Giving Thanks-Pohnpeian Style

K and 1st joint worship!

I can’t believe it’s already Thanksgiving! I don’t think it feels like it because we are stuck in a summer that lasts all year round. This especially warm, Thanksgiving day was festive in the elementary school classrooms. It was a half-day and the teachers in the lower grades spent most of the day doing various Thanksgiving crafts. I did not have much time to plan because I had been working on mid term grades for my computer classes the night before. Plus I got some fantastic packages from my parents, sister, and Scott and Megan so that kept me occupied for a while. J

Ellie, Caleb, and Kim preaching at Kolonia

Right now my family is all gathered at my house in beautiful Oregon, getting ready to feast on a huge traditional Thanksgiving dinner of mashed potatoes, turkey, dinner roast, stuffing, yams, pumpkin pie, and of course, the traditional turkey shaped ice cream cake. The weather is cold enough for a sweater or jacket, and there is a fire in the wood stove, keeping our house nice and cozy.

On the other side of the world, there’s me, sweating in this ridiculous humidity and sitting in front a fan instead of a fireplace. Our dinner menu consisted of fish, turkey, potato salad, local fruit, and of course rice, which we shared with about 90 other people. The girl SMs were in charge of making dessert so we made pies, cakes, cookies, and muffins. It took all afternoon but the end results were quite delicious!

Favorite Student! :)

Even though I miss my family and I would love to be at home enjoying this holiday with them, there is no place I would rather be than right here in Pohnpei, Micronesia. I am here with some amazing people that I consider my family and I am so thankful that I get to share this special day with them. I think the thing I am most thankful for this year, is being here in Pohnpei. Even though I came here quite unwillingly, I am so thankful that God put me here. I love my children no matter how much they may frustrate each and every day, I love the people I work with, and the people and churches here are so welcoming and loving toward us. Being here made me realize how blessed I really am. I’m healthy, have loving family and friends, I go to an Adventist university, and I have everything I could ever need! God is so good! I have 6 months left here on this island. It feels like a long time but it’s been going by quickly.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you back home! I hope all of you have as blessed a day as I have had.

Now you can play your Christmas music without anyone complaining! ;)

The Devil Himself

I’ve never seen anyone with demons before, but on Sabbath night, we encountered not only one, but two people who were being mind controlled by the devil.

Saturday night, all the high school and SA officers got together at the school to spend the night for the officer retreat. We had dinner and then went to the gym to play some games. Roy and I were at the gym when Avalon comes in and tells us that we need to get everybody into the computer lab. So we usher the kids to the lab and we found Pastor Tim with a few students inside. Pastor Tim explained that Arty had been seeing a spirit follow him around and telling Arty to follow him. So we all held hands in a circle and started praying for him. Arty was sitting down on a chair but as we started to near the end of the circle of prayers, he started shouting saying, “No! You can’t take me! I won’t let you! Stay away from me!” and started to climb up on the desks with the computers. Pastor Tim was the last person to pray and as he was praying, Arty suddenly collapsed and fainted, hitting the hard tile floor and at that moment, we saw a freshman girl named Joselyn book it out the door.

The next thing I know, I heard Kim yelling for someone to come help. So I ran out the door and followed Joselyn up the stairs to the chapel. She was thrashing around on the ground and some girls were trying to comfort her and calm her down. I helped hold her down, along with Avalon and later, Mrs. Edward. She kept clawing at her neck because she felt Satan chocking her. She would calm down, then begin thrashing again. She kept screaming, “No! I won’t come with you, you freak! Let go of my mother! No! Don’t burn her! Take me instead! PLEASE! Take me instead! Don’t touch my mother!”  We kept telling her that her mother was fine and at a point when she had called down, she asked to call her. So we got her a phone and dialed her mother, but there was no answer because she was probably already asleep. I helped Joselyn down the stairs back to the computer lab so that we could pray for her. When we got down there, Roy and I tried to set her down on the ground. But Joselyn said, “No! Not on the ground! He’ll come up from the ground and take me!” So we let her sit on the desks of the computers. But she suddenly started to thrash very hard. We sat her down on the chair and Roy held her legs down with all his weight and I held her down by her shoulders. Joselyn is about 5’1” and I weigh at least 30 lbs more than her I’m sure. She literally lifted me AND Roy off the ground. I said, “Joselyn! It’s okay! Satan can’t hurt you.” “MISS. I can see him right there!” she replied pointing ahead of her. “Let me go so I can kill him.” She finally calmed down and we carried her and laid her on the ground with a pillow.

There was about five of us holding her down and we definitely needed all five of us to keep her from getting up off the ground and running. I had one of her legs and Roy the other, and it took all of our weight to hold even her legs down. Everyone stood in a circle holding hands around Joselyn and we prayed and sang for a good two hours. The prayers were constant. Finally, she calmed for a while when we were singing and her mom came in. We let her go and she ran to her mother. The demon was gone. Praise God. We all had a prayer in a circle after that. I went up to Joselyn and told her that I loved her and gave her a big long hug. She told me she loved me too and that she was sorry. I really wonder how much she remembers from that experience. Joselyn decided to stay here even though Arty went home. Afterwards she was happily playing basketball, like there was nothing wrong.

Truthfully, I have never been more scared in my life. Seeing Joselyn’s eyes going wild, hearing her yell and tell Satan to go away, I was scared. I don’t know how God gave me the courage to do what I did. I was so shaky after that and as we were praying, I could feel the chills go up and down my bones. I have never felt anything like that before in my life. I was drenched in sweat from holding down a struggling girl for 2 hours. I hugged Roy for a good while after that because I just needed to be held. I can’t believe some people don’t believe in God and demons. I could see the terrified faces of the high school boys that I teach. They looked at me with frightened eyes and just didn’t know what to do or how to react. I hope this night affected a lot of the kids. I know it affected me. I was scared that someone else was going to be possessed after Joselyn and we were all so exhausted as it was. Sunday morning I woke up sore and bruised from the night. We were all exhausted because we had all gotten about 3 hours of sleep. My apartment couldn’t go to sleep until 3 am because quite frankly, we were kind of scared. We prayed a lot though and talking about how God amazing is really helped us with our fear. God is real. God is our protector. God is all powerful. We could feel God’s presence in the room when we were praying. There were probably hundreds, if not thousands of angels crammed into that little computer lab. I will never forget that night. Keep Pohnpei in your prayers.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,  neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 8:38-39

A Weekend in Paradise

Relaxing, breathtaking, and painful. Those are the three words I would use to describe my weekend on the island of Ahnt. On Friday, we headed to the beautiful ring of islands off of Pohnpei called Ahnt. The water was crystal clear, and different shades of blue and green that I can’t even describe to you. It was an hour-long boat ride to get to the island where we were camping. As we waited for Franky’s boat to arrive with our luggage, Kim immediately went to work of finding a coconut to eat. She soon found one and then proceeded to attempt to open it by throwing it at a cement block over and over again. She got one open after quite a few throws! She’s quite the resourceful woman! J It took us a fairly short amount of time to set up our hammocks and tarps. After that was taken care of, some of us went for a swim in the beautiful warm ocean.

Relaxing under the palm trees and blue skies

To avoid getting bit by mosquitos, I slept in a sweatshirt, and long pants tied at the bottom so they wouldn’t crawl up my leg. The only parts of me exposed were my face, hands and feet. All three parts got bit like crazy!! Since sleeping in hammocks is not something I am really used to, I slept fitfully that night. I rolled out of my hammock at 9:30 am and went straight to the water to swim. Our entire Sabbath consisted of swimming, eating coconuts, and laying on the beach either relaxing or reading. This was definitely a weekend we all needed! No sound of children running wild on the school campus, just the sound of crashing waves and the soft swaying of palm fronds.

At night we would lay out a tarp and lay out under the stars and full moon. The moon was almost too bright! We couldn’t see the stars very well but on Friday night, Amanda, Tony, Jen, and I were laying out on the tarp looking at the man on the moon. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I see a shooting star! I practically crawl on top of Amanda with excitement and point to the star that was falling from the sky. It was the longest shooting star I had ever seen! It lasted at least 5 seconds! Saturday night, I slept very well, only waking up once or twice. (I think it helped that I took Nyquil.) At 7:00 am, I was out of bed and changing to go swim. We didn’t leave until noon so I had plenty of time to relax on the beach and swim for a good while before leaving. Because the tide was out, the water was very shallow around the island. Karyn, Jen, and I spent a lot of time just sitting in the water, playing with the sand. On the way back, we stopped the boats and the mouth of the channel to go snorkeling for bit. The drop off was simply beautiful! The water was an unbelievable blue that my camera could just not capture. I can’t wait to get my scuba license! I’ll be able to see things at much closer level.

Crystal clear water

The boat ride back was so fun! I sat at the front of the boat with Karyn and going on the open ocean with our little fishing boat was quite the ride! Going over the waves reminded me of a roller coaster! Karyn and I definitely had the most fun, whooping and hollering when we went over a good wave. I have to say the boat ride brought me so much joy! I’m not really sure why, but going up and down on the waves made me laugh out loud with real happiness. Getting back to the apartment, we got to see what our sunburns looked like without the glaring sun. Even though I reapplied sunscreen several times throughout the day, my shoulders, legs, and face were all red. That’s the painful part of the weekend. Every little touch, made my shoulders and legs hurt. On Monday morning I shaved my legs. Oh my word. SUCH PAIN. PE time did not help when some of the boys patted me on the back. When I flinched, they said “Oh miss! Did you get sunburned??”

Please keep praying for all of us. There's always someone sick among the SMs no matter how hard we try to stay healthy.

Oh for the Love of Children

 I have recently started using a devotional called Uncommon Life, written by Tony Dungy. On Tuesday, I read something I found very relevant to my teaching life right now.

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you. Whatever you say and do, in word or deed, do it all for the glory of God. Daily living. Each day, every day. Regardless of what you are called to do as an occupation.”

This year, God called me to be a teacher. I know as a student in elementary and high school, I always looked up to my teachers and this made me stop and think. What do my students see when they look up to me? Am I being a good example? Am I showing Christ through my actions and words? 90% of these kids aren’t even Adventist and don’t really know Jesus. Am I showing them who Christ is, or the opposite?  This worship really had me thinking about how I live my life. Just thought I would share that with you. J

It was SO nice to have Monday off. It was a really hot day so in the afternoon, some of us went swimming at what we now fondly call “Parasite Bay”.  It’s just a little swimming hole at a river. It’s only about a 10 minute drive so it’s pretty close. J I really did not want to start school again on Tuesday. My kids were quite crazy and couldn’t focus on their work, so I decided to give them more coloring to do. My mom sent me some cool coloring murals where each kid gets a page to color and when I put it altogether it creates a picture. The kids absolutely love it! That morning, I did a joint worship with Amanda’s 1^st graders in my classroom. Just as we were starting the worship part after singing, I saw my student Pria come to the door with her mother. She was crying hysterically and I went out to see what was wrong. Since Mrs. Jano has been sick, I’ve been taking the Kindergartners that were left after 12 o’clock to the office to wait for their parents. And Pria for some reason was terrified of going to the office again so she didn’t want to come to class. So I told her that she could stay with her sister in 5^th grade until her mom came and got her. That finally calmed her down.

My Princesses and Princes!

On Wednesday for art class, my kids made crowns because I told them that since God is our Father and a King, we are all princesses and princes. This definitely made the girls happy to hear that they are princesses! The picture we took is really cute! I really wish all my kids had been there that day!

This week went pretty well until today, Thursday. Today was definitely in the top 3 worst days of school so far. For some reason, my kids had the hardest time listening! Every time I started talking to instruct them in something, they would start talking to people across the room. Doing their worksheets with them in class, I would sit directly in front of them and tell them the answers and still not know what to do, despite my constant repeat on what to do and what the answer was.  I’ve gone over and over stuff I want them to learn and still the majority don’t seem to understand. The parents are expecting these kids to read and write and do math by the end of this year so I feel a lot of pressure. So many times today, I closed my eyes, and felt like crying. Instead, I prayed for patience and wisdom. I felt a lot calmer after those moments and tried my best to be more patient with my children. But my land they know how to test me! Starla has been very weepy in class the past couple of days and I finally found out why. Apparently her cousin left a couple of days ago and she is really sad about it. Today in worship, I kept seeing tears falling down her cheeks and after worship, I said “Starla come over here.” I was sitting on the ground and she just fell into my lap and leaned into me crying her eyes out. I rocked her back and forth for a while and then told her she could go to Tony’s classroom to see her brother for a bit. That calmed her down and when she came back after 30 minutes or so, she was fine the rest of the day. I gave her an extra sticker to help her mood a little bit. I was definitely not cut out for teaching though. Social work is definitely where I should be! 

Some of my boys like to pretend they're superheroes!

Danny’s 7^th grade class, who comes and reads with my class every Friday, asked me to teach them Romanian. So Danny and I made a deal that on Fridays, if he teaches my kids phonics, I would teach his kids Romanian. Good deal! They still believe that Danny and I are cousins! Today one of the girls came up to me and asked, “Miss! So tomorrow are you going to teach us romance?” “Wait what?? Oh you mean Romanian right?” “Oh yeah! Romanian!” Lots of giggling followed as the girls ran off. It definitely made me laugh. J

I am SO thankful that I have high school classes in the afternoon. I’m pretty sure I would go crazy with my Kindergartners all day! A girl named Jeroleen, who will be studying engineering at WWU this next year, just makes my day. She, Demi, and Ariel always know how to make laugh! Jer says I’m her favorite teacher and that just makes me so happy! Tomorrow we are going camping to a place called (pronounced) Ant. I’m not really sure how it’s spelled. I’m excited but not really. We never get any sleep on camping trips so we’ll see how this goes! I have a new hammock that won’t fall with me in it this time and a tarp to hang over Jen, Kim, and I.

Keep us in your prayers as we head out this weekend! I miss all of you back home!