Thanks . . . But No Thanks! Or wait . . . Maybe I Will Take It!

People are always giving me "stuff."  The thought there is that if you are a teacher, you are either 1. desperate for free materials you can use in the classroom, or 2. so resourceful that you can take junk and make something useable from it!  I am going to "go with" the latter rationale.


We have a wonderful "guest house / hospitality coordinator" on the compound, and G. lets "no grass grow under her feet!"  She has been cleaning out the storage units here, which is no small task.  There have been hundreds of people who have lived here over the past 70+ years of the history of Galmi Hospital; some have returned and reclaimed their possessions, and some not. If you are a parent of grown children, you probably have "storage issues" yourselves.   We used to think, as you may, that when the children have their own homes, then they will take it all.  Hahaha!  All I can say is, "Have fun with that delusion!" Anyway, G. has been cleaning out storage areas around the compound, and I have been the recipient of some of the contents . . . 

Dozens of Paper Tubes

Clothes Pins

Hundreds and Hundreds of Pipettes

Over 1500 Wrapped Straws

Miles of Adding Machine Paper Tape

But yesterday, I "hit the jackpot" with this gift. . .  

Over 200 Plastic "Slides" Holders

 IF you don't know what these are, you are probably very young!!!  Go back in years from "smart phones," computers / internet,  "downloadable cameras," . . . yes, keep going . . . back from "online scrapbooks,"  "scrapbooking" as an art form, . . . back up from Costco inexpensive photo developing, . . . and arrive at . . . (drum roll) . . . the world of SLIDES!!!  NOT water slides, NOT "slip 'n slides," but just SLIDES!  PICTURE SLIDES!  You know, grandma and grandpa go to Alaska, take 450 pictures of snow or icebergs, invite you for dinner (it's a trick!), and sit you down for a showing of their slide pictures projected from a wheel of slides onto a large screen, and you slit there until you resolve you are NEVER going to Alaska!


Anyway, back to "slides."  I was about to put them deep into a storage cupboard of our own, right in the classroom, when it hit me:  the kids would love to use these, and I am tired of teaching how to write a summary!  Today we shall draw our summaries!  Onto little pieces of clear contact paper!  Each student will make his own "mini slide show" summarizing the chapter we just read in our study book, Sign of the Beaver.  So, they did!  And they had so much motivation that they did not want to go home.  They wanted to stay in and keep drawing and making slides.  Our boxes of slides had three little "viewers" in them which enlarge the slides as you look through the little "eyepiece."  Here is one student's beginning of her summary:

And I am having a "blast" in this classroom with these precious children.  And the best part is that despite all the planning I do, and all I think I need to do, I believe God is faithfully providing resources and people and ideas for me to use in this "calling," for which I have many shortcomings and which sometimes seems so far away from my "other life."  Thank you, Jesus!