Today was the last day of behind the wheel driving for the term. To say it was the happiest day of my life would be an overstatement, but not as much of one as perhaps it should be. If you have ever felt like your outdoor trash can is rude or has an attitude and you want to teach it a lesson, I have got just the class to do it for you.

ALL of the outside trash cans at RVA cower in fear from my students.

Ben did some cowering the other night. He called for me in the middle of the night:

Ben: I do not like what is under my bed very much.
Me: What is under your bed?
Ben: Something not very nice.
Me: Should I lay here with you for awhile?
Ben: Yes, because it does not like Daddies very much.

Evidently it didn’t, because Ben was able to fall asleep right away, but it got me wondering what COULD be under the bed, and it took awhile for me to fall asleep.

Ben and Kate have a different reaction to a warthog

Nancy is in charge of the elementary library, and she did a special program last week where all the students just read for a day. All the teachers did also. And the janitors and anyone else who worked in the area. She started the day with a special cake:

The kids were encouraged to bring pillows and even wear pjs, and the whole day was just reading. My favorite picture was three of the workers who read aloud to each other all day:

The biggest success of the day was in seeing little kids who didn’t like to read turned onto a book by Nancy and then begging for more. Reading is so important to succeed in life, and sometimes it just takes a little encouragement for a non reader to become a passionate reader.

RVA is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, and we had a big ceremony to cut the ribbon on a new plaque and flagpoles that will be a symbol of every country represented at the school. The head of the local church came out and talked about how many missionaries he knew came from RVA. RVA started with so little, and now it is the second highest ranked high school in all of Africa. I have never felt like I deserved to be here, but the ceremony on Sunday made me especially grateful that I am.

The rains have made everything so much greener here, and the students at Kenton were just so full of life when I visited on Friday. When the bell was rung for lunch (actually a metal bar hung from a tree hit by a branch) they ran to lunch with so much gusto. After the last few weeks, it was so wonderful to see kids full of life again.

The best part of the visit was seeing kids in the new computer lab. Kenton is so remote and so poor; there wasn’t one student who had ever seen a computer before. The teacher introduced me to Beth, who is 12 years old. She typed 51 words per minute in front of me, with only one error. She has had three months on the computer.

Beth

The kids here are still so poor, and they still wear rags.

But they were so thrilled to be eating, and so elated to be learning how to use the computer. I bet I had 30 kids just shout to me `I LOVE computers!’

Sometimes, it just takes a little rain to make all the difference.

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