I teach English to one of the cleaners at work, and to our maid at home. Not a tasking thing to do usually, but as I am not exactly an English professor, I often run out of activities and assignments to help them in their learning. These are adult learners…Wendy is a trained lawyer, not a skilled teacher. Lol. So I often run out of what to say, actually I run out of HOW to say what I want to say really.

Sometimes, I really want to stop with the classes because they are stressful especially when my ‘students’ keep making the same mistakes. It makes me worry and I think that perhaps, they do not really understand my teaching. But the little things keep me going. For instance, the other day the maid wrote a little note for me in her homework book. Her note simply said: “Aunty please help me I really want to learn this reading and writing”. Punctuation-free sentence aside, I was very touched. Lol.

The cleaner at work is a far more challenging student to deal with. The girl laughs at every damn thing! It’s like, I’m trying to explain my corrections and her giggling crosses the threshold from cute to “C’mon now!” in a heartbeat! One day, I told her off and suggested that we give the teaching a rest. She started sobbing and explained that she teaches others who don’t go to school in her house, with the material I give to her! How ridiculously amazing is that???! So the moral of the story is what my friend Ojone often says to me; “The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyways.”

So the cleaner gave me a nice little gift recently. I’d asked her to make some sentences with some words I’d listed. She made some sentences and at the end used the letters of my name to form the sentences below.

W: Wealthy: having a lot of money, possessions etc
E: Effulgent: it means shinning brightly
N: Noble: having fine personal qualities that people admire such as courage, honesty and care for others.
D:Development: the process by which good and new things are happening in an area
Y: Young: (She left this one blank! Hahahahaha! Subliminal message p’rhaps? -_-)
O: Optimist: a person who always expects good things to happen, or things to be successful.
K: Kindness: the quality of being kind.
E: Ebullient: full of confidence, energy and good humour.
I: Intrigued: someone who is very interested in something and wanting to know more about it or about someone.
N: Neat: Someone who likes to keep things tidy and in order and who always do things carefully and arranged.
I: Intervene: to become involved in a situation in order to improve it help it or be involved in someone issue in order to help her.

Although she has clearly gone far, far beyond in her estimation of me…rest assured that this list is not accurate, lol…i was incredibly touched by her thoughtfulness. It’s really lovely to be appreciated, especially when you’re not sure if you are getting through at all! It made me think I ought to be more thankful to God actually. It also made me realise how much of an impact we can have on the lives of others if we just made a little more effort, go out of our comfort zone and ask someone honestly, “how can I help you?”

Remember, God isn’t going to come down into the world to change it. I’ll paraphrase a C.S.Lewis quote I like, he says “I pray not because it changes God but because it changes me…to change things.”

Nothing changes until I change.