It’s Sunday night as I write this and we are gearing up for our second week
\nof literacy classes. Before we launch into another week, we wanted to get
\nan update off to you about how the first week went. It was FANTASTIC! That
\nis the short version.
\nSunday afternoon, last week, as we were putting the final touches to our
\nplan, we got a visit from a couple trouble makers in our village. They came
\nto inform us that they were going to disrupt the start of literacy classes
\nif we didn’t follow through with demands they have been making on us. We
\nanticipated this happening, but nonetheless, it was disheartening to hear.
\nMonday morning it poured out of the heavens. Typically no one does anything
\nin a downpour in Amdu. We thought for sure our class would be a no show.
\nOur little faith was showed up in a big way as all our students straggled in
\nout of the rain, eager to begin. The trouble makers were not so brave! We
\nhaven’t heard a peep from them all week.
\nTuesday we were off and running. We could see how sharp the sharp one were
\nand who the students were that are going to struggle. They patiently
\nsuffered through our explanations of how to write letters. Explaining how
\nto write an ‘a’ in the Amdu language is not an easy thing! We pointed out
\nhow there were little things that we thought the students should take
\nresponsibility for to make things run smoothly. At the end of the class
\nthey talked and agreed and they have faithfully been doing things like
\nhelping to pass out books, sweeping the floor before class, etc., this past
\nweek!
\nWednesday we began pulling our fast students alongside our slow students
\nasking them to help with certain tasks all with a view of this program being
\nput into Amdu hands permanently in the near future!
\nThursday we could hardly believe a week was coming to an end. We
\ndemonstrated three kinds of writing – meticulous and slow, fast, furious and
\nsloppy, and medium paced and neat. We asked the group to discuss this and
\nidentify where they struggled. Our fastest, sloppiest writer burst out
\nlaughing, “That one is totally me!” he said! We are so grateful for how
\nteachable this class is.
\nFriday started with another dramatization of some reading principles;
\nstarting at the left and moving to the right. Bart was Village Left and
\nBenjamin was Village Right. Missy and Emily were sisters Read and Write and
\nthe audience helped them to determine which village they should go to first
\nif they wanted to read or write. So much fun! We even had a few of our
\nfast students up front doing their best to explain how to write some new
\nletters. There were some standouts; guys who might be the next Amdu
\nliteracy teachers.
\nThanks for praying for us. It is evident that you are as excited in prayer
\nabout this as we are! Thanks for praying for our fifteen students. It’s so
\ngreat to see other Amdu friends expressing their desire to be in the next
\nclass.
\nTomorrow we jump into reading syllables; actually learning to read the sound
\nof a particular set of letters on the page. BIG TIME! There will be a few
\nstudent who really struggle with this at first. But the experts say that
\nwithin about five days these students will have learned the concept of
\nreading. After that we’ll just be expanding their vocabulary by introducing
\nnew syllables and sounds. So pray with us this week.
\nHope Sharp and Candace Swift are joining us for the next four days of
\nteaching. They are coming to help us make sure we get our teaching
\nprocedure nailed down. Their experience will really give us confidence.
\nPraise the Lord for TEAM; it is what is making all this possible. Thanks
\nfor your partnership and for all the encouragement you have been sending our
\nway these past two weeks. We love hearing from you. If you are praying
\nwith us and haven’t dropped us a line yet, hit reply and let us know! It
\nmeans the world!
\nBenjamin and Missy<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s Sunday night as I write this and we are gearing up for our second week of literacy classes. Before we launch into another week, we wanted to get an update off to you about how the first week went. It was FANTASTIC! That is the short version. Sunday afternoon, last week, as we were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[448],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","tag-ethnos360","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/benjamin-hatton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/benjamin-hatton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/benjamin-hatton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/benjamin-hatton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/benjamin-hatton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/benjamin-hatton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/benjamin-hatton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/benjamin-hatton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/benjamin-hatton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}