Role Reversal

By Jessie Fox

I love teaching and I love learning as well.  Since being in Honduras I have done a lot of both!  Most of my learning hasn’t been in a formal setting but rather from interacting with the people here an djust doing life here.  However most of my teaching has been in a more formal setting a classroom, an office, during a training or lesson.  Many of the staff members see me as a teacher and I have enjoyed playing that role.

But a few weeks ago the roles were reversed in a simple but profound way.  The amazing deaf staff members that we work with day in and day out have taught me so much, but like I said, in an informal setting and in ways that they probabaly don’t see themselves as teachers in the formal sense of the word.

The’ve taught me that many things in life are a process, and that process should be cherished not rushed.

They’ve taught me patience.

They’ve taught me how important trusting relationships are.

They’ve taught me how to be joyful in tough time.

They’ve taught me so much more!

For the first time Nancy got to be my “formal” teacher in learning how to crochet.  When Links of Hope was here in July Nancy quickly mastered the skill of making crochet necklaces.  I felt it would be good to learn to be able to teach other deaf people as well as better understand the product that the people in our vocational training program would be making.

“Nancy, will you teach me to crochet!”

Her face lit up, “yes!”

She got to see me confused and struggling with this new skill that required attention to small detail and fine motor skills.  She never gave up on me but encouraged me each step of the way telling me that I would get it, to just keep practicing, and giving me more strategies to try.  She was such a good teacher, as I had the opportunity to observe so often as she taught the deaf sign language in the villages, but now I was getting to experience it from the other side and for some reason it was special.

I actually didn’t learn to crochet that day. But several days later after more practice, just like Nancy said, I completed my first corchet necklace.  As I proudly displayed the product of this newly acquired skill she seem to be just as proud as I was.

Nancy teaching Jessie 

Love Is A Verb

We serve a BIG God.  I typed that sentence while having the privilege of sitting looking out over a vast, roaring ocean.  While waiting for God to move this blog post in a certain direction that He desires it to go, that was the only thing I could think about.  I look out and see people sitting along the coast line, literally dwarfed by the trillions of gallons of water that serves as their background.  We serve and more importantly are loved by a God who put the moon at just the right distance that gives us beautiful waves in the ocean, that make the ocean look like a living, breathing entity.  Full of thousands of different species of fish that he all knows by name.  It’s easy to sit here and dwell on the intricacies of truly how tiny we are in the grand scheme of all of life on this earth.  That makes the fact that God is constantly, deeply knowing/loving me, us, and every other being on this planet all the more beautiful and amazing.  Almost every other religion in the world features a deity that is distant, unreachable, and too grand to be amongst men.  Thus, God humbling himself to give us Jesus, or Emmanuel meaning “God with us,” is what makes Him so amazing.  We have a God who is relational.  The Maker of Heaven and Earth wants to know us, are you freaking kidding me?  What a love.  The greatest love we will ever know, having the Holy Spirit, his presence, inside of us.  Here’s the hard part, God calls each of us to replicate His love for us to everyone (John 13:34-35).  I don’t know why, but for me it’s difficult to look past people’s fallacies and love wholeheartedly and unconditionally.  It’s a daily struggle to look on people as Christ views them, both holy and unblemished (if saved), or someone in desperate need of a savior and experiencing the love of God (if not saved).  Something that has greatly convicted me during my time in Honduras is that I am a direct reflection of God’s love to those who don’t know Him.  In America it’s very easy to fade into the background, just live your life, do what you want to do and overall not many people really care.  So going to Honduras and immediately realizing that wherever you go people stare at you, constantly watching, because that fallback of fading into the background is no longer there.  Thus, as to be expected given my struggles, I was exposed under the spotlight.  Then came the long process of coming to realize that I was being extremely selfish in not displaying the God I know, who loves me, to those around me.  It was much easier for me to talk about His love, His greatness, His forgiveness, than to show it.  Come to find out that love isn’t a noun, a thing to be talked about or discussed; rather it’s a verb, an ACTION word.  It requires hard work, dedication, discipline, and patience on a daily basis.  Its meeting people where they are at, showing them love the way that they need to see it, and using the love that they need to lift them up closer to Christ.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that any spiritual gifts given to us from God are meaningless without using it with/through/in love.  In the NASB version says that without love we become like “a noisy gong or clanging symbol.”  Have you ever heard someone just randomly bang away at a symbol not knowing what they were doing?  If not let me tell you, it’s quite annoying.  My family likes to tell a story about me that when I was 2 I went to my uncles wedding rehearsal dinner.  We were all seated at this big table, everyone in the family just chatting.  While I was seated in my high chair a saw a shiny metal object called a spoon.  My infant mind thought it would be fun to take the spoon and begin to create my own “7^th Symphony” with the noises that it could produce.  My dad told me that I would bang away on the table with that spoon creating the most unpleasant noise; whenever they took it away I always managed to find another one laying around somewhere and commence the banging all over again.  One of my uncles apparently couldn’t take it anymore and completely snapped at little 2 year old precious me.  I imagine that us using our gifts without love metaphorically sounds like 2 year old me banging on the table with a spoon to those we are trying to use or gifts with or for.  Every single thing we will ever do in this world hinges on how we love others in Christ’s name.  In many ways love is the gospel in action.  People can’t help but see love in other people and wonder where it is coming from.  If we are accurately displaying love selflessly it can only point to Jesus, since His was the most selfless love of all.  Isn’t that whole point of us being alive?         - By Daniel Fox