short 15. He was at Emmanuel orphanage 3 years ago when I came on my first trip to India. It's amazing how much he has changed over the years. He has grown into such a young man and has grown so much in the Lord. He is such a leader here. The next closest child in age to him is around 10. Because of this he has a lot of responsibilities and seems to have little time to just be a teenage boy. He helps cook and clean and get the kids ready for school. He
translates for us and leads prayer time and also has to find time to do his homework and take
care of himself. I pray that He is able to find time to dig into the Word himself and grow. I
hope that I am able to be an encouragement to him while I am here. He needs someone to really pour into him and disciple him and I am praying that God would provide that.
We have spent a lot of time together lately because I have been attempting to help him with
his homework. In order to understand what a challenge this is, you have to understand
something about schools in India. They go against so much of what I was taught in college
about teaching/learning. It gets so frustrating at times. Almost all of it seems to be rote
memorization. The teacher writes a question on the board and then the answer, and the students copy it down in their notebooks. Then their homework is to re-copy it on the next page. There is no comprehension going on. They are copying down and memorizing words that they don't even know what they mean. It's hard to explain English words to them using only English words... it would help if I could speak hindi! We are getting tutored for an hour a day, but since I came a month after the other girls I am already behind and find little time to study. Anyways... back to Prem... we spend a lot of time on the roof working on homework; mainly geometry. Now, it's been at least 8 years since I have done geometry. Not only that, but there is little explanation in the book, so I have to rely on my memory and try to figure things out. We spend a lot of time just looking at eachother pondering a problem and saying "I don't know". We do our best, but it takes a long time just to do a few problems.
I have also spent a lot of time with a boy named Ravi. He is sooo smart, but he really struggles in school. His conversational English is great and can even translate, but when it
comes to reading/writing/spelling English, he has trouble. We have spent at least 4 days
memorizing answers to questions about a story that they read in class. Even some of the
answers they get from their teachers aren't gramattically correct. We've spent so much time onit I can practically quote it myself: "What happened to Lucy when she was searching for her mother?" "All of a sudden a fierce storm arose. It was dense darkness and it began to rain
heavily. Lucy was caught in the storm when she was looking her mother in the town. She fell in a river and died." Really? Half of those words he doesn't even know, but he has to learn how to recite it. I feel as if there is a battle going on inside me. I want so badly to really
teach them, to help them to read something and comprehend it and really really learn how to
learn. But at the same time, there are 26 kids here and I can't do much to change the school
system, so I just have to bear it and try to help them succeed in this crazy thing they call
school.
Despite all of the frustrations, there have been many enjoyable times. It gives me a chance to sit and talk with Prem and get to know him better and it gives Ravi a chance to get away and have one on one attention. I hope to encourage him and boost his view of himself.
I cannot even tell you how much I love and adore each and every one of these children. Just
spending time with them is a blessing. I love serving them through cooking and washing their
clothes and helping them get dressed in the morning and walking them to the bus. There have even been several children who have gotten sick, some with almost a 102 fever. It is heart wrenching lying there with them trying to bring some sense of comfort, all the while they are crying for their mom, who we all know very well isn't going to come.
I am already thinking of how much heart break there will be, on both sides. These kids have
seen so many people come and go out of their lives. My hope is that they realize how much we love them, but even more, internalize the love of Jesus Christ. With 3 prayer services a day we really try and pour into them and plant the seed of the Word in their hearts.
I love you all and pray you are well! There is so much more to write, but this will have to be
enough for now. Sorry for the jumbled thoughts, I hope this all makes some sort of sense.
Prem with a load of laundry
Some of the boys with their school uniforms.
more pictures to come later :)
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