It should have overwhelmed us


 We've had the busiest 4 Days of our mission. We were visited by our humanitarian leaders and then by our mission president. We had to schedule appointments and show them around. In the middle of all of that we began our English classes.

We have four english classes that are each twice a week. On our first class we had 57 signed up. We had no idea how many would actually attend.  We had 42show  up.  An ideal class size is 20. We had never taught before. The curriculum is a little bit difficult.

We were remarkably calm. We could only laugh at the prospects of no one showing up, too many showing up, us doing a horrible job and people walking out, or anything else unknown for the first time. It went remarkably well. We actually enjoyed it. We were exhausted at the end of the day but remarkably unstressed.
 We had a team teaching approach. We would each go for about 10 minutes. The class lasts for 1 hour
This was the larger class. It was very difficult because often we break into small subgroups and they practice among themselves. We cannot monitor so many small groups

Earlier in the day we brought our mission president to one of our humanitarian contacts. This is a school where they teach how to repair air conditioners. We are considering funding their purchase of newer equipment for the students to practice on

We run almost every morning. The pictures are beautiful. It's the heat and humidity that are a surprise
Fishing boats that have returned from their night and early morning fishing trips

Comments

  1. MelissaJanuary 31, 2018 at 9:16 AM

    Glad your classes went well!! It will be interesting to see how many students come back next week.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Trapani's in LiberiaJanuary 31, 2018 at 12:33 PM

      We taught our second round of basic classes yesterday. On both classes we had almost as many show up the second day as the first. We were actually hoping for a bigger drop off because both of those classes are too big.

      Delete
  2. UnknownJanuary 31, 2018 at 8:36 PM

    So great to read about your experience so far! Keep up the great work loving and serving our bothers and sisters there. We're anxious to follow you. - the Haydens

    ReplyDelete
  3. GerryFebruary 1, 2018 at 8:19 PM

    “We were hoping for a drop off...” What a goal setting overachiever you are. 🤣

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Trapani's in LiberiaFebruary 1, 2018 at 9:18 PM

      I so much want to be a slacker. Other than making Cheryl do things I don't have many other choices other than doing it myself. It's been a quick learning curve. In the first two months I think we've done everything will do in the next 22.

      Delete
  4. UnknownFebruary 1, 2018 at 9:01 PM

    Why is there such a high demand is it the off season for work over there? Or you only offer classes once a year?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Trapani's in LiberiaFebruary 1, 2018 at 9:23 PM

      The response has caught us off-guard. We will probably finish with this big group. The next time around we will probably not even advertise and be much more careful to keep the classes smaller. The people really want to learn English. It is such a good career enhancer. We could teach English all day everyday. But then we would not be able to do devote time to the other humanitarian projects which are equally as important.

      I thought for sure because we are so new at this and there's a pretty big learning curve to being a good English teacher that many of the students would not show up for the second class. We were shocked that the numbers increased on the second class. I guess even pathetic teachers are better than no teachers.

      Delete
  5. The PiersFebruary 4, 2018 at 8:19 PM

    That is an amazing number coming to your English classes! We never had more than 10 at any of ours! Keep up the good work and you will touch many lives. Are you able to even mention the Church and Sunday meetings?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Trapani's in LiberiaFebruary 4, 2018 at 10:07 PM

      The church has not been officially sanctioned in the country yet so we cannot aggressively proselyte but it is okay to mention the church and to respond to anyone that is interested. We currently have two investigators attending sacrament meeting resulting from the prior English classes.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The test

Image
Our students took a midterm exam. Attendance was much greater in each class for the exam then it was for the lessons. For some reason in this culture tests are held in very high esteem. One of our classes has 3 Catholic sisters. After the test they asked to have their picture taken with us. One of the reasons the class interests them is that they will be serving in America for a period of time. Today at church we had our biggest attendance ever. On the front row is Warlito who is a member of the church from the Philippines. On the row behind is Janu our English class assistant, his fiance Zelia and her sister Santi. He's difficult to see but sitting behind Warlito is one of Dominguez's children. On the next row is Dominguez and 3 of her children. On the last row is Eden, Genevieve and Billy, they are members of the church. In the very back by the keyboard is Tara who is a member of the church and planning to serve a mission soon. Those who are not members are show
Read more

Holidays

Image
This year we had a Christmas tree. It made our lives seem a little more normal. The two little gifts under the tree are empty. Cheryl just thought we needed some wrapped gifts to make it look better. There's also a small carved manger scene. That was made on a neighboring Island in timor-leste. Last year we didn't put up the tree and it felt terrible. We called our children and my parents on their Christmas Day which was the day after Christmas for us. This Christmas felt so much better. Last Christmas we were only out for 20 days and it felt so lonely and we felt like we would be away for ever. In our church group three of the four adult members are living alone here in Timor-Leste. We had them all over for Christmas dinner. Sitting next to Cheryl is Nikki. She works for the Philippine Embassy. Across from Nikki is Eden. She has three children that are currently living in the Philippines because one of them needs special therapy. She'll be alone until they return th
Read more

Sunday in the MTC with foreign missionaries

Image
Fast and testimony meeting Today we attended a remarkable fast and testimony meeting. It was with missionaries from foreign countries who will be assigned missions in the United States. They came to the mission home already knowing how to speak English . They are in the mission home for only 3 weeks. When they bore their testimonies they did it in English and they announced the countries they were from. The countries were Paraguay, Indonesia, Philippines, Venezuela, Fiji, Brazil, Montreal Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Japan and Haiti. They were remarkable. They all appeared to be very bright and very mature in there gospel understanding and application. A lot of them were assigned to serve throughout California. One of them will be speaking Creole in Florida. One of the missionaries from the Philippines will be serving in our home mission in Sacramento.
Read more