English Class

We had the opportunity to teach two English classes while we were in Haiti. We taught them at Respire but it wasn't just the students of Respire it was the older population of the community, spanning from late teens to probably 30 or so. I had no idea what to expect when I heard we would be teaching the beginner class.

One of the school buildings where we taught our class

I am not a teacher, I never even wanted to be a teacher at any point in my life when I would dream about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I don't have the patience or the creativity for it. BUT this was something we just jumped into with both feet.

 We worked on body parts that first class and then on colors and time the second class. It was so fun to watch them get so excited over pronouncing something correctly or watching it finally click. I have never seen grown people cram themselves into the front row of a classroom so anxious to learn. They wanted to be at the front of the class. They wanted to learn and they wanted to practice with us.

Towards the end of that first class a young woman came up and said she had a song to share with everyone. She wrote it on the board, in English. I then read through it for the class to hear it in English and make sure they knew all the words. The song was called "Lay it Down" the young women who then sang the song in the front of the class blew my mind. They were so beautiful, so confident, so full of joy...we explained it later as experiencing a bit of heaven. A place where color of skin doesn't matter, your material possessions don't matter, where you live doesn't matter, if you have an education or the struggles you may be experiencing NONE of it mattered. It was the blending of voices and hands reached to the sky in worship together.

Our team hugged or shook every hand in that classroom that night. We spoke words of encouragement and God's truth to those beautiful women, that they were beautiful and so talented, that they blessed us with their music that night. We thanked them for letting us be part of their classroom. I don't know who was more excited that night, our team or the people in our class. We all left that night with smiles plastered on our face with a sense of renewed purpose and meaning for our trip. To them English means a chance at a job or a new life. To be a part of that means more than I think I knew at that time. To them it's a ticket to something more.

Our English Class

I never want to forget that night, that feeling, those voices and smiling faces.