Blessings

Well for the past two days I haven't been able to teach. This week has been a trying one with the older children. There have been major issues in the school with discipline and the older children. They don't have much respect for authority. I know every child has their battle with respect. But things seem to be worse here. I definitely was not the greatest kid at home, but when I went to school j just knew I had to obey the rules and be respectful. But here there is no separation. Their principal sleeps in a building right next to them. Half of their mentors are missionaries that come and go from week to week. Some teachers are Haitian some are American. The list goes on with the difficulties. Apparently this is he best and most organized the school has ever been and that is only because of the principal miss Teri who has only been here since august.  Before her there wasn't much order. So all this to say the school has come a long way by still has many struggles. This week sister Gladys decided to try and teach the older children a lesson. We are on day two and I'm not sure they quite get it yet...
Each class has a supervisor who is there to answer questions and give you tests and sign off on your work. Clearly they have taken this role for granted. Monday the decision was made to give the principal and the supervisor of the older children the rest of the week off. The children were not told anything. They showed up Tuesday morning and no one was there. Of course they took this opportunity to goof off and mouth off to a few of us in charge of other classes. This resulted in their classroom being locked and they were not able to do any work. Which in their head was great, they had a day off. Today they didn't even dress for school or show up for chapel. My guess is that at this point the majority of them truly don't get it. There were a select few that were angry and some cried. And it sucks for those select few because they are being punished as a whole. We were instructed not to help them with work and not to answer any questions. So it's been a hard couple of days. There is not much I can do or say. I just pray they can get through this and learn respect. All kids take things for granted, all people take things for granted. I am no exception from this. But being here has taught me so much. Their true test will be when they leave this orphanage, then they will see how good they had it. Most of them will not make the connection until they step foot outside of his place. But i do hope they come to realize it sooner.
I hope that we all can take a look at our lives and realize how great we have it. To have hot water and electricity. What I would give for some air conditioning lol. We are blessed with such simple things in America. Besides air-conditioning I think I miss ice the most! A glass of ice cold water would be amazing. Television, ice cream, cell phone, carpet, washing machine, being able to hop in my car and go anywhere....just a few things I used to be blessed with on a daily basis that I no longer have. In chapel this morning we were asked to think if our daily blessings, our special blessings that don't happen so often, and blessings we can share with others. And we were challenged to thank someone today for a blessing in our life. So I want to thank my parents for all the simple things and more they were able to provide me with and also giving me this opportunity to come to Haiti. Because without their support I would not be here.  And I challenge you all to thank someone in your life for the blessings that surround you.

There's no disaster that can't become a blessing, and no blessing that can't become a disaster.