Bridget, one of the Grade 1 students and Bethesda kids.
The Grade 1 class holding up on their get well soon card, which had butterflies on them.
Greetings
from Bethesda!
In
terms of my involvement at the school, this was probably my busiest week as I
substituted for the first grade all week as their teacher was out with a
respiratory illness. It was a lot of work and pretty tiring, but it was a lot
of fun nonetheless. I am very grateful for the hard work that the Grade 2
teacher, Miss de Clerq, who had to scramble and organize the materials for me
when I was going to be teaching since I had no knowledge of the curriculum. I
also had some fun times putting on a pizza party for the families on Friday,
but I’ll elaborate on that more later. Additionally, I was able to do a lot of
shopping for souvenirs for friends and family on Saturday. But first things
first: Happy Father’s Day to my dad, Jim Lehe! For the second consecutive year,
I’ve managed to be away from home on Father’s Day, but hopefully I can make up
for my lack of presence with an abundance of presents :) But in all
seriousness, I am grateful for his influence in my life and hope to one day have
his work ethic. I know how hard he works because when I work with him, frankly
I can’t keep up. I owe a lot to him in how I have turned out. In addition to
this, I have been blessed to observe some great fathers here at Bethesda in
Fritz, George, Peter, Jack, and Jones. Not only do these men work full time
jobs, but many of them are pastors of their churches and they take a very
active role in instructing their children in the Lord. They have all followed
God here and adopted several children into their families and are giving them a
loving home and showing them God’s love constantly. However, I was reminded in
church this morning that we have the greatest father we could ever imagine or
hope for in God the Father. Even though all of the men I have mentioned are
great men, they cannot promise to always be there for their children, but God
can. As it says in Deuteronomy 31:6 “It is the Lord who goes before you. He
will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be
dismayed.” So today, I thank God for my earthly father, the great examples of
fathers here at Bethesda, and my Heavenly Father.
Looking back on this week in the
school, it certainly wasn’t quite what I expected, but it went very well and
no, I didn’t make the first graders cry…. too much. Their classroom is adjacent
to the grade 4 room and since the upper grades of the school were taking exams,
I was pretty vigilant about talking out of turn and the students responded very
well to these demands. It also helps that I have gotten to know the students
much better now and know how to respond to them more effectively. For example,
one girl tends to be a bit dramatic at times and I have learned to recognize
her fake crying for attention and her real crying, which are few and far
between. I am also blessed that there are only ten students and they are all
very well behaved. Nonetheless, I still find myself losing my patience from
time to time, which is something I clearly need help in and need to work on. Some
of the highlights of the week included making “Get well soon” cards on Thursday
for their teacher and Father’s Day cards on Friday. Both of them implemented a
limited amount of writing for the students. I would take some ideas from the
students and write them on the board so they could get the spelling and
everything correct. I thought it was cool how one of the most popular choices
was “May the Good Lord bless you.” This was also popular on Friday for the
Father’s Day choices. The Father’s Day cards were basically a handwriting
worksheet with “Thank you for” as a writing prompt and the things that the kids
were thankful for were pretty hilarious. One girl’s paper read “Thank you for
buying me toys. Thank you for buying me shoes. Thank you for buying me clothes.”
Of course, my personal favorite was by one of the boys. He wrote “Thank you for
everything you do for me. Thank you for buying me pizza. Thank you for buying
me KFC & McDonalds.” To add the hilarity, he actually spelled KFC “KeFeSe”
before I corrected him. Another highlight for me is when I get to read to the
class. One of the books I read this week was Who is the Beast? by Keith Baker, which had a repeated line “The
beast, the beast” at the start of every other page. I would add a little bit of
a suspenseful and scary voice and the kids loved it even though they jumped
each time I read it. They are a lot of fun and I know that I will miss them all
immensely.
So I had this idea a little while
back that I would try to get pizza for all of the families at Bethesda as a way
of saying thank you for welcoming me and everything that they all have done for
me. I set up everything to do this on Friday night and we made the order. It
was all looking good until we went to pick up the order. The pizza place here
puts two normal sized pizzas in a large box so when we order 14 large pizzas,
we were meaning 28 pizzas. But the pizza place thought we only wanted 14 pizzas
all together, which meant only about two pieces per person. I was really bummed
out by this and I unfortunately let it ruin my evening and time of fellowship. Looking
back, I think I had good original intentions, but I was definitely looking at
it as a way to glorify myself and this definitely reminded me of how fragile
and pathetic my glory is. After the pizza time, the guys and I watched The Dark Knight Rises and once again, I
fell asleep for most of the movie.
On Saturday, I went shopping with
Tonya and Heather for souvenirs and gifts for friends and family back home. It
was a lot of fun and I got some really cool things, but I am always so
indecisive since the only person I can effectively buy things for (other than
myself) is my mom. Thank goodness that Tonya has a lot of patience! I just hope
everything I bought can fit in my suitcase.
In conclusion, it was a pretty good
last full week at Bethesda. It’s weird to think as each day passes that “This
is my last [insert day of the week] here.” While I am starting to look forward
to going home, I know that I will miss Bethesda and everyone here so much and
will probably kick myself for not doing more things with the kids here. Either
way, one of my concerns is that I may fall into the mentality of “This is my
last week, so that doesn’t really matter.” One of my prayer requests is that I
would avoid this temptation and just finish strong. Another one would be for
Tonya’s car to be fixed soon and that if it is repaired while she’s in the
States, that it would be repaired properly. Lastly, I would ask for prayer for
safe travels as Tonya, Heather, and I leave this Friday. I can’t believe how
fast the time has gone, but I am thankful for how good has worked in me and
given me the opportunity to grow and serve. As always, thanks for reading and
have a great day!
In
Christ,
Dan
Lehe
Praying!
ReplyDelete