Momma Had a Baby. . .

. . .and its head popped off.

What an awful nursery rhyme.

Moms have babies all the time, and does it sound insensitive of me to say that here in Honduras the baby population is about as plentiful as a field of dandelions? Well, it is.

OK, so this babies head didn't pop off, but mine almost did.

I'm standing in the back of the first grade classroom, listening to the new English teacher talk about rulers and pencils. The little girl in front of me keeps looking back to grab my hand. She's obviously not captivated by the scintillating number activity going on upfront.

"Open, Shut them. Open, Shut them," the teacher demonstrates with her hands. "One, two, three, four. . ." We make it to 15 and I think if the class gets any more exciting I'll pass out.

This is my second week assisting with English classes at La Escuela Alborada. I'm not accustomed to assisting really. I'm accustomed to someone telling me post-last minute that I need to teach a Sabbath School class or lead song service; teach five sections of high school English without books for a month. Those sorts of things. I've gotten good at it, winging it that is. Last week the high school English teacher was sick for a week and so once again I found myself back at the Colegio [high school] teaching classes without any lesson plans. Thankfully I at least had books this time. Anyways, back to the story.

The little girl turns around again, this time to tell me that her mom recently had a baby.

"Did she have it at home or in the hospital," I ask, picturing the mud-brick home she lives in up the road. "Oh, at home," she says. "Daddy cut the umbilical chord."

***

There's a short break in between two of the classes and I spend it sitting in the office talking to the English teacher. Her and her husband and two daughters have only been here a week. They're Spanish-speaking Californians who plan on living here for at least a year. He's the new principal and she'll be teaching English. A boy walks in to get a band-aid and she notices a box on the shelf labeled Lice Solutions. "What. . .do they. . .they have lice here?" she manages to get out. "Yeah, it's pretty common," I tell her. "You mean even the Hogar kids have lice," she asks. "Yeah, most of the kids here have lice." Her face contorts itself slightly, but she regains composure. "I'm itchy now." I laugh. "So, have you had lice," she asks hesitantly. "Oh yeah, I've had it on and off. It's hard not to get it when you come in contact with the kids." I refrain from telling her I combed through my hair a few days ago and found two.

***

It's a long morning. She spells octopus wrong four times in three different classes. Oh, elephant and Matthew are also spelled wrong.

She makes up for the glaring spelling errors with a brilliant idea.
Air conditioning for the classrooms?

. . .

People are having babies in their homes and showering in the river, and the best idea you can come up with to help is to air condition the classrooms?

Sometimes I'm not quite sure how I'm going to return. I don't think the same as I used to. My head itches sometimes. The heat makes me melt. I'm wearing a pair of Payless flip flops that are two years old and worn so thin I can feel every footstep, but I could care, less. I rarely match my outfits. None of it matters.

What matters are things like having conversations with a kid who thought he was lost for good, who hadn't read his Bible in five years and only went to church because he had to, and seeing him change. It makes me want to change, too. It's one thing to encourage these kids to grow closer to God, and then to put it into practice yourself.

I just got an e-mail from a good friend working in Chad, Africa. She ended with this: "It's rough out here and I have learned Tchad is definitely harsh on the body and spirit. But God is so much bigger and He is able to lead us through and give us His perfect peace and joy through blessings each day."

God is good. A person doesn't need to have air conditioning and a lice-free scalp to realize that. And even though the new teacher apparently can't spell, I'm confident God will use her to minister to these children. Being a missionary isn't about what you know or what you can do; a missionary is someone who's willing to come as they are and let God multiply and bless their feeble efforts beyond their imagination.