Changes and breakthroughs

This morning's French class was one of the most moving I have had since I got here. We spent a frustrating first hour dealing with possessive adverbs (or something rather) and I decided it was time to move on to something else. So we once again pulled out our alphabet sheets. It had been a while since we had worked on reading and I was worried that we would have to go back over the alphabet. We didn't, and in addition to that, when I began putting together consonant-vowel combinations, most of the women could read them! It was amazing! It wasn't easy....they would first state very harshly that they didn't know, that they couldn't do it, and I would ask them over and over to just try...and then they would get it...and they had this look of incredulity on their faces when they realized they had done it. They didn't want to stop, they just wanted to keep reading word after word. It was a really uplifting atmosphere. I could almost feel them walking taller as they left class. Literacy truly is an powerful tool! The following is a quotation regarding education from a statement by the Universal House of Justice, The Promise of World Peace,from which I have drawn a lot of motivation and strength since arriving here:
"For ignorance is indisputably the principal reason for the decline and fall of peoples and the perpetuation of prejudice. No nation can achieve success unless education is accorded to all its citizens."
It might seem like an obvious statement but to actually carry it out definitely is not, considering UNESCO currently estimates that over 771 million adults in the world are illiterate.
Later on the in the afternoon I had two children's classes. The first one is in a house where the children are repeatedly beaten, but I am beginning to see a change...instead of the mothers coming over to hit one of the children today, they simply came over to "show" their children how to color. It really was beautiful to see the mothers standing by the kids coloring their sheets, the children looking very impatient to get their sheets back but I think thankful that they weren't being hit.
Thanks to the arrival of Dulcie, I was able to split my second children's class into two age groups, making things much more manageable. She took the younger kids and did an absolutely amazing job with them considering she is still learning French, and of course the kids adored her. I took a smaller group of older kids aged 9 to 11 and we worked on memorizing a prayer with a lot of imagery by making a picture book. It was interesting to see how different children interpreted different words and what pictures they used to portray them.
I finished off the day with a junior youth class, in which I got deeply criticized for having not yet tried "awasai", a Ndjuka specialty, and left with promises that I would get to taste it next time. I did not understand much of the explanation of what it actually is, which frightens me a little, but hey...what is a year of service without some disturbing food experience?

Lesson Learned: One of the greatest gifts we have been given is our free will and our ability to choose. We choose what to believe, how to act, and how to treat others. We must never for a moment think that these things are beyond our control. We have a choice in whether or not to believe in God, whether or not to steal, and whether or not to gossip. It is first consciousness of this that enables us take control and begin living life in accordance with Divine Teachings. (hmmm...that may have been a little obscure...once again, open to individual interpretation)