Teaching

I have made it to Pakistan safely, after over 28 hours of travelling. It was such a blessing to have Rebecca travel with me to London. It made my 7 hour layover go by a lot faster. From London, England I flew to Islamabad where I had a 5 hour layover. My flight from Islamabad to Rahim was just 2 hours which was a nice break from the previous 7 hour flights. The last plane I flew on was very small, it only seated about 30 people and only half of the seats were filled. Before the flight took off, the captain said a little prayer to Allah. This really shocked me and made me aware of just how predominate Islam is in Pakistan. The man sitting beside me on the plane was very eager to talk to me and learn about myself and Canada. He kept telling me how brave I was to travel to Pakistan all alone and for such a long time. I met his wife at the airport once we landed and they invited me to come visit their home some time. I love how warm and welcoming the people here are. I have only been in the country 2 days and there has been numerous occasions where people have really reached out to me whether they invited me into their home for something cold to drink or have given me popsicle because they know I like ice cream.

Today is my second day in Pakistan and also my first day teaching. I am teaching English in a little 5 room school. The school is Christian but also has some Muslim students and teachers. There are 105 students that attend school this school, most of which are boys. The school day starts at 7:15 with an assembly where they sing some songs and go through announcements. The first class of the day is Bible, I sat in the 7-8 class where they sang some songs and read part of Proverbs 24. They asked me to sing a song, so I sang “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” because I thought they would like the actions, they just started at me. After Bible I started my 35 min rotation of teaching English. Because there are only 5 classrooms (one of which is a hallway) there are numerous grades in one room and it can get very loud. I worked with each grade sharing a little about myself and the country I came from and working on improving their English. Teaching was interesting, they memorize everything so when I tied asking the grade one class to sound out the word cat and they couldn’t. I worked with it though and played some word games with them and read some books to the different classes. I am really looking forward to spending more time in the school working with the students. On Monday and Thursday I will be running some teacher training sessions in the evening. I was a little intimidated with this at first but the teachers are so excited about learning some new ways of teaching. I already have a list of things I want to teach them.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has been praying for me, It has been very encouraging. I was really scared about coming over here alone but God has been so faithful in bringing people into my life that have encouraged me and really lifted me up in prayer. I am learning about what it really means to all be apart of Christ’s body.