Our First Week

This is Liliana, the first grade teacher.

It’s the end of our first week here in Paraguay. It’s hard to believe because I almost feel like I’ve been here for weeks and weeks already. I’m amazed at the fact that my Spanish has come back to me faster and more accurately than I thought it would. Don’t get me wrong. I still lack tremendously, but I am thrilled with the speed and accuracy at which I can now communicate. The teachers and I try to speak to each other in our broken languages and it is exciting to know that we can get ideas across to each other.

School has been my life this week, so I’ll talk about that today. Nancy and I are on the road at 6:00AM every day because that’s when our ride is available. I am usually at school until 4:00 or so because I let the boys stay a little longer in their class. The afternoon session goes until around 5:00, I think, but because our English classes finish earlier, we haven’t stayed until the end of the day. The boys really want to stay and play at recess, so we’ve stayed a few times so that they can play.

I mentioned yesterday that Nancy is filling in for the high school English teacher today and Tuesday. She came out of her classes smiling today, so it must have gone well! She is supposed to be doing conversational English with them so today she took her family photo album and talked about her family. They created family trees and discussed the different aspects of a family. Whenever I walked past her classrooms, it seemed to be quiet and under control and she was talking. She believed that satan was really trying to discourage her, but a lot of prayers went up today for her, so we were able to see the wisdom from God flow through her. Remember to pray for her again on Tuesday as she will be with those 7th, 8th and 11th graders again!

Liliana is the first grade teacher. She is such a sweetheart! (She really reminds me of Adrienne Pentsa, for those of you that know her. I want to call her Adrienne all the time!) Liliana and her husband are the caretakers of La Quinta, a house with beautiful grounds that has been offered as a retreat location for the school/church. Petite little Liliana rides a motorcycle to school, although you’d never expect that from her! The first day we taught, she told us that she was going to stay in our classroom while we taught. Nancy and I weren’t thrilled with that idea because we would rather have made fools of ourselves alone, but she insisted that she should stay in case we needed help. We found out the real reason why she is staying, though! When we introduce new words to the class, we see Liliana’s lips moving in the back as she pronounces the words, too! Nancy was going around the room asking each of the kids to say the word “purple” and then they got to touch the shiny purple picture in the book. She walked right up to Liliana and said, “Purple, Profe. Liliana” and then let her touch the picture only after she said the word. The kids got a good laugh out of that and now Liliana participates in all our activities.

Please pray for Liliana. Although I don’t know her well, she and her husband seem to be servants at heart. Pray that they will use that desire to serve and will be encouraged and not burn out.