Learning how to adjust and adapt is pretty much a given while on the mission field. But that doesn´t mean it makes it any easier. Our first week here in Costa Rica was way more difficult than I ever expected. We were told we were going to be teaching and I was in charge of study hall. Easy right?? I basically would get to hang out with the students and pretend to do homework. However things never go as expected as I have come to discover.
My first class was the 11th & 12th grade which consists of about ten students. About three minutes into the class seven of them leave and I am sitting there with three high school boys who are all talking in rapid Spanish and have very little interest in talking to me, let alone acutally doing homework. After the long 45 minutes of class and feeling totally out of place, I had a break. Which at first was welcomed since I didn´t really feel comforatable in the classroom, but when the break lasted three hours I was asking mself, "God, what on earth am I doing here?!" I then went to my next class where I was told by the teacher that my help really wasn´t needed so I didn´t have to stay if I didn´t want to. Double punch to my self esteem.
After hanging out for another hour, trying to think of things to waste time, I had my final class of the day. I told myself, "Okay this time I am going to do something!" But even though the teacher welcomed me to the classroom, I sat on the floor in the back and listened to a lecture in Spanish. All I could think was, wow this is going to be a long month!
As the week went on things didn´t get much better. But in my struggle God was deeply at work within me and teaching me patience and flexibilty. He was showing me that when I expect things to go a certain way, I need to realize that He is at work forming a perfect plan. That in my moments of feeling totally useless and unnecessary, I am being used even though I can´t see it. Because by week three of working in the school, those same students that didn´t seem to notice that a white American missionary was in the room had become my friends. We could talk about life and laugh at silly things together. And I see how God is at work here. How He is moving and His Holy Spirit is working within our team.
