Beautiful things

Written October  17,2012

Ill put up pictures soon...


Lil update
School has been great of course with its difficulties and also its joys all flowing together. The kids are just kids that want to understand and communicate. I am praying that God allows me to guide them in learning those things and I am praying that their minds will blow with understanding of His love and strength. 
I have so much help in class from Jason and Serafina ,my assistants. Right now I have Jason in the morning for chapel and bathroom time then Serafina comes for 2 hours and Jason comes for the last 2 hours. Every month they have a new job to accomplish in the class. The month of September their jobs were to only observe the class & now October they are much more hands on. The class of eight is separated into two groups of four and it seem to be working very well. Half the class is taught by me and the other half is taught by one of the assistants and every once in a while we switch off with each group. This class really cracks me up, the assistants and I have a lot of laughs everyday and once in a while we have a rough and tough kid that wants to fight... but its not too often.

On Thursday the girls and female staff here at the ranch got to attend a self defense class led by a man from the Arizona group that was here. He explained when and how to use the self defense. Amber interpreted for all the girls so they could really understand what to do and then we got in groups and practiced what was taught! I have to say it felt so good to know all that I can do in the moment of an emergency and someone trying to hurt me. About five minutes after Olivia and I got home from the class we got a call from Serafina at the girls dorm letting us know they found lice on one of the girls and it is possibly on the others. The girl they found the lice on was in my group for the self defense class and we got close for practicing. I kinda freaked out. Olivia and I bagged our clothes that were on us and took HOT showers. Maybe an hour later we walked to the girls dorm to get searched and nothing was found on either of us! YAHOO! But they found that 7 out of the 10 girls had lice and needed to be picked clean. So I stayed and got started picking while Olivia helped Katie clean sweep the dorm: all the clothes, toys, brushes all went. Everything off to get bagged, washed or frozen... pretty intense but needed for sure. Nothing I am used to. The girl that they first found the lice on was FULLLLLLLLL FULL FULL of crawlers and eggs. Completely full in every section of her hair, poor girl it looked awful. Awful!!! Another girl with lice was for sure bad also but luckily she had mostly eggs. The girl I worked on from 7pm-almost 4am was not feelin it at all... she was not a happy camper, but considering her circumstance I see why she was not thrilled. She decided not to eat dinner which made her very grumpy and tense but that did not stop the picking. Around 8:45 or 9pm about 8 girls from the Quail Lakes Baptist Church group came to pick lice. So we had 2 people on each girl filling up the girls dorm bathroom. The room was packed with ladies, all helping with the nasty critters. Just to be sure Olivia and I were protected Katie had us use her home aid RID formula /all natural concoction. So we lathered our hair, we got an O.K from Katie to break free from the dorm and around 4:50am with both our heads soaked in tea tree oil, vinegar, & coconut oil (maybe more but honestly I have no idea what was given to us to use at that point) we were outta their. At home we put on My Big Fat Greek Wedding while our hair was soaking and took showers. By the time we finished the sunrise was about to break through so I watched it. School had been canceled because of what had happened so breakfast was at 8:30am. I went to breakfast early and sat and talked with our AMAZING cook Juanita, who is also a great Spanish teacher. Finally, around 11 I decided to sleep a bit.
In that time of picking we all had plenty of time to think and really get to know each other better, as female staff and with our girls. Different sides came out that I had never seen before, I had an interesting time laughing at so many things. When I become tired the laughter starts up and everything is funny...
But one thing that is super sweet I think we all noticed is how when something unexpected happens & things go not according to our plans we all came together and did what was needed, no questions asked... everyone all stepped up. Also I saw so much patience in the girls (the students) some sitting for hours and hours with no complaining so whining, just dealing with the situation and allowing us to pick. I saw patience in all the staff needing to be flexible in the night: borrowing each others washers and dryers, getting jobs assigned to you when you thought you were done, sorting through clothes, sorting through stuffed animals, vacuuming over and over again, and the obvious reality that we all could get lice and patient with one another.

Saturday was the big opening for the Mission Training Center! Over 200 people came to check out all the awesome stuff God has done, is doing and will continue to do here at RSM. The same group that the ladies helped us in the dorm the Thursday night before, from Quail lakes was staying with us to work the opening and were not leaving until Monday. Before the opening everyone had a few hours and people were eating tacos or were in line to get them. I had just eaten the best 3 tacos (yummm) noticed that the program did not start until 2:30pm and it was only 1pm... I was thinking O.K. what now? when a girl from the Quail Lakes group came up to me and asked me to look at her head and a few other girls heads from their group because they thought they might have lice. The two girls I checked right away I found in their hair lice eggs (totally not as bad as our girls ,but they still had it). Their group asked me to check all the ladies... finally we came to the conclusion that only the two girls I first looked at had the lice, so we started picking. I picked one girl until 3pm then we went down to the program where I fully enjoyed every second.
God blessed me and protected me and others from getting the lice so that we could help and encourage those that had it, I know that.  We all need someone to pick the lice out of our life, we all need that person that is there for us. We need to be that person in other peoples lives, here for each other and have love overflowing for each other... no matter how bad and ugly the situation. Jesus did not pick and choose who he loved. His love was not held back, it was and is freely given, perfect love.  Let us not hold back.