten there, or home life issues that are going on. 

I then get back and clean up whatever has not been cleaned up by the girls, and so most nights my day ends around 18:00 -18:30. I have just resigned from my post on the Lanner House board, so I would have some hours free because that would typically take a few hours every week, either in meetings or responding to e-mails and calls. What typically happens is that there’s a lot of fires to put out, those juggling of balls and cones while riding a bicycle. 

On Sunday is street people’s church. Normally I go to church in the morning and afterwards I am leading worship at the street people’s church at 12:00, and at least once a month teaching the lesson. So my week starts on a Sunday and works its way to Saturday. Saturday is supposed to be my Shabbat- my day of rest. Sometimes that doesn’t always happen like it used to, but for the most part, I try to keep that day free. That can mean having an extended praise and worship time, taking out my journal and journaling, writing songs or talking to family members, visiting with friends- an opportunity to reboot. 

A good week for me would be that somewhere on Thursday I got a break while the specialist was teaching drama and abacus and I manage to get a break on Saturday, and if I can keep that in line, If I can walk that tight line, Ps16 says that the boundary line has fallen for me in pleasant places. If I can keep that tight line going, then it works. It is more difficult when I have to do all of the teachings on Fridays when the girls come. Typically Christine is doing the voice exercises, and then I take them aside and teach, but the last two Fridays some young ladies from the Netherlands have done that, and that’s a blessing. That left me to just deal with discipline and to drive and to cook, so that’s a blessing. That’s pretty much what my days look like.