Sunday, May 8, 2011

New classes, new teacher, new church!

SUNDAY 8th May

It's Mothers' Day and my morning began with the blessing of talking to my beautiful children and family via skype. It was so lovely to catch up with Greg and Gemma and Gemma's bump! And Katie reported that Tyler cooked her a perfect breakfast and she was being treated royally with loving attention and gifts.

This week I've had 4 new classes... two kiddies, one teenagers and one adults and from next week's roster there are 2 more, so my work load has increased by about 60%. So far, so good... I've enjoyed the challenge. I am so grateful I've had a couple of months under my belt so that class preparation is much quicker these days.

Last Wednesday at the expat ladies lunch at Texas BarBQ (just after the young'ns had done a runner) I gave my number to Pia, from Finland, who has children at the International School here. She said one of the teachers there was looking for more work... so one thing led to another and we now have a new part-time teacher on the payroll. Her name is Gene, and she's a 66 year old Californian primary school teacher who has lived in Hai Phong with her daughter for over a year and loves it here. She is very easy to talk to, and will fit in well, I think.

I guess it had to happen... I had a night of vomiting and diahorrea on Friday night. It was all over by morning, but I was very tired on Saturday... I must admit I finished my last class 10 minutes early (at 9:20PM). Praise God, I am fine today.

It has been very hot all day, so when I finished work at 5pm today, I went to Texas BarBQ for dinner because I didn't have any food at home AND it is Air Conditioned...I had just ordered my dinner when Helle and her husband and son (from Demnark) came in. She invited me to join them and so instead of eating alone, I got to have a thoroughly enjoyable hour sharing with them. They all speak fluent English with very little accent.

After that I came home and turned on the aircon for a bit, then Lynh arrived on her motorbike and took me to church!  There were 12 people there in a room in a house, in a poor part of town. The Vietnamese pastor preached in English, and the worship was in English, because most of the people are Philippinos... they are teachers from an English language school in Hai Phong, so English is their common language.  It was just like a beautiful pentecostal home group... one acoustic guitar, worship songs I recognised, people just loving the Lord. They have a grand vision to reach the lost and they speak my language. They are keen for us to get involved in their outreach language classes, but at this stage I need to wait and see how my roster settles. If Lynh is keen to go again on Sunday night (this is not the church she fellowships with on Sunday mornings, which is Vietnamese) I'll happily join her.  :)

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