Amazing Kids
There were three kinds of kids around here today. The amazingly enthusiastic workers, the amazingly sick, and the amazingly naughty! Now, if you combine them all into one family, add a ton of work that needs to be done, and then sprinkle in some heat, humidity, and biting ants, you have just an amazing day that you can thank God for when you make it through it nearly intact.But, lets start out on a good note. Early this morning, we were warned that the students would be out on the job this morning, instead of the customary right after lunch. So, Roy started looking around for something quick to grab for breakfast...which is hard to find around here...when we heard a group of children walking by. WOW...almost half an hour early! So, Roy gulped his breakfast and ran out to the new dorm site. Sure enough, students were shoveling just as fast and hard as possible. They came at one hour intervals all day long, and they got a LOT of work done! At our last school, we could not get the students to dig in the dirt unless we paid them...a lot! But here, we never saw so much enthusiasm for what is good, hard work. Roy came in tonight totally impressed. What a great group of kids!But then there were the amazingly sick. This morning when I got up, Destiny came to me and showed me her hand. It has what looked like infected sores all over it. She was so fussy, and she also had sores on her head, and bottom. I started to get rather suspicious, and so I checked inside her mouth. Sure enough, she has hand, foot and mouth disease...a pretty severe case of it too. It is going around the school here, and even though we tried to isolate the sick students, it looks like it is just spreading anyway. So, I walked the floors with a sick baby all day instead of painting that office like I had intended.But wait...that was not all the sick ones. Right before lunch, Memewah suddenly came down with a very high fever. A sudden high fever always makes me think dengue. So, I checked her out, and I am relatively sure that is what she has. I got to wondering what the MMS would do to dengue, so I mixed up a batch, and got it down her. (While holding Destiny on the other arm) Within two hours, she stopped her crying, her fever went down, and her headache and muscle aches diminished. So, we have kept up with it every hour for the rest of the day, and we will see tomorrow if she is better or not. But, the beginning sure is encouraging.Then, the amazingly naughty. I don't know if I want to talk about that...Hannah just decided that this was the best day possible to be naughty. So, she started in on every form of bad behavior that she could think of, and tried them all out. Needless to say, when walking the floor with a sick baby, sponging a roasting hot daughter, and trying to work on the IMM curriculum and keep the house clean and fix all the meals, I was not real thrilled with the additional antics of a sassy, naughty little girl.By this evening, I felt ready for a long vacation to an uninhabited island. Somehow, I get the feeling that it isn't going to happen...this vacation I am dreaming about. Instead, tomorrow God will probably once again give me the grace that I need to get through the day. I don't know how He does it, but after just a minute or two of peace and quiet, I am already looking forward to what tomorrow brings. There is a verse in Psalms that says "Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation". (Psalm 68:19) Are sick babies and screaming youngsters benefits? Well, they surely are teaching me patience, and how to lay aside self to meet their needs. I have to lay aside the plans that I have, and trust that God knows what is best for me today. Hmmmmm....doesn't that sound a bit like character development? Sure does to me! So praise God for all those exciting benefits!