Tales of a Traveling Teacher

This blog is coming to you as an update on my life currently, as well as things I have learned and am continuing to learn. The plan since about February has been for me to move to the Wingate area, teach full time and participate in ministry on Wingate’s campus. So on August 17, with no job and no place to live, I left home with as much stuff packed into the back of my Jeep as possible. I stayed the weekend with a good friend in Wadesboro, NC.   On Sunday, August 19 I took a duffel bag full of stuff to Wingate University to stay with my friend Erika for the next two weeks. The following Monday (the 20th) I had two interviews at elementary schools in Union County. The rest of that week consisted of me checking the job listings multiple times a day, praying for a job offer, and riding around Wingate looking for a place to live. On Thursday, August 23, at about 3:00 in the afternoon I was offered a job as an EC Resource teacher at an elementary school in Waxhaw, NC, about 30 min...

This post has been a long time in the making - I started writing it while in South Africa and just finished it yesterday. I by no means think that I have all the answers when it comes to this area, but I wanted to share what the Lord has been teaching me. Love. I think our culture is absolutely obsessed with love. Everyone wants to find love and will go to extreme measures to do so. People are, by their own admission, “in love with love.” But I’m not convinced that most people even understand what the word itself means. I mean, where do you draw the line between love and simply an extreme like? Google defines “love” as “an intense feeling of deep affection.” But who is to say what warrants an “intense feeling” or “deep affection”? What I consider to be an “intense feeling” may not be the same as yours. Those things are subjective. At the Chinese restaurant the other night, my fortune cookie said, “Love is a friendship set to music.” Everyone, it seems, has their own definiti...

We are back stateside! I am still in a weird “limbo” so to speak; glad to be home, yet sad to leave South Africa. I remember the first few days in South Africa, I was extremely homesick (probably a little culture shocked too). I was so glad to be in South Africa, but was already looking forward to the return home. I remember praying that God would move in my heart to really love Johannesburg, and I can say now that He did. As cliché as it may sound, I have left a small piece of my heart there. I didn’t expect the transition back into American life to be so difficult, since this is where I call home, but it has been far from easy. At random times my heart will skip a beat and I’ll think, “Where am I?” And as surprised as I am to say this, being an introvert, it’s hard not constantly being around my family of 19 others for the first time in 7 weeks. Before leaving South Africa, Bill and Kristen challenged us to come up with five adjectives to describe our experience there. I don’t thi...

We have passed our halfway point! It’s crazy to think about all that has already happened in the past three weeks here and what God is still going to do throughout the remainder of our time here. A quick recap of the past week: last Friday night, we had a “social” in the dorms. The dorm that I and seven other girls on our team are ministering in is called Sunnyside. For our social we held two “craft stations”: in one room girls were decorating journals and in the other (the room I was in) girls were creating rosette headbands and necklaces with strips of fabric. In both rooms we had cupcakes, icing & sprinkles to decorate your own cupcakes. That night, as my ministry partner and I were walking a girl back to her room she said, “I love when you guys come because you bring so much light. I always have fun with you, but it’s like a good fun, and you don’t feel bad about it tomorrow.” On Saturday, we went to a rugby game: the Lions vs. the Sharks. I didn’t really understand all t...

Hello again from SA! Today marks two weeks exactly since we left the States. It has been a while since my last post; as you remember, our internet access is very limited and we don't really know when exactly we will have it. Since my last post, we have done a lot of things. Besides starting ministry at the University of the Witwatersrand (pronounced Vits), on Friday night, we had a braai which is basically like a BBQ. On Saturday, we visited the apartheid museum and for dinner we went to a place called Seeman's where they had all you can eat ribs for about $6. In my last blog, I promised a look into "a day in the life" of a CCPer, so here goes. I apologize I can't be more detailed than this for now. Each day, we wake up at around 7am, and we have a two-hour block of time where we eat breakfast, study God's Word and pray. We usually leave our guest house at around 9:30 and go to a meeting. Depending on the day, we have HIStory training (our theme for the ...

I apologize in advance for the length of this post. We will likely not have internet again for another week and I am sure many of you would like to know everything we are doing here so I am trying to be as detailed as possible! We made it to South Africa! After a 14-hour and flight and not much sleep, we are here and settled into our house! The Lord was so gracious to us in that there were no complications with our flights, luggage or anything. This was such a blessing thinking about how many things could go wrong when traveling with 20 people. South Africa is actually 6 hours ahead of the U.S., so while it is 11am here as I am writing this, it is only 5am in the States. It's also winter here! Most days warm up to feel like a fall day, but this morning has been the coldest since we've been here. Our first full day  in South Africa was Friday. In the morning, we met up with CCP team from Campus Outreach Indianapolis who we will be working alongside at The University of the...