Following two days of school holiday, we began the day at PICS high school. Our lesson covered the physical creation of the world, Adam and Eve. The students are doing well on their scripture mastery. It was a good morning.
Got in a couple loads of laundry and took the Zone leaders to a birthday lunch. Stopped by the grocery store and loaded up on treats for Friday, another stop at the local open market for a variety of bananas. We grabbed a thirty minute nap in front of the fan.
We made a quick trip to the church to meet, by request, with the Branch President of Sapwalop. He wanted to encourage us to train a young man, Darney Aloti, as Institute teacher of his branch, which we had been planning to do. This was our first teaching assignment in that branch.
We headed to Sapwalap, a forty minute drive into the jungle over curving, narrow roads with children, dogs and chickens darting out at any given turn. We arrived ten minutes early.
The chapel was open, little kids were playing outside the building. No teacher trainee. We opened the louvered windows and turned on the fans. It was hot!
Inside, we found a young mother lying on the tile floor with her baby…….napping.
We asked “are you here for Institute or English class”; the answer was groggy and unintelligible. We assumed she had a different agenda.
Ten minutes after the class was to start, a member of the Branch Presidency came to see how we were doing. Well …no one was there yet. They started to trickle in one or two at a time. The age bracket for Institute is 18 to 30. There were more kids between the age of three and 13 than any other age. They came right out of the jungle. From nowhere, they just appeared. Finally as the young adults took their seats, the kids got sent outside where they
proceeded to run around, scream, run in and out and generally create havoc. All this while I’m trying to begin class with “I Am A Child Of God” and an opening prayer.
No kidding, it was like driving my convertible with the top down, in 110 degree heat; stop and go traffic, holding an eight inch soft swirl cone in my right hand, licking as fast as I can, with three kids in the back seat with their own cones. I didn’t know which end was going to be up.
Without a doubt, it was the most chaotic atmosphere in which anyone could ever be expected to teach. If I had been in Utah, I would have stopped and strongly urged for order. Here, you just have to roll with the punches, and they were coming from right and left.
Mothers with infants came, adult men, and oh yes, the trainee finally got there by taxi.
Elder Smith asked one sister with nursing baby to sign her name to the roll where the older people sign. She turned and asked, “how old do you think I am?” He fumbled a bit. She was 26, just the right age to be there and she was on the front row. She moved from seat to seat to get comfortable. Her husband came in half way through the class and plopped right next to her and really got into the lesson. Grandmothers sat in the back.
It was amazing! I just kept going into the scriptures and relating the creation as recorded in Moses 1 and 2 and reminded them, they are ‘children of God’. It was hot; noisy around us, but they were really listening and understanding. The Spirit was there! We closed the class with prayer (by the trainee) and asked “now where are those who want to be in the English class.” No one left! More came. Now we really had a mixed group.
They were fascinated and really want to learn. We talked about vowels, sounds of letters, meaning of words and idioms. We spelled their names phonetically and they got a kick out of that. It was fun and they laughed a lot. Finally, something for the kids; Primary started at 6PM.
Elder Smith got some great pictures, we left with hugs and smiles and promises to be there on time next week. The ride back to our apartment was even more treacherous because it was after 6PM, twilight time and many more people on the road than before. More dogs and more traffic. I was wringing wet but couldn’t do anything until I wrote this down!
In eleven hours we start all over again! And Saturday is a double-header. With two branches and two English classes, plus a farther distance through the jungle.
Sunday will be a “day of rest” visiting two branches, one we haven’t visited before.
