During our time so far teaching our new ESL classes, we've gotten to see some real change. Not that our students are now able to speak the English language overnight, but our students' progress is noticeable. It's awesome to see them so excited to learn. There's this one student, Maria - a woman in her 50's with two kids. Maria is a great student and loves learning; she's always the first one to raise her hand to answer a question in class. We got to talking during the break one night and I asked her what was her drive behind her studious manner and positive attitude. "I don't want to clean rooms my whole life," she told me.
I got to thinking about this. It's so easy to get around if you speak the language; it's just something we take for granted. But for others, everyday is a real struggle. But with this struggle, there is also real drive and real hope - and that's where the best parts of people come out: the plain willpower people have to improve themselves and aim for a something higher than they are.
Maria is an exceptional student; I am sure that if she continues on this path, she will be speaking English fluently very soon. But there's a lesson in this for us, too: all the things we take for granted and the power inside of ourselves that we are very rarely asked to extract . . . if we were ever forced to reach higher and fulfill our the potential that God has given us, what incredible and beautiful things would we find? What would we be capable of? For Maria, it starts with learning English. Where does yours begin?
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