19 January 2008 – Saturday

I am afraid that while I have the faith to walk two or three steps into the darkness, I do it with some doubt lingering in my mind. When I prayed about the lost set of keys, I felt that everything would be OK. But as usual for me and inspiration, I had no idea what ‘OK’ might mean. Did it mean that the keys would be sitting somewhere in the office, or did it mean that in the big scheme of things, my losing the keys would not matter. So when – thanks to Ari having not only keys to the building but also a key to my office – I opened the door to the office and did not see the keys where I expected them to be, my heart raced a little. However as I stepped into the office I saw them sitting behind a stack of papers and so the answer to my prayers was the one I was hoping for.

 The rest of the day was pretty much as last Saturday. We took turns with the morning class period – I took my three speakers up for another practice – and in the afternoon Mary taught the High School Class – 2 students – and I took our IEC. Both went well and I decided to keep the IEC for an extra hour in the afternoon and give them the evening off as we had no one to host them.

This group of young men and women are a joy to teach – all of our classes are that way – because they seem to really want to learn. The problem is that even with 30 days of solid teaching, it is hard to get enough vocabulary and critical thinking into them so they are ready to take the Michigan or the TOEFL tests.  About the best we can hope to do is maybe help the best two or three do well enough on the Michigan test that they feel motivated to prepare for the TOEFL test.

We gave them a sample test today. Mary will grade it tomorrow and we will see how they did.