To Be Known

It has been over a month since my last update. That is both hard to believe and not a surprise at all. It does not feel as if I have been here for a month and a half already. It is not that I have been so busy that there has been no time to post, but I am simply terrible about communicating specifics about my life. Since I am in it and living it, I sometimes forget that the only image of my life here that people back home have is my last post or the pictures I've uploaded on facebook.

The first couple weeks of being here were simply getting over jet lag and adjusting to the culture.  It is a completely different world in every aspect. Once I was a little more used to everything here, I was able to focus on what I am doing with the school. I began with creating a workshop for the teachers from Creche (1 year olds) to Primary 4 (4th grade). I had no idea where to begin. Sure, I went to college to be a teacher but my professors did not teach me how to teach other teachers in a third world country. I was incredibly overwhelmed by the entire idea of doing a workshop at first. I really thought that God was crazy for calling me here. I thought that Di, the lady I live with who also started the school, was also crazy for believing I could be of any help here.

 So I prayed. I prayed a lot. I prayed that the Lord would simply help me do whatever He wanted me to do. Every morning I would pray for guidance, direction, and wisdom. Once I began, the Lord just continued to guide me. Somewhere between having no idea what I was doing here and the end of today, I created and presented a  workshop for 24 teachers at Greater Heights. I am realizing that even though I wasn't trained to do exactly what I am doing, I am using so much of what I learned in college that at times I thought I would never use. The beginning of the workshop was going over very general components of teaching and the expectations that I have for the teachers. The schools here are nothing like the schools in America. I do not want to change their culture, but I want to give them the knowledge of how things are done in other places so that together we can combine the two and make it work for Ghana. In the last part of the workshop I explained and somewhat demonstrated three different activities or methods of teaching. Circle Time, Centers, and Guided Reading are the three components I decided to introduce. I was very worried that nothing I said would make any sense to them. I'm not saying that they are not capable of understanding me, but what I was teaching them are things that have been engraved in my brain over the last 4 years of college and I know them like the back of my hand. I wanted to make sure that I was communicating it correctly to them so that they would realize that even though this is something they have never heard of, they will be able to use it in their classrooms.

Other than creating the workshop I have been busy planning the curriculum for the first part of the school year. This was another place where I had no idea what I was doing, but God did. I started with a basic overview of each grade for one month. Then I made a weekly plan for each grade and gathered all the materials for the first week of school. This will be a work in progress as the year goes on. There is a lot that I have to learn, and so much of this aspect can only be done week by week because it depends on so many different things.

Aside from school I go to church in the village every week with my dear friend Dorcus and I go on walks around our house in the evening after school. There isn't very much to do here for entertainment and I'm learning that I am okay with that. I did learn how to drive a motorbike though.  I have so much more time to devote to being in The Word and prayer that I actually enjoy not always having something else to do. I'm realizing how distracted I was from God before.

It is not always easy. I had in my mind that God would be enough. It would be okay that I didn't have my friends and family because I would have God. I was so confused when it wasn't enough. It took some time, but then one night it just clicked. God wasn't enough now because before I came here I hadn't taken the time to get to know Him they way I knew my friends. I know my friends better than they know themselves sometimes. They were my whole life. They were what I put all of my energy into. They were what mattered most to me. God was there when I needed Him and I didn't need Him as much when I had my friends. Now I don't have any of my friends and I somehow expected God to just fill that spot. It isn't that easy though because friendships take time and work. Time and work that I had never put into getting to know God before now. I didn't know God well enough for Him to fill every void. Don't be mistaken, this was by no fault of His, but completely mine. I'm now in the process of getting to know God better than I know my friends.

My biggest lesson the last few weeks has been that I am on this earth for one purpose. To make His name great. I am not here to live an exciting, adventurous, or even comfortable life. In everything I do, I am here to make Him known. To show His love, mercy, and power. In that, I have realized that I will rarely know what I am actually doing but God will always know what He is doing. He delights in being strong in my weakness.  That is so much of the beauty of this story. Through God's grace, He is using me to write another part of His story. And even though it is difficult  a lot of the time, that is what gets me through. The simple fact that this is His plan and I am only in it by His will, to make Him known.


Grace and Peace,

Shelby