The Bench Dwellers

Day 2 at the church

This is a view from the back of the church. Open windows keep it relatively cool. The kids are holding up papers with the words to a bible verse we taught in English today: "greater love has no one than this, that he give his life for his friend." 

Praise God that I was able to talk with the teachers! Two teachers came to talk with me. I had a few questions prepared to get to know what school is like here before giving "training"/ advice. After we started talking, I kept getting vague, general answers from them about their classroom management, teaching style, and lesson development. What really began conversation was when I asked the question, "why do you teach? What motivates you?" They responded with the joy of seeing student progress. Then, I opened it up for them to ask me questions about teaching. They asked why I came to Haiti, how we had such generosity to the kids, and why did I choose disability education. This became an awesome opportunity to share with them a biblical perspective of disability (disability is not a word in creole, it seems) and the power of the gospel. I shared that I started studying disabilities when I realized if I didn't know much about these kids with special needs that would be in my class, then they won't be helped at all. That these kids have the same value and worth as all kids and I needed to learn how to best love and help them through school. I shared that only through Jesus do we all have the strength and love for this ministry/job and that we are all tired after our day working with the kids. From what I heard from the teachers and their response to me, it is possible that they have a heart disconnect with their profession. I will be praying for their motivation to be gospel centered with their students. I loved seeing the connection with the translator, Jimmy, to the content. When I shared my stories with him to translate, he'd smile and nod in response. As far as communication struggles go, I was thankful for this positive discussion with the teachers.

The rest of the day, I hung out on the benches with a few little girls who either couldn't run or didn't want to while the rest of the kids went crazy running around with games. One girl, Rebekah, has cerebral palsy and can't walk so I sat by her and she grabbed my hand. Later, she put my arm around her and grabbed my face for a beautiful embrace. I learned quickly that she loved being loved on. I became content with just sitting and showing love and affection to these kids. Yesterday, I tried to grab some balloons or bubbles for entertainment with these lovely bench dwellers but today we were all content just being together (I say this because they all had smiles on their face. Proof). I realize that I am blessed at this point with the novelty of being a white skinned American, because all they do for entertainment is touch my face, play with my hair, or look into my eyes and they laugh and smile. Even today some of the girls were wiping sweat off my face for me..."Merci," I replied. 

Logistically, we did break up the kids into two groups based on age, with 2 different lessons and activities. It worked beautifully. After the first 2 hours of music, skit , craft, chaos officially began as the beach ball and bubbles came out. But we still loved the chaos. And I loved my bench dwellers.

Also spent some time having fun with the camera. My friend Stephanie is to the right.