Two funny moments come to my mind from our TESOL time.

Moment #1

This is just an embarrassing moment for me, but it still makes me laugh. Let me introduce you to Doug. This is our TESOL instructor, the same one who taught me back in 2010. He’s a one-of-a-kind teacher.

Doesn’t he look like the kind of guy who deserves a noogie? If you knew him, you would agree. He likes to crack jokes and tease so he really does deserve a noogie.

Well he was being his usual self, teasing me for something or other, doesn’t matter. I’ll just tell you here that I was not in my right mind, I had just returned from a crazy bus ride that lasted all night and I was still reeling from the lack of sleep.

Doug made some smart remark and I simply responded with “Oh I just want to give you a noogie!” At least that’s what I said in my head. What actually came out was not noogie, but wedgie. Two very different things let me tell you. We had a good laugh about that one for quite a while.

Moment #2

Now that I have described Doug a bit you might also sympathize with what happened one day in class. Doug was teaching along, doin his thang. My fellow ruffians, Allison and Joanne, and I had had enough of his jackaboo antics and thought ‘we’ll teach him!’ We stormed the classroom and took over! Mutiny happened in Ternopil!

Yep, this really did happen. We tied him up, duct taped his bearded face, shoved him to the back of the class and took over the classroom. We taught for the rest of the day while he had to just sit there and listen.

The only referendum I have to make to this story is that it was actually Doug’s idea. Yeah, he wanted some fun way to change gears in the teaching and to introduce Allison, Joanne, and I to teaching the class. We taught on what it was like to use English in missions. He talked us into the mutiny idea, but we sure enjoyed doing it though!

TESOL has invaded Ternopil!!

It was a quick attack. They came, learned, and left. It was a whirlwind tour, some of us barely made it, most survived though.

They can be a scary bunch, just look at them.

Heebie jeebies all over. Intimidation is their game.

They come from all walks of life, from age ranges of 17 to 56, from Russia to New Zealand, from the USA to Ukraine. Throw in Canada for good measure and you got a crazy bunch of eager learners ready to tackle any bit of information!

They took on the English language with no fear! Sentence inversion you say? No problem! Gerunds? Piece of cake! Subjunctive adverbs? Don’t make me laugh! By the third week this ruthless bunch was begging for more.

Not only did they wrestle English into submission, they had time for working with English in a missions setting. You think English is tough enough for you? Try understanding how to use it in ministry overseas! We fed this class all they could handle on understanding cultures in the classroom, when to charge for a class and when not to, how and when to use evangelism in the classroom, working with limited resources, working with other organizations, having a multi-leveled class… I won’t overwhelm you with all the topics, you weren’t part of this English eating class.

At the end of three weeks we fed them English from a distance, with a stick. Don’t let their sweet smiles fool you, they were ravenous!

A connection is made (or reconnection, depending on view).

A teaching opportunity.

A sudden invitation.

A bumpy bus ride.

Arrive at a home in the Карпа́ты or Carpathians.

Teaching with Lance

I had the great opportunity to teach in the Carpathians along with three others, Andri, Allison and Lance. We were asked to staff a retreat time for the staff of the Ternopil Missions Institute. This was their first staff retreat and the first time they had someone come to do any teaching.

Building team

We had fun partaking in team building games, relaxing together, teaching, praying, and some sightseeing. We taught on topics such as team, relationships, unity, confrontation, and healthy boundaries. We did a lot of debriefing which is basically taking a step back and reflecting on what has happened both good and bad in the past years. This team of people had never been able to have someone help guide them through this process. Allison and I helped them create a timeline and go through all the fun and happy memories to the sad and tearful memories.

Seeing a castle

Not always easy to get a picture while I’m teaching, but here is one while I was closing up our time of creating a timeline. The hanging green, blue, and purple chickens in the background were used to create a mobile to demonstrate how taking away one piece will completely alter the mobile. Each piece needs each other to balance and it will take time to adjust when one piece is taken away. The same applies to a team or family when one member leaves. Transition takes time and will cause some imbalance at first.

Funny moment from our last week of English For Missions.

We were watching a few videos on line dancing during our break (I don’t remember how we got onto that topic.) I looked over at Valya and said, “Valya you would make a great cowgirl.” She had started to walk toward the door but stopped and gave me a confused look. “This has something to do with cows? Cow and girl?”

We all burst into laughter as we imagined the sort of thoughts that were going through Valya’s mind. We explained that a cowboy and cowgirl are people who work with cows, not look like cows. Apparently she always wondered why we said cowboys…