#11 Teach adult literacy
One of my roles on the team is to teach adult literacy to the Nahuatl. Our organization believes that personal access to the Word of God is essential to the growth and maturity of the church.
I have taught two classes to the younger generation of adults, with about 15 students in each. Currently I am teaching a class to the “older” generation of adults, people who–before this class–had never held a pencil and didn’t know which way to turn pages in a book.
Fewer adults were interested in this class. I started with five students, then four, and now three. Two of the ones who remain are believing ladies who are longing to read the Word for themselves.
I worked for several years on the development of materials for this class, so that now I can be focused on teaching and helping the ladies. Progress is slow, but it’s happening. The women have a variety of community obligations that sometimes mean they miss class and get behind.
Time is also a not a strict thing in this culture, so people come when they come, and I am sometimes studying with ladies from 10 until anywhere around 3.
It is exciting to see my students sound out syllables, and then words, and then short stories. It is exciting to hear them answer questions about what they just read and see that they are understanding. But it will be more exciting still to know that this skill will open up their lives to all sorts of new ideas, information, self-confidence, and–greater still–the ability to feed themselves from that which is more necessary than bread.
