Leave It There

This morning as I was stumbling around the mess in my school room wondering how in the world I was going to be ready to teach school by next Tuesday, I found myself humming the hymn "Take Your Burden To The Lord and Leave It There". As I thought about what has happened over the last couple of weeks I must have subconciously known that I needed the message that was in that old hymn of the faith.



After the week of orientation in Marion, Indiana all of us new teachers boarded an airplane like some migrating herd of hyenas. By this time we had spent 12 hours a day studying and eating and praying together, so we were at the loud stage of being able to share with each other. The prospect of traveling to a small school in Santiago, Dominican Republic to use our teaching skills to share the gospel to the children of the island's wealthy population as well as give a good Christian education to the children of missionaries was exciting enough to generate quite a bit of chatter. This was the new director's idea to travel over to the DR as a group so we could feel together and face potential problems together. As the rest of the day unfolded I definitely appreciated his wisdom on this matter.



Arriving in the Santiago Airport all at once, each of us went to claim two suitcases, one carry-on, and one personal item all packed to within a few ounces of the maximum weight. It is an amazing process to pack a limited amount when you know it is for two years, and each of us had gone through that process with each of our suitcases and felt that each item was important ... very important.



So our first problem we had to take to the Lord and leave it there was the missing luggage. Of the 22 gringos who went to collect their luggage so they could go through customs, 10 of us had missing luggage. Then it took about an hour to stand in line to give a report to an agent about the missing luggage. One of the first lessons a gringo has to learn in this country is patience. Things get done only when they want to get it done, and if it doesn't interfere with some social or personal relationship, or when they finally finish using some random, inefficient method.



For example, the next day after we had been shown to our respective apartments late at night, we were picked up in a broken down looking grey-hound style bus and transported to Santiago Christian School. Some did not have clean clothes or sheets to sleep in or water to take a shower, and none of us had a shower curtain, but we made it for a day of orientation to the new school. One of the first jobs was to sign up for the school insurance. We started this process after some devotions and a brief tour of the school at about 9:00 am. We finally finished around noon when we ate a lunch that some of the Dominican staff brought for us.



This was a delightful introduction to the Dominican support staff but for the life of me I could not figure out why it was taking nearly three hours for us new teachers to sign two sheets of paper. There was no apparent sign of structure except for a few introductions occurring sporadically during the time. We were introduced and paired up with a Dominican staff member "host" who sat with us during lunch and invited us for church and dinner the next day.



Over the next few days I've had to realize that things don't happen on my time schedule, even if I try really hard. When I was interviewed a few months ago I remember one of the questions was, "How flexible are you?" Now I see why. The important stuff gets done but it just takes longer and in a more random manner than I am accustomed to. In the meantime I work at being flexible. By the way, all the baggage came and was delivered to all of us within the next two days although at this writing some still do not have internet or water.



The church that we attended on Sunday with our delightful host and her family was called Grace Baptist Church (I can't pronounce the Spanish way of saying this yet). Our host, Bielka, is in charge of human resources at the school and has a husband named Carlos and two children. Since she works at the school and her children attend the school, they could understand us and translate when we conversed with the father. What a gracious and delightful family! We ate a simple lunch of chicken, beans and rice with flan for dessert in their small home while they tried to tell us many secrets of surviving in the DR. It must give them satisfaction to help out a couple of "potato farmers" from Idaho. By the way, when anyone hears that we are from Idaho, we get one of two responses. Either they think of potatoes, or they think we are from Ohio.



After the lunch we talked around the table for about an hour (people seem to be very fond of talking a lot around here). When they took us home they wanted to come in and see our apartment. This was a welcome gesture because we had a number of questions about the different items we found in the house. For example, in the maid's quarters we found a white box attached to a series of eight car batteries. Through translation we learned that this was called an inverter ... or in our culture we would probably refer to this as a generator ... a type of electrical battery backup. In this country the electricity goes out a lot. This is not because of storms or any logically predictable phenomenon. Rather it appears to be a type of rationing. When they want to save electricity, they simple turn it off at various parts of the city at different times for a half hour or hour at a time. There is no warning or schedule for this so quite a few of the homes and businesses have these electrical backup systems. We were fortunate enough to have one in our apartment. During the frequent power outages this inverter runs the lights and refrigerator.



Another odd feature we discovered in the linen closet was another car battery. Puzzled, Carlos decided to figure it out on his own when I showed it to him. Within seconds all of us had to put our hands over our ears to protect our hearing from a very loud security alarm. He had inadvertently tampered with an alarm system that our apartment is equipped with and this was a miniature inverter in case of power outages. Of course, it doesn't do us any good because we have to sign up for the service from a company which we are probably not going to do.



In one sense we felt a bit embarrassed about showing our apartment to this family. Although they appear to be better off than many Dominicans that we see around us, their house was smaller than our apartment. So Carol and I almost feel unworthy to have this apartment. I think the school was trying very hard to make us feel comfortable and to have enough room when our daughter comes to live with us in a few months. (Lord willing!)



We understood at first that we would have nothing in the apartment when we arrived except a stove, a refrigerator, an inverter, and a bed. We discovered to our surprise that they also had a used wicker set of living room furniture and a kitchen table and chairs. They are loaned to us until October at which time we have the option to purchase them. In the refrigerator also was a few day's supply of food, and on the counter a five gallon jug of purified water. I also noticed that they had purchsed a 2-liter bottle of Coke and a pint of peanut butter .... nice touch! We were very grateful for these small considerate acts of kindness.



The church that we attended, by the way, was called Grace Baptist, but it in reality is a 5-point Calvinist Reform doctrine congregation. Our faculty and staff appear to be predominantly from this background. Many of the colleges that this school recruits from are of the reform doctrine and many of them come from the mid-west. The only reason that the word "Baptist" appears in the name, I was told, is because this particular church does not believe in infant baptism.



From the first time that I interviewed with this school until this week I have been asking a pretty basic question ... what are you hiring me to teach? Doesn't that sound reasonable? If I am striving to be an excellent instructor and do the job that I am hired to do it would be nice if I at least knew what I was going to teach. For reasons I still don't understand they could not tell me. So at first I was told that I would be having 4, maybe up to 5 preps, and that they would be math classes. Since one of the classes was going to be calculus I took a calculus course from one of my colleagues at the high school during my prep period this last year. A decent calculus thought had not crossed my mind in over 38 years so I knew I had to do this in order to be prepared. Then in the spring just before the year was over I learned that instead of calculus it would be biology. So I quit calculus and quickly picked the brains of several of my cohorts at my high school who taught biology.



Attempts during the summer, and then later at the orientation in Indiana at finding out my schedule were met with a quizzical look and the expression, "Remember ... embrace ambiquity!" This was too difficult of a concept for my brain to understand so I continued to hum "Leave it There". I could at least understand the idea of trusting God when things are out of my control ... which seemed to be a lot lately.



The master schedule finally arrived this week, scarcely six days before my first class. To my amusement I learned that I would be teaching not 5 but 6 subjects, and three of them had not been mentioned as a possibility until that moment. Algebra I, Algebra 2, and Biology were expected, but to my amazement in front of me on the schedule under my name were calculus, SAT Prep, and health. The words that I chose to describe this moment (ie - amusement and amazment) were not by accident. At first I thought it was a mistake and it was sort of funny. Only seconds later I realized nobody was snickering and I was truly amazed that this is simply the way it works in a small Christian school that happened to have a 40% turn-over of their staff this year. So I stumbled up to my room in a type of daze and tried to think of a plan to survive.



Trying to find the correct room and then the the correct keys is a half a day story in itself. But when I finally entered my school room (which was the biology room from last year) and saw the thick dust and disarray in front of me I knew then I was going to have to memorize all three stanzas of that hymn. When I explained the situation to my wife she immediately committed every minute to helping me. For the last three days we have spent every available minute washing and cleaning and dusting and organizing and carrying and tossing every thing from sheep eyes in formaldehyde to water damaged teacher manuals. Carol continued to work even when I had to go to other meetings such as a psychologically-based orientation session about how to adapt to the Dominican culture ... a four-hour marathon!



At this point I realize I am in a bit of a pressured mood so my writing is a bit skewed. Lord willing, when I post again I can mention some of the wonderful things that we've discovered here and the love that people have shown us. But right now it is late and I have to hum myself to sleep as I prepare for another day.