Look Up

Morning Conclave

We split into three groups now, one of which stays on campus and helps in the classrooms and with tutoring. Many of the young ones know very little English. We help teach PowerPoint and typing since RSO has been able to provide so many computers. Knowing English and computers raises your hiring potential 500% in India, so it's an important thing RSO is doing.

~My Priya~

One of the teachers was a little late so I read the small class

a Dr. Seuss book. As luck would have it, I got Priya's class!

She had fallen and stubbed her toe, so we cleaned it up

with some cotton, but soon she was just as happy as ever.

Meet Archana

I didn't realize when this little girl first ran up and hugged my legs this morning I would be working with her throughout the rest of the day.

[K. Gracie in the middle and Archana with 'the face']

The kids send letters and photos to their sponsors.

This little boy is a son of one of the workers. He came and just sat and watched us for long enough that I finally gave him some paper and pencils and he went to town.

Mango Grove Tutoring

"a" for Anne Marie & Archana

Sarathy...

could not sit still, and I loved his ears!

He took his shoes off when he saw mine were off and apparently settled on my lap as being the best place for his sweaty little socked feet.

~Little boys~

~~~~~~~~~~

Originally, I wanted to title this post "Selfish." By the time evening rolls around, mentally I am done. You reach a point after these long hot days on or off campus where physically you are about as dirty and exhausted as you can stand, and emotionally you have given all you think you can give. With over 100 kids constantly pulling at you, crying to be held or hugged, and hearing yourself be called "Auntie, Auntie, me, me, me!" all day long.....cute, but oh so tiring. I would love to have a bottomless storehouse of energy and love to give these kids. But again, as has been made so plain to me over and over again, I am only human.

It's in these moments of pure exhaustion from going going going all day in conditions that are difficult and hard that... I look up.

I look up at the sky and refocus on what I'm doing and why I'm here. I think about all the world of people under the same sky and the worlds apart I feel from my own sky. Though I've only been gone two weeks, sometimes I find my mind wandering back to my home sky; imagining myself sitting on my porch in the evening looking up at that sky. I think everyone feels a partiality to the part of the sky they grew up under. It was their shelter, it brought them their favorite sunrises and sunsets, it was under it they lied on blankets to watch shooting stars with their daddy, and it was their "message" way of sending their prayers and tears up to heaven.

~~~

Standing in the villages, school yards, and towns of India under a sky that I don't know and that doesn't know me has left me feeling a sense of 'displacement.' I feel like a broken record saying, again, how foreign this country and way of life is to me.

But it's just so in your face all the time.

So yes, sometimes I feel selfish with my impatience and fatigue. Sometimes I feel selfish for counting how many days I have been here and feeling like that is some great accomplishment. And sometimes, I feel selfish for spending any time at all feeling displaced from my own life and sky. But these are the times I try to remember to look up...to the good things of this amazing experience and to my Heavenly Father who never lets the prayers of my

heart go unheard, no matter to what sky

I look up.