Lisa's Last Days

These are a few shots of Lisa's last days here. Lisa stayed with us for all of 5th and half of 6th grade. I was so sick the last week she was here. I had headaches, stomach aches and pink eye. I guess the stress of getting her ready to go home, combined with the reality that we were losing her was hard on me. I wanted her last week to be really special, but we were so limited by our schedule, the school's schedule, other people's plans and my being ill. It was a bummer. I also got sick during Heidi's last week here. We really get attached to these kids. We treat them like our own. When they arrive here, they are like newborn babes in that they are being "born" into another country and culture. The time and energy we spend with them is intense.

When I was a teacher in various schools, I was always interested in knowing and caring for the kids on a deeper, more personal level than the teacher-student ratio would allow. With this business/ministry, we sure get to do that! At the end of each school year, I was sad to say goodbye to the group I called my class. But if I remained at the school, I could still see many of them the next year in the halls and such. Nowadays when kids graduate from our home stay and study abroad experience, that's it. We may never see them again. And when new ones come, that intensive training starts over again with them, so it's easy to lose touch with the kids that we once treated as members of our family. It's tough on us. And it involves the whole family.

Now Hannah and Naomi are sick and one of them has pink eye, too. We love what we do. We'd have to, or we wouldn't be able to do it. But this is a hard time for us now especially this year because Heidi and Lisa are returning in the winter. I'm not sure if we'll accept kids for a half a year any more because it means we have to say goodbye to our winter program kids and them back to back. It's too much sadness at once.