Hello everyone!
So, I feel like I have this mildly guilty confession to make. Between the last time I wrote and now, I took time out from killing mosquitoes, treating cacao trees kindly and pondering the ethics of good intentions by flying off to Buenos Aires (Argentina) for four weeks to undertake a teacher training course for English as a Second or Other Language (the Cambridge CELTA, to be specific). I had intended to take the course in Lima in February, but there were not enough students to run it and I had to look farther afield to have any possibility of getting the course done before Home Assignment (i.e. next week). Fortunately for me, Argentina’s economy is not in a very healthy situation and I calculated that doing the course there was only going to be about $100 more expensive than doing it in Lima. So off I went.
Now the fact is, I’ve been talking myself out of doing this course since about 2008 when I had my first taste of informal English teaching on an OM base in rural northern Panama. I came back to the UK, looked into it and promptly chickened out. “It’s a very intensive course,” I was informed by all sources, “it’s very demanding and you won’t get any sleep the whole time.” Enough said.
You know the old saying that ‘a change is as good as a rest’? We all know that that’s not even nearly true, but the act of submerging my brain in a non-life threatening challenge that is completely removed from my normal work/domestic situation, did help me feel that I came back with fresh eyes and a reinvigorated sense of what the future could hold.
As I spent my weekends in a city resplendent with famous art galleries, museums, theatres, concert halls and street art, holed up in my accommodation tapping relentlessly on my laptop to complete the latest assignment, I did spare a moment to consider the quandary of my belief in human free will, in light of my accompanying overwhelming sense that this whole idea (of me finally doing this course) was basically more at His insistence than mine…I described it to one friend as feeling that the Good Lord had finally backed me into a corner. Then when the Lima course didn’t work out, I knew that this was a test of my resolve to obey or not to obey.
I came across this song whose lyrics spoke to me a little:
Your love is like radiant diamonds bursting inside us, we cannot contain
your love will surely come find us like blazing wild fires singing your name,
God of mercy, sweet love of mine, I have surrendered to your design…
Turns out I actually quite like teaching English and I’m not even that bad at it. Who knew, eh?
Apparently, the English language has no future tense so I merely say that I look forward to seeing some of you over the next few months when I will be in the UK on Home Assignment (UK arrival on 10th May).
Love in Him to you all!
Laura x
Laura-Lee Lovering 