Saturday, March 30, 2013

Broken and Crushed, by His own Father, for us

I was an extremely active and fearless child.
Those words might actually be an understatement.
I had 5 broken/sprained arms by first grade and probably innumerable near death experiences throughout my childhood.
My poor mother.

It is becoming evident that Abigail shares just a little bit of my DNA... she loves to climb up as high as possible on anything and everything and certainly does not have any fear of falling.

On Thursday, she was playing on the slide (one of the many places I broke my arm as a child) unsupervised by her parents.... and she hurt herself. By the time I saw her she was crying and being held by one of our wonderful students who had been with her but wasn't really sure how she got hurt. Mom was not worried at first as Abbi is getting into all sorts of scrapes these days. However after about 15 minutes of continuing to cry a cry of pain (Abbi doesn't usually cry more than a minute) and being unable to move her arm, Mom began to think this was probably serious.

The sound of her cries made me cry.
The thought of part of her being broken broke me.
Knowing she was hurting hurt me.

Now, I will acknowledge that I am a woman, I am pregnant, and this is my first baby. Those things could have added to my emotions a little bit. But seeing as how I am typically an overly rational, intellectual, and analytical person, I tend to think that all of those factors combined probably only brought me to what would for many people be a normal amount of emotionalism/irrationalism. I think that for any parent there is just this really deep emotion and pain connected to seeing your child hurting.

Thankfully, we were only about an hour from the end of the school day and the students dad "happened" to come out to the property to take care of some business just before that. So we were able to leave them with him and take Abbi to the hospital. It is pretty impossible to describe the experience of a Haitian hospital. There is pretty much nothing in common with an American hospital other than sick people and people who are trying to help them get better. Suffice to say that after paying our $4.00 entrance fee (which nobody would have checked to see if we paid) and before ever getting checked in or doing any sort of paperwork a doctor (well we think he was a doctor) passed us on the way to help with a major head trauma that had just come in the gate. In about 1 minute of conversation he asked if anyone had seen us, asked why we were there, grabbed Abbi's arm and pressed on it, then said he thought he had fixed it and ran off after the guy with the head trauma. We don't know who he was and didn't actually talk to anyone else. After he ran off, I looked at Jimmy quite bewildered and said, "I think he just said he fixed her arm". Sure enough within 5 minutes or so, Abbi was no longer crying and began to use her arm like normal. Not knowing what else to do we figured it was time to go home. It turns out she had dislocated her elbow when her arm got stuck behind her on the slide. So he just popped it back into place and that fixed things.
Another crazy day in Haiti. Another day of God's wacky and incredible provision for our family.

So as we are driving home, I am no longer crying, I am laughing.
Laughing at our surreal hospital visit, and at my healthy baby dancing in the back seat, and at the goodness of our God.

Until somewhere along the drive, thoughts about our heavenly Father and his Son Jesus, our Savior, brought me back to tears.

Isaiah 53:10
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer... 
But the Lord was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief...

After what I had jut experienced I could not possibly imagine being the one to purposefully choose to crush Abbi, to cause her to suffer and put her to grief. Could not imagine being pleased to do it. And we're not just talking a broken arm here, we are talking crushing your child in body, soul, and spirit beyond recognition. To the point of death.

How could the perfect Father ever do it to His perfect Son?
How?
How much must he love us? 

Thank you Father. Thank you Jesus, for your saving love that is beyond comprehension. 


Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Nana's Visit

There's nothing quite like having a little bit of "home" come here to Haiti.
The week after Spring Break, we enjoyed having my mom, "Nana", come to visit and play with Abbi for a week.
She came bearing all sorts of important gifts like cookies, cheese and meat, chocolate chips,a globe for school, diapers, toys and clothes for Abbi, an amazing new frying pan... more than 100 lbs worth of such wonderful gifts. Christmas in March!
Oh yes, and we can't forget the ducky swimming pool she brought. :o)

There was a lot of sickness going around our house that week, but it didn't seem to slow Nana or Abbi down one bit. Abbi loves her Nana! They got in every moment of playing possible. Abbi quickly developed the habit of going to get her shoes for us to put on and grabbing our hands to take us outside with her first thing in the morning as soon as she got out of bed. Don't all 1 year olds climb up ladders, slide down slides, jump on trampolines, swing in the hammock, chase chickens, feed goats, and blow bubbles before breakfast?

So very glad you came to visit us Mom. Looking forward to seeing you and everyone else in just a few months!







Sunday, March 17, 2013

Spring Break 2013!


This last week has been our Spring Break week. But who goes to school during Spring Break? That would be us. We attended 4 different schools this week. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

First we went to the country town of Cazale and visited with Licia and her kids and their teachers at Real Hope for Haiti. We have been following what they do, and they are doing some pretty remarkable things. People from all over Haiti go there to receive medical treatment, because it can be so difficult to get it elsewhere. It should not be the case, but that is the way it is. Check them out and support what they are doing if you can.

We were able to rest and relax... (continue to http://teachingkidsabroad.com/spring-break/ to read the rest of the post.)

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

New Project

by Jimmy

I have started a new project. My first independent website. I read a lot of information on Education, and Becky is probably getting a little tired of me telling her all about it, so instead I will tell you all, my faithful readers about it.

Really, I need help in my quest to become an expert teacher. As much as I would love to do things by myself, I am just not that smart. I hope to use the website to collect and spread information on how parents and teachers educate their children while living abroad.

I am fully aware that there are as many ways to educate kids, as there are people doing it. Like most things, there is no ONE way that is best. Benefits and drawbacks exist in every method. I hope to share what is working for us (or not) on the website, and get to hear back from parents AND teachers on what works for them.

Thank you so much for your time, and support for us. We are so blessed.

Feel free to visit: www.teachingkidsabroad.com


Browse and return, as I will be posting twice per week there. And please leave your comments, suggestions, and opinions.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Review Week

I'm a bit of a Type A personality. I can tend to be pretty task and schedule focused. So, during a normal school week, we've got certain things to learn and a certain schedule to follow and I tend to pretty much stick to it by the minute. This means we typically get a lot accomplished, but can also miss out on fun activities because I don't "have time" for them.

And this is why I love review week. Every 6 week we have a week set aside where we change the schedule all up for that week. We do not have to learn any new material, only review what we've already learned and and do fun things.  I love it! It gives me the feeling of freedom to be creative and do all the things I would normally like to do, but don't. I love the change of pace, coming up with fun ideas, and learning in new ways. Instead of having a math lesson and working in our math books, we play math games every day. Instead of having a typical history or science lesson, we watch movies related to what we've been learning and do science projects. We may put on a play, or a concert, go on a field trip, or make inventions. You get the idea.

Jimmy is actually not as much of a fan of review week as I am. He doesn't so much like the change - it feels like a lot of work and somewhat uncertain to him. But the funny thing is that he has no problem during the normal school day deviating far from the set tasks or schedule. Because of this he probably needs review week a lot less than me. This is why we make such a great team.

During review week we also work really hard on our cumulative "memory work" that we have been learning all year, with a big test at the end of the week. This week the kids had to know 18 Ancient history "facts", 18 Earth Science "facts",  all of their propositions and helping verbs, all the Latin noun declensions, be able to name and locate 90 different geographic paces and features on the world map,  know all of their math times tables and basic unit conversions, and recite 144 events in a timeline of word history beginning at creation and going through completion of the transcontinental railroad. It is pretty impressive all the things their little brains can remember.

Ok, well here are a few highlights from this review week.

Field trip with other home schoolers to Wynne Farms:




 


Science Projects:
 

Art Show Awesomeness: