Day 5

Psalm 52:8-9:
"But I am like a flourishing olive tree in the house of God;
I trust in God's faithful love forever and ever.
I will praise You forever for what You have done.
In the presence of Your faithful people,
I will put my hope in Your name, for it is good."

The Lord is incredibly gracious to me. I am so aware of that fact today. I am sitting here in awe of just who He is and how He uses people like me in His kingdom. The best way I can describe what I'm feeling today is that the Lord has given me favor with people, and with students. I was extremely nervous to teach English today - from stressing out because I didn't think I would have a computer projector screen or Internet, to trying to plan a 2 hour about me/ice breaker time slot. But the Lord gave me a great day. My kids seem to have really taken a liking to me. And I've met me, and I'm not that funny, or personable. I'm not the most patient person, and definitely not the most creative. But I got the kids pumped up, and everywhere they went today, people commented on how excited my kids were. The Lord has blessed me - I feel like I can't give enough glory to his name for that!

If you want the whole day in perspective, breakfast included chicken nuggets, honey mustard, rice, and CEREAL! The whole team rejoiced when they had cereal for us! Korean food starts to taste all the same after a while. While I don't really mind it, it is starting to become a bit old to some other people on the team. Having a break from rice, seaweed, and kimchi was a gracious change. Thank you Lord!

I then went to my classroom to try and get my powerpoint up and running. I couldn't get it working, even with help from 2 students. They said there was no internet, or a projector for me to use, which took out about half of my activities planned for my two hour time slot that morning. Scared me to death. I stressed a little bit (ok, a lot bit) about that. But - excuse me jumping ahead - I didn't need to. The Lord worked everything out. It went extremely well. Which of you by worrying adds a day to your life? Yes, Jesus, thank you for reminding me.

We had an opening ceremony in front of the whole school where we had to introduce ourselves and the principal gave a speech. After that we went back to our meeting room and waited before we went and taught. The first 2 hours went really well. Thank the Lord the game "2 Truths and a Lie" took 20 minutes - I was starting to freak out a little. Playing Pictionary was some of the most fun I've had in a long time. They had a blast too.

Lunchtime was Bibimbap again and pork/chicken patties. I do not particularly care for their soup, but the rest was good. I am finding I eat the most for lunch, and then don't really have a big appetite for dinner. After lunch we had to teach idioms - "caught my eye", "Dream on!", "I'm broke", two others that I forget...lol.

Then we had Conversation Stations. I had to run a station that was a mock cell phone station. They had to ask about buying a new cell phone. I had a lot of fun with this - I ad libbed from the script when I knew they were capable of actually conversing without just reading the script. I also used a lot of voices and accents. I laughed a lot today haha. I had to run a shoe game afterward where they had to put their shoes in the middle of the room and send someone else to get them with only english descriptions of what they looked like. That was fun.

Dinner was good too. I didn't eat as much. It was fish and rice and soup that wasn't as bad as usual haha. We had another good group devotional tonight - Aubrey shared from Jeremiah. We I think are all growing already as individuals, and growing together. It is really awesome to experience.

I love the Lord a lot, and I'm glad that He has blessed me with this amazing opportunity. Everyone is really working hard for our lesson on music tomorrow. So I'm going to go do that. Thanks for all the prayers, they are greatly appreciated!