I hear lots of interesting things as a guidance counselor, but perhaps the greatest thing I’ve heard all year was from a parent who had come in to express her rather extreme displeasure with me about the advice I was giving her daughter:

 

VERY Displeased Mother: Why on EARTH are you recommending Cal Tech to my daughter?

Me: Your daughter is bright enough to get in and I think Cal Tech is one of the premier colleges in the United States. When I was at Oracle, we revered the graduates. It is a beautiful campus filled with the best minds in the country.

VDM: I FORBID her to go to Cal Tech.

Me: Why?

VDM: It is FAR too nerdy.

Me: Where do you want her to go?

VDM: MIT

Me (Desperately looking at anything besides VDM, and trying to think of unpleasant dental appointments I have had): Oh.

 

Mom was right, and the first female in our history is going to MIT. And I am QUITE sure that MIT has outgrown any nerdy tendency they ever had.

 

I had someone ask me if I enjoyed college guidance, and I thought about another student. I think Katie was as insecure of a student as I had ever met when she came to RVA as a freshman. She was gifted, but she really had no confidence. RVA is a place that grows lots of kids, and she was progressing nicely. When she was a junior and I suggested Harvard, she laughed and told me there was no way someone like her could ever go to that college.

 

She got an interview, and as we drove over to Nairobi, she was pretty nervous. We were with someone else as we drove who was quite a talker, but then we had to take a cab to a part of town I would have never have found on my own. It was just the two of us in the cab, and I told her I really didn’t care where she went to college. That was between her and her parents. What I cared about was that she realized that she had a legitimate place at the table. I encouraged her:  Go and show them who you are.

 

Our fourth student will be going to Harvard in the fall. I cried when I heard the news. But I cried when our first student was accepted to Wellesley on a full ride, and I cried when I heard the news on all the kids. These parents have sacrificed everything to be on the mission field, and when their kid gets into a great school at a price they can afford, it is as fulfilling as anything I know.

 

And Tabitha now has all the monies to go to college this year. The only hold up is her getting her passport. Thanks so much for helping her and please pray; there is no reason for them to deny her a passport, but they are doing it to her right now for no good reason. We need a miracle.

 

One of my best friends here is thinking about adopting a child. He is in his 50s and they didn’t set off to adopt; the baby was abandoned and his wife went down to the hospital to hold her, just because babies need to be held. One thing led to another, and they are in love with this child. But the path of adoption in Kenya is crazy hard, and there are no guarantees. When we were talking about it, he realized that they were opening themselves to potentially tremendous heartache in trying to adopt Hope.

 

I realized that was the holiest thing I had heard in some time, and probably what we are all called to:  to make our self vulnerable to heartache for something greater than ourselves. 

 

This has become real in the past few weeks. Perhaps the greatest pain is when you have tried to help someone, and they betray you. We have had so many computer centers attacked that we had to take all the computers and bring them to a secure place. When I would visit a school and didn’t have computers with me, the children would cry.

 

A part of me was just sick of the hassle. Everything takes 20 times more than what it would take to do in America, and then this started happening. It would be so much easier to just pull the plug. My hero Mark Buhler told me the sad part of that thought is that it would be the children who will suffer.

 

But if you are fortunate, and you have people praying for you, you can move from disillusionment to anger and cynicism to something greater:  you decide some things are worth fighting for. The thieves don’t motivate you, but you can use what they have done to fuel the drive to not back down.

 

Bruce came up with a way to reinforce the doors so it will take a tank to break in. Every school now has two guards, equipped with cell phones and weapons. The next school that gets attacked will be greeted with dozens of parents who have been notified, and they will come running. They are outraged at what has happened, and they will fight for their children.

 

If those who would steal from children want a fight, I will give them a fight. 

 

Your pal,

Steve