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A called teacher...

When we started all of our schools, we began interviewing people for teaching positions.  I'll be honest and say that it's really difficult to find the right teacher for this job.  With orphaned and vulnerable children in your classrooms, it's quite hard to find those who truly love the orphan.  We battle the mindset of those who only want a promotion, a contract, more money, or a job for the now. Our schools are on the private sector of education, so we also battle the government wages and benefits.  But, we've decided that we will not just take any person who will work for a private school--we want to find the right person for the job.  However, searching for the right person is literally like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Last year, we would sit in interviews all day and find ONE person.  This passed December, Kathryn set in days and days of interviews to find 4 or so.  It's not easy.  But it's really neat because the one's we do find, we know were handed to us by the Lord. I remember our first day of interviews.  We interviewed 7 candidates and we managed to find 1.  Just when we starting doubting that the right people are out there, the Lord brings us a sweet lady named Edna.  Edna now teaches at the Tree of Life School and is one of our best teachers across the board.  She truly loves these kids.  She travels a very long distance to come to work each day, and every time I see her she has a pep in her spirit.  She longs to see improvement in our children.  My sweet boy Joseph--who I sponsor at the TOL--was in her class during term 3 of last year.  He would always say how much he loved his teacher Edna.  She would call me and say that he talked about me in class that day.  And not to brag about my boy or anything ;) , but he finished as number 1 in his class!  On teacher appreciation day last year, Edna sent Kathryn and I a text to say how much she appreciated us and that we, as teachers, are shaping the world.  She is the right person for this job.  Once Kathryn and I interviewed her, we knew that our standards were set for a reason.  Our faith was strong.  But as time dragged on, we didn't find more Edna's every day... or even every week.

However, the Lord is faithful.  Because of His provision, we have found teachers who went to school in Finland and China, who worked for the International School of Lusaka and college institutions, who visit our children's homes to check on their home life, who don't take no for an answer and fight for these kids.  One of our teachers said that his student came to school one day crying.  When he asked what happened, she said her grandmother was sick and she was scared that she would die (her grandmother is the only one taking care of her).  This teacher used his lunch time to walk to her grandmother's house just nearby to pray for the grandmother's healing and give her a small amount of money so she could eat something.  Stories and stories and stories very much like this one has happened over the course of the passed 4 months.  God truly has handed us angels to teach these children.

Even as I stand now, we are short teachers.  We need those whose hearts are STRONG, whose love for the orphan is HUGE, whose call to being a teacher is from GOD.  We need those who know how to teach and love doing it.  I ask that you pray with us as we continue to search for the RIGHT teachers.  The Lord will bring who he wants to serve the children He loves.  He will hand us more and more teachers who stand beside the orphan and fight for them with us.


Pray that He will open the gates and flood this place with teachers who are called to serve these orphans.

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