And these precious souls are the reason I came to Korea...

Jr. High Students in Mrs. B's English Class

     I have begun to care deeply for these kids already, and the way I know that's true is because I find myself thinking of them and praying for them when they are not with me. On the first day I gave each one a journal that I purchased for them. I wrote a personal note on the first page of each one asking questions about things my students had mentioned in class.  Their assignment was to read my note, consider their answers to my questions and write me a note back in their journal for the next day using their best English grammar. Well, suffice it to say, they blew me away! They LOVE writing back and forth with me, and I love writing to each of them everyday too! They look forward to when they will get the next note from me. At this point, the fact that their written English grammar is being practiced (and corrected) daily is just a nice side benefit to the exercise!

     God's purpose and plan for this trip may be (or more likely not be) fully revealed to me, but I know He is stretching me and showing Himself to these Jr. High kids in the process.

     The first morning I explained that each day we would begin by gathering prayer requests and praises for the day, and I would then pray. Well, when I asked them if anyone had a prayer request, you could hear crickets... No one wanted to speak up or call attention to themselves. So I suggested some things I wanted to pray for and when I asked them to bow their heads, one of the girls quietly said, "Mrs. B. Teacher, I want to pray for chicken." All the boys began snickering and whispering in Korean. The girl was embarrassed. I was rather caught off guard by this request so I stammered and tried to get a little more information before I prayed...for chicken. She went on to say how the cafeteria food is really bad and that all she really wanted was to eat some chicken. (I'm not sure I've had chicken in that cafeteria yet, so I knew this was going to be an earthly long shot...) SO, I prayed that if God would so will to answer this small request sometime during camp that we would praise Him and that if He chose not to, we would also praise Him! 

     I ended up working in the classroom through lunch period and nibbling one of my precious-few Cliff Bars that I packed. Well, my kids came running back across campus from the cafeteria 15 minutes earlier than they had to and burst into our classroom shouting in their best English, "We have chicken lunch today!!"

     What a GLORIOUS, personal God we serve! I asked the students if they thought this was 'luck' or if they believed that God had specifically answered our prayer. Two students weren't willing to say that God answered our prayer, but the other five were confident that He had. I told them that this couldn't just end with excitement, but that it needed to end with thanksgiving! I asked them to bow their heads with me and we thanked God for caring about one young girl's desire and that we were grateful that He chose to bless them all with chicken!