On the brightside

This morning, as simply as I could, I asked if any of my students had something they would like to pray about. Not many of my students are Adventist, not many understood what I was asking. One of my dorm girls raised her hand and said, Pakistan. I was shocked. How did she know?

With two million people "significantly affected", this can bring no good to a country that is already unstable. With Ramadam ending on Saturday, too many people will celebrating in a place that is not their home.

Tomorrow is the ninth anniversary of September 11, 2001. I read an article from the New York Times this afternoon about a woman whose husband worked in one of the towers and was killed when the they fell. He was, and she still is, Muslim. And every year on the anniversary of that day in 2001, she goes to the where the towers once stood and prays to Allah. The same Allah that drove men to bring them to the ground.

These are the stories that make my insides ache.

This week one of my students went missing, and 8th grader. I noticed after lunch on Tuesday. Where is Sryneang? One of the other 8th graders told me, she went to the hospital with her brother.

My thought was: Oh, I hope her brother is ok.
Dumbest thought ever.

A few minutes later the phone rang, Vice-Principal Sopeak asked me to send Sryneang to the office. She's not... here...? Oh no.

After school I was called down to Principal Sharon's office and she and Sopeak told me a story I did not want to hear. Sryneang had not shown up for lunch, I had noticed that. Apparently during that time she went to Sopeak and said she needed to leave school to take her drivers test, she begged and she pleaded. Sopeak told her to wait. She didn't.

She lied to Sopeak, she lied to her friends, she didn't say anything to me. The boy she left with was not her brother, and she wasn't going to take her drivers test.

After school Sryneang's mother was sitting in the office crying. And I exited I looked at the mother who was staring at me. Her face was asking me the same questions I was asking myself. Where was her daughter? How could we just let her leave like that!?

My heart hurt for her.

I walked back to my classroom in a daze. I couldn't fight the feeling, somehow I could have stopped this. Somehow this was my fault. If I had made sure she was at lunch, if I had called Sopeak immediately after learning she wasn't in class..

The following morning in staff meeting Sharon told the teachers what had happened, Sryneang was still missing. She never came home. Stunned. Words like, prostitution, and kidnapped, were used. This can't be happening. There is no quality police system in this country, the only thing we could do was hope and pray.

And pray I did.
Jesus and I talked ALL day. I tried to keep class moving, but my thoughts were elsewhere.

During seventh period I was in the office making copies when Kim Serieng came running in shouting in Khmer. Sopeak immediately grabbed his phone and hurriedly started talking to someone in Khmer. By this time all of the office workers had walked over, but before I can ask what was happening Sopeak is off the phone and looks at me--

They found her.

God is good.

So I guess it's not all bad news.

There are new schools for South Africa's black townships are bringing hope for a future for a people that have been without quality schools for a very long time. Look it up, it's an amazing story.

Maybe I can't feed 200,000+ people that are going with adequate food today in Pakistan, and maybe I can't put of the fire in San Francisco, but I can pray.

And I can spend my days being invested in the lives of 27 ESL students. Today as school ended, all of my girls and all of the younger boys hugged me on their way out of the room. Maybe they don't know English so well, but they know they are loved. And thats a step in the right direction.