Lessons Learnt Pt 2

Yesterday afternoon was by far the hardest lesson I have ever had to teach. For all the lessons I have taught, this was the loudest and most questioned I have ever been in. Unfortunately the young people were not doing a very good job at listening to the answers I had. After a few incidents of "Jebus" I had to stop and tell them exactly what was bothering me.

Sometimes the things we say offend other people with out realising it. The only place I really pull young people up on their language is Big Breakfast, some of the yp swear unnecessarily and I have a sharp ear for it... but in this lesson there weren't any swear words, but poor Jesus got a nickname. I know he's been called worse things. I stopped, took stock for a moment and when I carried on things weren't much better.

I stood at the front of the class being pelted by some really good questions, "Who created God?" "How can you believe all this stuff?" "Is Jesus really alive?" "Does God talk to you?" Waaah, but I know that there is nothing before God and there will be nothing after God, I know Jesus is alive and God does talk to me (but not in a audible voice). Our children know myths about God, I find this very sad. They believe in very little and are sceptical. One of the teachers said "you can't question other people's beliefs" don't think that's so true, I think you can, but I think you do have to be sensitive to others too and listen to what they believe, even if you don't believe it yourself.

These discussions HAVE to continue... I was dreaming big dreams on Monday and one of them is to always be in discussion about faith and beliefs.

Lessons Learnt

Christianity lessons are going really well, thanks for all you who are praying/interested! It's been a good week. Though I sit listening to a tennis match I'm completely uninterested in. Sad there's no Murray on court today, but he's only young and Wimbledon happens every year. More chances for him!

Back to the lessons! I had a bit of a mental block in spelling harder words like Crucifixion and even Church at one point! Have learnt that spelling on a board is so much harder when there are lots of sets of eyes on the back of your head. Also had some very intersesting questions. I'm sure evey one else has experienced that moment when you realise there is someone in the room who has just as much knowledge as you, but you expected there to be no knowledge at all...

Happened to me on Friday, there was a JW in the class. Very very interesting to hear someone else pov, but for the conversation to have continued down the interrupted by unnecessary OMG from the tennis stairs afterwards.

I wanted to start conversations with these young people... seems I have done that. The teacher who was in Friday's lesson was very impressed with me. Though I wasn't too impressed with me, but there we go, God works in mysterious ways.

You know though, vodafone have nicked my blog title! They are going to be employing 8 people to work for an overseas charity of their choice next year. You could earn £45,000 for working for a charity under their scheme. Hmmmm not sure what I think of that.

If you are a pray-er

Now would be the time to do the praying thing... I know it's late notice, but I'll be in school in about 15 mins delivering the first of six RE lessons on Christianity. This is an annual event for me, but it's always different. The young people are different, the teacher is often different (and some times learns more than the pupils).

We shall see how it goes. But if you are praying, pray now. Pray at 2.40pm on Thursday, 1.50pm on Friday and 2.40 Weds and Thurs next week. Will update on the inbetween times.

In other news, it's hotter here than in Uganda. I'm praying that Andy Murray will win Wimbledon (and turning into my mother in the meantime)! And something made my day today, but I can't tell you cos it's a surprise! Yeay! I love surprises!

On form

I'm pretty much back to normal after all the car trouble last week. It got me down, but is probably a symptom of bigger things.

So this morning as part of my job I headed into first lesson at the school across the road from work. And went head on against a lovely bunch of guys who are hopefully a little bit more aware of the choices they have to make before they have sex.

I'm teaching all girls this afternoon. So we will see how differently that goes.

Its a bit more hard-core next week. Going to try and teach the boys how to use language without being derogatory.