BEEP I'm still alive in the middle of BEEP intensives

Happy Dogs watching sunset. Ko Chang, Thailand.



Pocahontas just isn't as good unless you're watching it with eight enthused Korean adolescents. I'm teaching middle school social studies, and the textbooks are absolutely horrendous (as most history books are- not history's fault, of course), so I decided to get real and show my kids Pocahontas. Pick your jaw up off the floor, of course I explained to them the erroneous love triangle. They remember, however, the important parts: this happens in Virginia, the evil English people are stealing Native American land, and that large crazy insect is a hummingbird (native only to the Americas). They are so pumped about Pocahontas that today when I wrote it on the board Tom (I have one in each class, this one is 14) corrected my spelling. When the raccoon jumps in the dog's bubble bath and eats all of his rasperries you would think Kobe Bryant just made a winning shot (is that what we call it in basketball?) the way they shout and laugh. Today Jin read a grammar exercise to the tune of "Just Around the Riverbend." Not that he doesn't hear me singing it constantly.

I am essentially in teaching boot camp. Monday and Wednesday are 12 hour days and the others are just the regular 2-10pm. We have morning classes called "intensives" (and yes, they are) which we were assigned without any consideration of what age group or subject we might prefer. That's Korea. I'm bending under the weight of the educational system here only by the grace of Jesus. Teach on Saturday? Ok. Come back to school on Monday for a 50 hour work week? Ok. Today we were talking about holidays, and the magical world of America where school closes for them, and my kids were stunned. No country is perfect but I am excited I got to explain the concept of a chocolate easter bunny (white, milk, and dark), and later we will learn about why we celebrate Easter. Can't wait!

I've been teaching pretty much all of my free time except Sunday where I rested in zombie position in various apartments, so I'll be writing about Thailand intermittently. Not that anyone was holding their breath, I probably have enough Korean student stories to go on for awhile.

I learned that vacations are wonderful and great and they wake you up and help you remember that life is about living... it filled me with courage and excitement for the future and a desire to swallow the world whole and restlessness...

then I came back to Antartica...

and Jesus is teaching me some good lessons I can't learn anywhere else. Mainly, He is my source of everything. I can complain about working constantly and being "underappreciated" and always being tired--- which of course, none of those things are true, but like all compaints, they feel true enough to whine about at times. God has put it on my heart that He promised He would be my joy and peace and strength, that was His promise, He will follow through, and I have no excuse to complain about life. He tells us-

"Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life- in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing."
***Philippians 2:14-16

I can remember 11th grade tiptoeing in the kitchen at midnight making macaroni and cheese and memorizing those verses. Well I had better buck up and do it again! Jesus has been so amazing and faithful and good and He answers little prayers all the time sometimes big ones (most big ones take a lot of time so I'm still waiting). And He put it on my heart that HE is my joy- I have no reason to be without joy- and the glory of God is that Christians can go through life praising God and being positive no matter what the circumstances. A lot of people I know think that I'm a positive person or that I must have an easy life... I laugh to think what it would have been like could they have met me before I met Christ. And I'm learning that I can't just get the strength I need through osmosis- I have to pursue Him and talk to Him and spend time with Him so I can soak it all in.

Of course, the worse things are, the more potential for God to be glorified, and even though it sucks for us, later everyone can say WOW!





Quickly let's get too personal. Last night (Jan 11) I was writing and praying and just going through dreams for the future and where I wanted to be, for some reason I had this impression of feeling this heaviness of wings and wrote the following:



"...my back itches b/c of these wings I feel threatening to just beat me out of here..."





and TODAY (January 12) this is what I read:

This is an excerpt from Charles Cowman's (WHAT A NAME) notes his wife put together (Streams in the Desert):

There is a fable about the way the birds got their wings at the beginning. They were first made without wings. Then God made the wings and put them down before the wingless birds and said to them, "Come, take up these burdens and bear them."



The birds had lovely plumage and sweet voices; they could sing, and their feathers gleamed in the sunshine, but they could not soar in the air. They hesitated at first when bidden to take up the burdens that lay at their feet, but soon they obeyed, and taking up the wings in their beaks, laid them on their shoulders to carry them.



For a little while the load seemed heavy and hard to bear, but presently, as they went on carrying the burdens, folding them over their hearts, the wings grew fast to their little bodies, and soon they discovered how to use them, and were lifted by them up into the air--the weights became wings.