maybe

One day a week, I teach a short English class to the kids at La Fundacion. This week, there were 35 little ninos anxiously waiting when I got there, and I walked into the room to a whole lot of “Hi teeesshherr!” greetings. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, some of the kids go to school and others don’t—so in this class there are all levels of development and ability. So, we started with greetings, learned “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” counted to one hundred, practiced pointing out the colors around us, and we are taking a shot at memorizing Philippians 4:13 in English: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. In between all of that, there were quite a few interruptions from curious kids asking, “Teeesshherr, como se dice en Ingles… Teacher, how do you say in English…” So needless to say, it is a fun two hours, and hopefully the kids are learning something, too!

As I watched everyone copy down the words on the board, I noticed tiny little Steven, who was sitting on the floor in the front. Steven was doing his best to mimic the shape of the letters on the board, but while most kids had finished writing a sentence Steven was still on the third or fourth letter. Sometimes he would just give up and not write anything, other times he would really try and when I would ask if everyone was ready, he would look at me with a little panic in his eyes and shake his head no.

Steven is one of the kids who does not get to go to school, for reasons I do not fully know or understand. As I watched him struggle to copy what he saw, and at the same time try to hide the shame he felt, my heart just broke for this little guy. What will life be like for him next year? What will it be like in five or six years when he is a teenager? What will happen if Steven never learns to write, never learns to read, never truly understands the life and world he is living in.

The purpose of this short little English class is to teach the kids a few words in English, have a good time laughing, and together remember that God is the same God in Colombia and in California. But I think I learned more in those two hours than I taught: I learned that I can ignore the pain an inequality in the world but it will still be very real. I learned that kids like Steven want something more but have no idea how to get it. And I learned that while the problems are way bigger than the solutions are, that does not give us an excuse to give up. Because maybe in the next six weeks Steven will learn to write the alphabet, then in the months that follow he starts to understand what certain words are and eventually finds a book he can read. Maybe that leads to picking up newspapers and magazines and harder books. Maybe he’ll get to go school someday, maybe even high school, maybe even college. Maybe he will understand the life and world he is living in, and even be able to make it better for him and his family…

That’s what I think about when I see his face. And I also think that if everyone thought a little more “maybes” than the world could have more “probably.” My best friend, Kristin, reminded me a few weeks ago that there is so much we can do if we decide to not put our own mental and physical limits on God. Maybe God can and will do a whole lot more if we think He probably will.