May 2, 2009
God is in control… we believe that His children will not be forsaken. – Twila Paris
That chorus from one of my favorite songs came alive in a new and remarkable way for me today. As we pulled into Barek Aub this morning, even from a distance we could see through the windows of the school that our prayers had been answered – the classrooms were filled with kids!
We were eager to get to work handing out bags of new school supplies from a variety of generous donors, socks from Pearl Izumi, and more than 100 boxes of Girl Scout cookies donated by some Girl Scouts who attend Flatirons and wanted to send a special treat to their friends in Barek Aub. To a person, everyone on the Team was overwhelmed at the sight of these kids – absolutely thrilled to be in a classroom – some of whom are the first in their families for several generations to get any formal schooling… and they can’t get enough of it. The school is still desperately short of books and other supplies, but at least the teachers are back and we are VERY thankful for that!
After we’d completed our rounds, we presented the school with a 12-foot poster made by LaNae and Patty from the March Team. It features more than 400 photos of the school kids the March Team shot when they were in Barek Aub last month. It was great to see kids giggle and search for their photo as they walked past in the hallway. Actually we caught a number of elders and parents doing the same thing. Smiles were abundant in Barek Aub today.
But then as we were leaving a man approached our host shouting things at him in Dari and sobbing uncontrollably. He appeared to be extremely upset about something… but it turns out he has four school age children and was just totally overcome with emotion when he realized they were back in school today.
As we fought to gain our composure we walked to the home of Abdul Zahir, an elder who donated his home to serve as a community activity center which was used for the recent school uniform sewing project. Our Team got to meet with Najiba, the lead seamstress, and a couple other women from the project to get an update and see samples of the uniforms. (Rumor has it a large quantity of them may be handed out tomorrow!!) As we were leaving the meeting I was stopped by Salam Khan, one of the elders that wants to start a tailoring business in Barek Aub, who passionately thanked me and everyone at Flatirons for helping jump start a sewing business in Barek Aub. Supplying uniforms for the kids was the focus, but training a couple dozen women to sew while providing income for several families was really the “win” we had hoped for.
We then headed to the northernmost end of Barek Aub to check out the new block of homes being built specially for widows and orphans. Construction began only 15 days ago and five homes are already nearly finished with another five to be completed in the next two weeks. A total of 50 homes should be ready for occupancy by the end of the year.
Then we had to “burn some roads” (inside joke) back to the guest house for lunch and then a training session by our hosts in preparation for a Vision Meeting we’ll be hosting tomorrow in Barek Aub. We'll be meeting with the elders and 30-40 other members of the community who are interested in starting businesses of their own. This meeting is a huge step toward helping Barek Aub become an independent, functional, sustainable entity and we are truly excited about it. I’m sure I’ll have a lot to report on it tomorrow.
After the training session we had a little time to kill before dinner so our host escorted us to the nearby City Center Shopping Center for some fresh fruit juice and window shopping. (I won’t name names, but look for 3 guys wearing spiffy new shalwar kameez’s at Flatirons on the 10th. ) Then it was back to the guest house for some kebabs and french fries before everyone pretty much crashed for the night.
Remember that verse from Ecclesiastes I quoted a couple days ago? Well it couldn’t have been any more appropriate again today: There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven… a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. And today we did a whole lot o' laughing and dancing!!
Whether or not you believe the teachers coming back was a miracle really doesn’t matter to us… we know it was. And we know there are more great things ahead for the kids of Barek Aub. Thank you for helping them by doing your part – we so depend on your support.
--Bob
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