God has a weird sense of humor sometimes. Do you ever pray really sarcastically? Well, you’ve all heard the saying “be careful what you wish for!” but after today I think I will change that to “be careful what you pray for!” It’s been an interesting day.
This morning as I was tossing my books into my backpack, I flipped open the textbooks and noticed that we had finished most of the book in both fourth and sixth grade. All that was left were the holiday sections, which I taught at the end of last semester and it wasn’t my favorite thing in the world. I pitched the books into my backpack, prayed sarcastically, “Lord, please don’t make me teach holidays today,” grabbed my bag, and headed out the door.
A cup of coffee and ten minutes later, I arrived in the parking lot, looked for Jack, almost got into the wrong car, and then noticed Joanne walking towards her car. Joanne is the other English teacher at Hu Shan and we get along really well, although we haven’t really had the chance to talk much before. She saw me, waved, and walked over. “Are you surprised?” Uh, yeah… I hopped into her car and we headed off for school. I thought that probably Jack had a meeting or something and had sent Joanne to pick me up. WRONG. We started driving down the road and this was something like what our conversation went like…
Joanne: “This morning after our teachers meeting I almost forgot to come get you until Jack said YOU HAVE TO GO NOW! I’m glad I remembered, because I’d really forgotten that this was the first day.”
Christina’s Brain: “First Day? What the…?”
Christina’s Mouth: (laughs) “Yeah, I’m glad you remembered too! Um… first day of what?”
Joanne: (laughs) “Well since sixth grade will be finished with their books soon, we all decided to let you teach with me this month! But I almost forgot that this morning was the beginning of it.”
Christina’s Brain: “How sweet of you to not let me get bored watching movies with MY sixth graders that I’ve been teaching ALL YEAR!”
Christina’s Mouth: “Oh, cool! So I get to teach with you until the end of the semester?”
Joanne: “Yes!”
She then proceeded to tell me about her classes- second grade, third grade, and three fifth grade classes. I won’t tell you what my brain was saying at this point, but if you know me you can probably guess. Tina needed an attitude check. But even with the attitude check, God still chose to bless me with an awesome day. The kids were SO excited about having me teach them, even just for three weeks, that it was hard to not be excited about teaching them too. The last fifth grade class was especially fun- one girl is going to America this summer and I met her last month when I judged the kids competing to go to America. There was another kid from Japan who had great English, and this one kid had the girl going to America write on his book “My name is David and my English is really bad but I like your hair and I’m good at drawing.” I was cracking up when I read that one! Joanne kept cracking me up all day too- she kept forgetting what she had taught and what she hadn’t. It was really fun working with somebody so easygoing. We had a blast together and before the day was over she’d bought me watermelon juice and promised to take me sightseeing in a couple of weeks!
So… the moral of the story is… Be careful what you pray for, and even if the answers are different than you expect, God’s always got your best in mind!
Keep us in your prayers as we wrap up the semester here, and for some of us, wrap up our whole world and try to fit it into two suitcases. Two suitcases is not nearly big enough to take home all the hearts that have touched mine these two years, but maybe the pieces of me that will be left here will leave more room for an extra shirt or two.
Oh, needless to say, I didn’t have to teach about holidays today…
For Jesus and Nantou,
Tina Moody
