We’re coming down the home stretch. Christmas is almost here, and packages are accumulating under the tree. There are just a few more “Advent Adventures” to share.
After the survival hike, much of our training was complete but I still had plenty to learn. We were ready to move on to the last phase of our camp experience: Village Living.
Those campers who were single were assigned new partners for this final phase. My partner and I would be together for the next six weeks in the Tzeltal town of San Antonio del Monte. My new partner was Judy, the same girl who fell in the river when her canoe floated away from the bank. She was a girl who screamed with fear at each new stage of training, and I wondered how we would get along.
Our task was to teach literacy classes to the adults and children there. The population of the entire “town” totaled seventeen persons, plus cows, horses, pigs, dogs, and chickens. There were four people named Marcello, three Marias, two Betas…plus other Marcellos, Miguels, Manuels and Marias from nearby towns. They all wanted to crowd into our small slat-board house.
Judy took the beginners class out on the porch. I had the “advanced” class at our kitchen table. Only as I saw Judy teach did I realize what gifts she had in teaching. She had the ability to make every lesson on “ba, be, bi, bo, bu” sound fresh and exciting. She had the students “pick fruit” from a tree she drew, each piece of fruit labeled with these different sound combinations. She had them “fish” for paper ba-be-bi-bo-bu minnows in a little basin of water. My cautious opinion of Judy changed to admiration.
In John 2:24-25, Jesus had many followers, but he did not trust himself to them because he knew them inside and out. “He needed no evidence from others about what was in a man for he himself could tell what was in a man.”
I had misjudged my partner on appearances. Jesus saw her heart. As Christmas draws near, is there someone you have labeled unfairly? Could you remove that label as your gift to them this week?
