BOOKS!

You get a book! You get a book! YOU get a book! Everyone gets a book!

I felt like Oprah Winfrey handing out prizes to her audience when our special delivery arrived. For those of you who do not know my mom’s church has been incredible with donating money to our school here. The church itself decided to give their yearly missions fund to the Abundant Life School (specifically) in La Unión, and more donations have been pouring in from individual members. I could not even begin to describe the gratitude and appreciation I have in my heart for this kind of financial support! Since it is my mom’s church, Jake decided that I should be in charge of the money and decide where, when, and how to use it. I agreed with the idea of giving a face, a representative, to the money, but that is still quite a large responsibility! I spent a small portion of the money on things for my classroom – decorations, books, and school and arts supplies – but then had to wrestle with a variety of ideas of what to do with the rest of it. I guess I should not necessarily say that I ‘wrestled’ with the idea because it was clear to me how I wanted to spend the money so that everyone could benefit from these gracious donations. I wanted to buy the one thing that every teacher should be able to rely on when no other resources exist: textbooks.

Background: we do have textbooks. Every grade is equipped with some various form of textbook possession. The issue has always been the quantity and quality of the books. Not every subject has a complete class set of the textbook used. If there are enough books, the number of usable ones becomes the next question. Most of the books have seen better days… 10 years ago. There are pages missing or hanging in by a corner, the covers are ripped in half or bent in every direction except for flat, and the dirt stains are startling enough to dissuade anyone from picking the book up in the first place. These less-than-desirable conditions result in many teachers being forced to make ridiculous amounts of copies of each textbook, requiring students to share, or relying on their handmade pictures or worksheets to supplement the ‘reading’ material. Our textbook situation just wasn’t ideal.

Unfortunately our administration in Tegucigalpa has not been the most helpful or crucial in acquiring our essential textbooks. Some classes either need textbooks to begin with or the old ones desperately need to be replaced. My time to spend had arrived. Jake finally got through to someone in the administration in Teguc to order some books, and once he got the list of what they would provide our school with I could fill in the holes by buying the rest. I felt like a superhero swooping in to the save the day. Except I’m not the one who deserves credit; if you have ever donated money to me or my school, YOU are the superhero (wearing the tights and flowing cape – dang, you look good)!

A mission group planned to come down at the end of October and they were going to be our mules. We ordered 150 pounds worth of textbooks to be delivered to their homes and then transferred down here. With this particular shipment came textbooks, teacher’s editions, test and quiz booklets, and keys for history (for Lenny), math (for Jake, Kara, me, and Mrs. Soto), and science (for my little ones). God bless those people for stuffing their suitcases and hauling that precious load all the way to our tiny town. I want to take this opportunity to just praise the Lord for those people – would you do the same? I am so thankful for the hands that brought them to us. They cannot know how grateful we are for finally having these indispensable resources and being able to teach our students properly. It was like Christmas watching them unload all those books from their suitcases; I almost cried from joy and nothing could have wiped the smile from my face.

One of the best features of books – besides the knowledge they store and are on the brink of sharing with curious minds – is the smell and feel they have when fresh out of the factory. If every book could just be preserved in that state, schools would have found perfection. We have all warned our students about how critical it is to take care of these new books. We have given speeches about how to appropriately use and keep them (no stepping on them, throwing them, ripping pages out, using them as toys, etc.), and threatened the students with death if they mistreat their book at all. My third graders stroked their books like delicate pets and carried them like precious silver plates. A few of my eighth graders decided to name their books after I told them that they had to care for their book as if it were their own child. The excitement of new books was contagious and could be felt in every classroom.

So here’s to you Chapel of the South Fork! Thank you from the covers of our new books to the bottoms of our hearts for donating the money that bought these beloved textbooks. Your money has not gone to waste. These books will surely be used for years and impact every student that studies at our school. My prayers are with you this week. You have been an incredible blessing.