I taught ESL today.

One of my students arrived quite early so it gave us the opportunity to chat a little bit. To me, she appears to be the most “religious” one. Simply by the way she dresses and the way she talks about God, calling Him “Le Dieu” (The God). I asked her what she does during the week and it led us to a conversation about the Koran. She took a little booklet that contained portions of the Koran and she started to explain to me how she was trying to memorize the entire Koran. We kept talking about the different stories in her little booklet. Obviously, I couldn’t read anything since it was in Arabic, but she told me a few stories about Moses that I found interesting but that was it. Stories that I had never heard before. Some other stories were found in the Bible though. All the “new” stories she told me about Moses sounded like they could be found in a religious book, but really, the God who led Moses here and there and did this and that in the stories, did not remind me of the God of the Bible. So anyways, we had good little conversations about the Koran and my student seemed to be really happy to explain everything to me. I was asking questions and such, but really THE question I wanted to ask her what the following: “Those are interesting sroties but how do you know they’re true?” I’m sure she has an answer, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be an answer for me.

After class when I got into the metro, one of my students happened to sit in the same wagon as me. We usually take the bus together, but it was the first time I saw a student in the metro. So I changed places and sat beside her. We talked for the whole time until she had to get out. She’s the one that’s been on my heart for a while now. And when she left I told God, “Why, oh Why!” Why do I love these ladies so much, why do I want them to know that their Creator loves them so much? Why do I keep having windows open here and there to talk one-on-one with this one lady who seems to be opened to me? Doesn’t God see that there’s so little time left until the classes are over? Doesn’t God see that I don’t know how nor when to speak about Him to them? I’m tired of nodding and keeping my questions and comments to myself. The “religious” lady asked me today “You won’t forget us eh….?” when we talked about our last classes. I told her I could not forget them. Why do they want me to remember them? Why oh why.

Funny fact: At break, we had no coffee ready (ooops) so I took out all the different kinds of juices I found in the fridge. I even took the grape juice out. Well, I think it was like concentrated or something, it wasn’t good at all. BUT some of the ladies took some. Everybody knows that if you find grape juice in a church’s fridge, this juice is used for taking the communion. So some of these ladies will have stood in a baptistery and would have drank grape juice used for communion. Funny funny! Well, we all know that standing in a baptistery or drinking from the church grape juice won’t make you into a Christian or make you any different, but I think it’s funny to think about it.