Culture:  people think of Europe as being developed and very in-tune with religion, but that is not the case. In one mass, literally the whole church will only be there, but not be practicing any religion. The idea of religion is so burnt into people that they are either so ignorant towards the idea of Christianity or so turned off from religion that talking about Jesus is literally something that has to happen! Europe is a first world country so there are luxuries in this place that are not found everywhere around the world. To be honest, some of the things that I see here I wonder why the United States has not adopted yet. However, just because there is development in structure and a history that literally speaks for itself does not mean that there is spiritual development. A third world country, often times Asia or Africa is typically put on the priority list when we think of missions and telling people about Jesus. This is done either consciously or subconsciously, but if we’re honest, we see that this really is the case the majority of the time. However, Europe is predicted to be majority Islamic within only a matter of years. So if this other religion can move in and convince people to follow it, then Christianity certainly can grow especially when there is power behind it of the one true God. As it is with most cultures, as least in my opinion, it is our responsibility to reach the children and through that generations will change and follow. Honestly, the revolutions and culture changes throughout history have all been started by young people. The church was developed through the disciples who were teenagers that had been discipled and developed by Jesus himself.

So, for all of you out there who follow this, I hope you take two things from this blog. The first would be a desire to educate yourself on the real-life cultures of countries, especially if you are going to visit them. Do not fill a stereotype of being an ignorant American. We have enough of those. The second thing would be to allow your perspective of the world to change. Begin to look at parts of the world as God would. Ask the Lord to give you his eyes. It will change your life. Just because that happens does not mean that you will be called to missions, but instead you will be enlightened and that is perhaps a blessing and a curse. If you can understand where another person is coming from, you are light years ahead of most people in this world. However, it is pure laziness that we walk around proud and ignorant. So, I challenge you, I dare you: do something different.

some things are just universal

So my class is in a little tiny nursery that sits off of the big room that the rest of the class rotates through during our two hours of teaching English each day. When the air conditioning is not working, it is easily the hottest room in the building and when it is working, it is easily the hottest room in the building. So, needless to say my kids are often very rowdy and pretty crazy when we have class. I like to let them have fun, but some of those boys just go crazy. It’s interesting the opportunities that present themselves while teaching something as simple yet as complicated as English. The room we are in, apart from being the in-house sauna has windows from floor to ceiling on two of the walls. So, we can see people walking around. The area that the church is located in would be the equivalent of the area North Central University is located in the city. It is not the roughest neighborhood but it also not the upper end of the town if you know what I mean. So, we see some pretty interesting people walk past. Almost every day there are homeless men who lay on the bench across from the church and take naps during the day. When the kids come in, they notice it and usually comment.

One day, one class of about nine kids came in and they started laughing at him for being homeless…as you can imagine, my teaching skills and passion for justice arose in me and I started to get on their case for laughing. I asked them if they would want people laughing at them if they had no place to live. They quieted right down. I asked them if they believed in Jesus and surprisingly they all said yes. So, then I told them it was their job to take care of people who were poor. We had a whole discussion about where money would go if they were drunks. I told them it wasn’t their job to judge that and that there were other ways to help. The kids were clueless. They had never heard this information before. I told them that if they couldn’t help by giving them anything, then it was THEIR responsibility to pray for the homeless people. So, we prayed for them and then we started class.

I have been able to share a lot of other things about treating people nicely and taking responsibility for your actions. I created a small problem for myself. I told the kids that they could only speak in English all day; no Phillippino, no Chinese, no Italian, no Spanish, and no French. So, now they just tattle on each other when they speak in other languages. If they get caught, they have to write one sentence in my class that day. So, every time they get caught, it’s one more sentence. The advanced kids have to write two sentences. My classes write a lot of sentences. Ha I know what all of their favorite things are!!

The Lord is so good. He works things out. That is for sure. Stay tuned…

oops...dang language barriers

So when you’re teaching English to 9,10, and 11-year-olds who are from Italy, the Philippines, Nigeria, and even China, there are bound to be some funny stories that come out of the class time together. About a week and a half ago, one of my students, Cici was simply trying to help out one of the boys in our class. The act was innocent to be completely honest. One of the boys was asking for paper and he was using only motions so I asked for him to tell me in English that he wanted a piece of paper. He was struggling to think of the word “sheet” and CiCi helped him out by responding with “shit, the shit of paper”. I’m sorry if this is vulgar to you, but at the time I was doing everything I could not to laugh. She had no idea what she was saying because the sound only thing that made an innocent word turn into a seemingly bad word was her accent. I was hoping the whole situation would fly under the radar and no one would understand what she said, but as she started repeating it over and over again, one of the boys yelled “HEY THAT’S A BAD WORD!!”. Great. So, at that moment I was able to explain to my whole class what “s***” means and why CiCi said it and that in the future they should all just say that they want a piece of paper….and that’s my story for today…even though there are so many more to tell…