Drama Club

June 13, 2014

**Sorry this post is almost a week late!! I have a few more updates from the week that I will be posting soon.**

There are not words to describe our day. All day I felt like God was whispering in my ear, “Remember, I am in control.” It is days like today that make you realize that even the best made plans cannot compare to what God has in store.

Today was “supposed” to be the calm before the storm. The weekends are extremely busy for Rebecca and me because it is our time to work with the Sozo kids individually and in small groups to do some extra education activities to fill in the gaps. Fridays are pretty slow. Today we planned to do chores at the house, have our quiet time, do some education planning for the weekend ahead, run into town to get groceries, come back to House 4 to fix lunch, take the van to school, teach “Clubs,” and have a slow afternoon helping with homework after school at House 1.

“Clubs” is a time that P1 and P2 (1^st and 2^nd grade students) get to have art, music, drama, or scouting (learning “survival” skills for outdoors). When we were asked to help teach clubs, we agreed with the understanding that we could just choose one of them and teach from 2:00-3:00. We chose drama thinking we could do some interactive read-alouds with skits.

The hour before clubs is lunch. We were a little scattered because we had been running errands in town, and wanted time to collect our thoughts. The teachers were all eating together, so we went and sat with them. They were all joking around in Luganda, so Rebecca and I were sitting around not quite sure what was going on. When we asked logistics about clubs like where we were going to meet, the teachers said they were trying to work it out. That should have been clue #1.

As the lunch break ended with the bell, all of the P1 students returned to class and sat in their desks. Teacher Gorret suddenly disappeared from the room, and we were there with 87 kids and not sure what was going on. Rebecca got up and led the students through the alphabet in sign language. She was still not back. So, we pulled a book to read aloud. About two pages in, Gorret returned and moved the kids out to the veranda… all of them. And there were students piling out of other classrooms as well. We thought that they were going to give general instructions about where to go for the different clubs and then we would get started.

We were wrong. The teachers decided that since there were “muzungus” here to teach drama, that all of the students should be there. So imagine 250+ students sitting outside, speaking Luganda, with us trying to do a read-aloud of “Five Little Monkeys.” Utter chaos. I’m convinced that some of these children had never seen a picture book before. There were many times that if I would have moved an inch in any direction, I would have stepped on a child. Banange!

This picture is at the very beginning of the book, before the kids surrounded me, and more classes kept coming to join us...

That wasn’t even the worst of it. Rebecca and I had planned to split them in to groups to act it out. This turned in to her with a group of 100+ and me with a group of 100+ yelling over the children talking, while maybe 5 of them actually acted out the book. I looked at my watch and we still had 20 minutes to kill. We ended up pulling out every children’s book we had taken with us, trying to read it as loud as our voices could, with the teachers sitting around watching the chaos. When Rebecca asked them how they normally did clubs and managed so many children, their response was, “We have not.”

So, we were the guinea pigs. It was the first week of ever doing clubs with the younger grades, and they just gave them all to us. They told us at the end, “That was too many to manage.” At least we were not the only ones that thought that… Next week, they will at least be split into P1 and P2, so the groups will be half that size. That also means that Rebecca and I will be split and not be able to play off of each other.

Let’s just say that the rest of the day, we were exhausted. What we thought was going to be a “slow” day, ended up to be the most exhausting day of our week. We thought we had a plan… a plan for our day, a plan for teaching drama club, a plan to relax and get ahead on some education activities. God always has bigger and better plans than we can ever imagine. I know that God has big things in store for me this summer. He is going to teach me so much that I cannot even begin to fathom. In the midst of what seems like complete chaos, God is weaving together threads to accomplish His divine plan.

My prayer is that I will not forget that. I pray that I will lean on His strength when I have none. I want God to do amazing things through me this summer, but I want Him to do them in a way that only He can receive the glory for it!

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10