Monday, June 12
The day began with the beautiful sunrise I posted pictures of earlier. It was a blessing sitting on the balcony, sipping coffee, reading my Bible, and writing my devotional. Then, Zach, our leader, led us in a devotional thought reminding us that we’ll be leaving an impression when we leave and to make sure that our impression was godly. This was fro Acts 20:17 ff.
Today we got an overview of the week from John Africa and Johnson. Johnson is the director of the African College of Theology and the overall education program of the Africa New Life schools, while John Africa is in charge of the partnership program that Africa New Life has with the local schools where sponsored children go. We will be in the classrooms this week, observing teachers and seeking to find ways to encourage them and help them get better. 
The schools in Rwanda have started changing from knowledge based teaching to competency based teaching, much like we’ve experienced in Texas. We had a chance to have a quick discussion with some teachers about how that is affecting them. We learned about their perceived problems including large classroom rolls and lack of materials. A lot of my fellow teachers might complain about the same things. All I’ll say is that we heard stories of classrooms with 50 to 70 kids. They may have 4 textbooks for a classroom. Dare we talk about what we call normal school supplies? Posters? Post-it-Notes? 
What I saw when talking with those teachers was a group of dedicated professionals who are battling some incredible obstacles to do an amazing job of teaching, and they want to get better. I’m excited about the opportunity to observe their classes and learn from them as well as encourage them. 
We then had the opportunity for people with sponsored children to visit them. There is nothing more emotionally uplifting than seeing the joy as a sponsor meets with their child and the family. We will be meeting with our African daughter later in the week, but we also had the privilege of bringing gifts to the young man our daughter sponsors. If my daughter didn’t realize that we loved her, the fact that we willingly went down the mountain, all the way down the mountain, to bring the gifts to her son. He missed her, though. 
We then came back to the ANL guest house and began breaking down how we were going to be working on the conference. Pray for us as we develop this conference so that we can help these teachers grow. The team is amazing with some vibrant young teachers that are truly inspiring to me. God is so good!