Stars

Its 8:00, later than I usually stay up, but I was captivated by the stars.  I know at home we don’t see them all that clear, but here they are great.  I was walking back to the appt, when I noticed them.  I just kind of had to stand in awe of them.  Some bible verses came to mind about the stars and the heavens, but that’s not what hit me.  What hit me was not so much about the stars themselves, but about music.  The hymns we sing, the praise songs we sing are being sung straight to God.  The writers know that and so should we, but somewhere between the repetitions of singing them I seem to have forgotten to whom I sing.  I’ve forgotten that the God I’m singing to created the heavens and all that in them is.  Sometimes we sing the songs so flippantly, so arrogantly, so disrespectfully that I don’t think that God would have us sing to him at all.  It's not just praise music, I’ve seen it and probably done it in hymns and praise music.  As Louis Gigleo would say we need to re-right size God.  I think sometime we forget that, God isn’t our size; he has a canvas the size of the sky that he paints on.  Well, that’s my ah-ha moment for right now, it came from God to me and I hope it touches you too.

Happy and Sad

This I guess is another week down and one more closer to the time when I go home.  This week holds some pretty cool things hopefully.  I know at the end of the week I’ll be saying goodbye to the 3^rd quarter and saying hello to the 4^th quarter.  That means that there is only 49 days of school left, a week of vacation, then HOME……well really not home, but I hear that I might actually get to see all my immediate family at the airport.  I had thought that I wouldn’t, but that could make anyone’s day.  Even though I’ll be severely jetlagged at that point, I’ll be very grateful to see everyone. 

 

This week has certainly started out much better than last week, although, I have a strain of the flu virus.  Kind of frustrating, but hey, what can I do?  I will say that being this far from home is tough to be sick.  When you don’t have mom to take care of you, you have to do a lot to keep well.(I know mom, you are feeling bad about that)  It's all good though, you brought me up well enough to know how to take care of myself to get myself well again. 

 

Today is the funeral of the student that died last week.  I don’t know exactly what to expect by it, but hey, it gets me out of a few hours of classes, which I have to say I’m not to sad about it. 

 

One of my fellow teachers said to me at the beginning of the year that they weren’t sure whether or going to funerals of people we didn’t know was very good.  Now that I’ve been to one that is of someone I knew, I think I’d much rather go to one that I really didn’t know the person.  Whereas the funeral is much different than in the states, they are interesting over here.  My student didn’t look anything like him, which I’m sure is because they couldn’t get him to look right after him hanging himself.  Honestly I hope it is the last funeral that I have to go to in quite some time; they certainly aren’t the most fun use of my time. 

 

The last few weeks have been very tension filled; I hope that for the next few weeks it cools down for a while.  Although another one of our teachers is leaving this next Monday, health reasons as well I guess.  I guess I should start getting used to it by now, from now on, when the end of April hits we will slowly start loosing them.  So long as we don’t loose any more students, that is the important thing. 

 

Well this blog takes me to two very big days of my life.  First is Beth and my one year anniversary.  Kind of hard to believe, but it is true.  The second event is the start of 4^th quarter.  The beginning of the end, the tail end, the closing, there are many names for it, but the meaning is still the same, me being home and sooner and sooner than it has been. 

 

I’m not exactly sure how many days it is now, but I know it should be somewhere into the 70’s now.  I know that it is right around 10 weeks, which would be exactly 70, but I know that I’m not leaving on the last day of classes; I’m waiting a half a week for graduation.  I guess I should say I’m hopefully waiting for graduation.  I’m waiting assuming that it happens on time.  IF it is late, then I’m not going to be there for the end, I’ll only be there for the beginning.  I guess I’ll have to wait and see what is going to happen. 

A few more notes of sadness

Well, I just got my blog updated again and what do you know, more things happen.  Today is Sunday and usually Sunday’s are met with joyous singing, but this Sunday isn’t really. 

 

Over the next few days and weeks, everyone will be forced to deal with the following situations in their own way.  The way in which they deal with them will depict how the year ends for them.

 

The first thing that makes it not a good day is the fact that one of our teachers learned this morning that she wouldn’t be able to finish out the year here, about 1.5 months ago she got the normal rounds of pink eye.  It's not that uncommon to get when you are an elementary teacher, but none the less she got it.  Right off the bat it was bad, she was down for nearly 3 weeks with it, but when she went into the doctor the last time he told her that there were abrasions on the eye that Herpes simplex had gotten into.  They had thought that the normal regimens of antibiotics would cure her of it, but they haven’t.  She was told that she probably should go home to get it taken care of.  At this stage in the game going home means not coming back either, it's just too late.  Her roommate and appt. mates are taking it really hard, and to be quite honest, I am not keen on the idea either, she is one of my good friends here, but being in the medical field I know what just days and weeks can mean in treatment. 

 

The other thing that happened today is something that very few teachers really have to deal with in the states, but seems to be rampant here.  Many teachers attend the funerals of their students, but this next week I will be attending the funeral of a freshman named Ernib committed suicide last night late.  I really didn’t know anything bad was going on in his life, but apparently there was.  All of you who read this blog, will you pleas keep this students family in your prayers, I can’t imagine what it must be like to loose a son in such a tragic way. 

 

I can only hope that the way I handle these situations will allow me to be able to thrive in them. 

 

I’m sorry my update really hasn’t brought any joy, believe me, I haven’t had any in writing it, but I know that God has a plan in everything that happens. 

 

I guess one very exciting thing is, if nothing happens, I will be returning home in 3 months.  I’ll try to keep updating this blog as often as I can.

 

In His Service,

 

Stephen Baker, Majuro

A much needed update

Dear Reader

 

I realize it has been nearly forever since I’ve updated my blog, for that I’m eternally sorry.  I promised at the beginning of the blog that I would do my best to keep it up and I think the last blog I put up was saying I wouldn’t be able to post as often.  Well now I’m looking at the middle of February and I haven’t posted since the beginning of January.  I really don’t have much of a good excuse and it’s certainly not because I haven’t done anything in the past 6 weeks.  So I’ll try to start from the beginning. 

 

Just after Christmas some friends and I decided to go island hopping.   This is a very fun sport and you do it when the tide is out.  You see how many islands you can walk out to without getting caught by the tide and have to swim back in.  We were on our first island and one of the other teachers, April, decided to chase a gecko around a tree and slipped on the coral rock and sliced her knee open.  She was bleeding pretty good and decided to forgo her trip, she went promptly to the hospital and got 4 stitches in it and stayed off her leg for quite some time. 

 

New Years was ok, I felt that it was more of a milestone than really a holiday.  I did however do what I normally do, sleep the New Year in.  That has been my tradition for many years, why let a good thing like that go?  The next big thing to happen was school starting. 

 

School starting was a big excitement and some anxiety on my part.  I had asked the administration to be able to keep my senior Calculus class, I really loved working with them and I just didn’t want to loose them.  They told me that I would probably loose them because I needed to open up another section of biology.  I told them to do what they thought was necessary.  They decided that I could keep my calculus class, give up my free period and give me biology too.  What it really boils down to is I have a lot of classes to keep up with.  I go for 7 straight periods on Friday’s without a break and go for almost 5 without a break on weekdays. 

 

The next thing of excitement was announced in our staff worship.  A Pilipino lady was deathly in need of some blood, she is anemic.  Unlike the states, you have to find your own donors for blood here.  It isn’t too hard for Marshallese people, they all have the same blood, but this lady was B+.  I have B+ blood, so I went down and had my blood typed and within 13 hours of hearing about the need I was giving blood to a very thankful lady and her family.  At the time I didn’t get to meet the lady, she was in intensive care, but later about a month later to be exact, she came around the school to thank me personally.  That is one thing you don’t get in the states when you donate blood, you usually don’t know who it goes too. 

 

A few days after that another very special day came.  Our Chaplin from UC decided to do the island hopper and come and visit all of us in the islands.  Our island was the last one, but I was super excited, he brought with him my new computer and just a familiar old face.  The 2.5 days that he was here was busy with teaching, talking, and transferring data from the computer he was taking back with him.  It seemed like sooner than I wanted, he was heading back toward Hawaii and leaving me back alone again. 

 

Another very exciting day came just the next week.  I figured that I needed to think about booking my tickets home, so I talked to the principle and he said ya, go for it.  I went down to the ticket place and told them what I wanted and they started to work on it.  I wanted to leave on 1 June and get to Denver ASAP.  They said ya, you are on the flight at 8:00 PM evening of the 1^st.  But then the bad news came, they couldn’t get me out of Hawaii until August.  I was very confused, but we finally got it worked out and I have my tickets booked.  I will be coming home on 1 June and arriving in Denver on 2 June at 1022 AM.  It is really nice to have a specific day to look forward too.  I can’t tell you how nice it feels.  I know it is still quite a way off, but by the time this is posted it will be 98 days until I’m back stateside. 

 

The weeks of January seemed to fly bye and stand still at the same time, there were 5 weeks in January, so it seemed like it would never end, but February is going really fast.  It is exactly 4 weeks start to finish. 

 

This month has gone pretty well so far.  There was only one major hiccup; I got a virus on my computer that ended up being a boot sector virus, so my computer wouldn’t even start up.  With reformatting my computer I lost some very valuable information, but I guess what is done is done and I now know to keep more backups.  My computer is now back up totally and working fine again. 

 

Teaching as those of you who have been teachers is sometimes really cool and sometimes very frustrating.  I had a really cool experience today however.  I was working with a new student; she came in really late and totally in mid stride.  We are working on Organic Chemistry in the class that she is in.  She didn’t know anything about it, but now with some help is doing quite well.  It’s amazing to see student learning and excelling in things that they didn’t think they could do.  Well, I guess I’m done for now, my bell just rang and I need to go teach my 2^nd class of biology. 

 

Well an unexpected turn of events allowed me to write during a class period that I wouldn’t normally have off.  Our seniors are taking some sort of entrance test for the local “college” so much as it is, I don’t even know if they are a full 2 year college. 

 

It’s amazing how much we do here.  Now that I’m no the tail side of the school year, I can see so much that we as teachers have done, sometimes if you just look at the here and now you don’t see anything that you are doing, but on the other hand when you look at the past 7 months nearly, you see a great work that we as teachers have done.  Since we are on the tail end you get to see a lot of different things that you don’t normally see.  I wish I had time to talk about what all was happening here, but alas I don’t. 

 

I’ll tell one more funny story before I save this and get it ready to be posted on my blog.  Sabbath afternoon we were all just kind of relaxing when we see two police officers.  They were running off across the “lawn.”  Police don’t usually come on campus, but this time they did.  We all kind of just watched them.  We were very curious as to what was going on. (so was half the island so it seemed)  It turned out that there was a kid that had gotten drunk that they were going after.  He decided that they probably wouldn’t chase him into the ocean so that’s where he headed.  A few of us were waiting for him to pass out and drown, but he never did, he just worked his way down the coast walking in the ocean, the police, as far as we know, never set foot in the water, it was just kind of funny.  This is the first time that I’ve seen a police chase really be a spectator sport. 

 

Well this update takes me up to the 3 month mark.  I’m not exactly sure what’s going to happen in the last 3 months, but as you’ve been reading, I’ve had some pretty cool adventures.  I have no doubt that the last 3 months will be just as fun filled and action packed as the first 7 months have been. 

 

Well, this is long and I should probably get this ready to post.  I hope all you are having good years.  I know I am.  Take care.

 

In His Service,

 

Stephen Baker

Sadness

A note of sadness for all my loyal readers.  Our school decided to drop internet service.  I'll drop blog updates as much as I can, but it won't be very often.

Christmas in the Tropics

This is kind of an update that I wrote about the whole year, its quite long, so have fun, sit back and see how my love was......

This is a long needed and over due update to my blog, for my faithful followers, sorry that it has taken me this long to get this caught up.  To those of you who are just finding me, I’ll fill you in on what’s happening this year.  I guess this will take the form of a “year in review.”  I guess I’ll start from about a year ago. 

 

I hailed in the new year as I usually do, sleeping right through it, I figure there is no reason to stay up that late because, there isn’t anyone to stay up with and it will come whether I want it to or not.  Everyone that was home decided to turn in at about 10:00 and I might have stayed up until 10:30, but that was it.  I was kind of savoring the “liberating” experiences of the past few months when my girlfriend at the time broke up with me. 

 

At this point in time I was in the middle of signing up to become a Student Missionary.  I had filled out the necessary paperwork and such.  I had all my money to the college, at that point I was just waiting to see where God wanted me.   Since I was enjoying this time of no serious relationships, I figured that I would extend it through my year abroad.  I thought that would be a good idea.  Union cautions against it, they don’t say you can’t go if you have a relationship, but they do say that it’s easier if you don’t have one. 

 

Sticking to that theme, I wasn’t even looking for a relationship.  Second semester started and my favorite job started, I was a teacher in the EMT program, I love that job and miss it greatly right now.  I teach with about 15 other people and we all just do what is necessary to keep the head instructors sane. 

 

At this point in life God decided to throw me a curve ball.  He decided to let me work with a girl named Beth Cook, a very able and willing EMT that had transferred in that year from Washington State.  I wasn’t sure how well we hit it off, but she seemed cool and very knowledgeable in the area we were teaching together.  The next day break started and so I worked on an email to send to her thanking for her expertise and saying it was good to work with her.  I worked for 3 days on it.  I didn’t want to make any hit of me trying to flirt or go after her or anything, just a professional email.  I’ve been known to flirt and its gotten me in trouble a few times. 

 

I finally got it sent and within hours I had a response, I thought that kind of odd, people don’t usually respond that fast, but we exchanged real email addresses and started talking on IM.  I remember the night well.  We were talking and I was listening to songs on my computer, the song came up on my playlist, “Cosmic Cowboy,” by Berry McGuire.  I thought she might like to hear it, so I sent it to her, she loved it.  I thought that kind of odd, most people can’t relate to it.

 

I told my parents about this friend of mine, they just made playful jokes that she must be a good girl, if she likes those songs.  I couldn’t really disagree.  For the next month or so we just talked as we found time, not super often, but we did spend time together.  One night I asked her what her plans were over Spring Break.  She said she was going to go to Moab for Spring Break.  I said, kind of in jest, well if it falls through you could come to my house for break.  Not thinking much of it I just left it there.  I didn’t think about it until Beth said that she was wondering if the offer still stood.  I was frantic; I hadn’t asked my parents or anything.  I told her I’d get back to her.  I called my parents and told them the situation, and that I hadn’t really intended on her saying yes when I asked her, they understood and said yes.  They were hesitant because my last ex had spent the last Spring Break with us and it wasn’t a good thing.  I assured them that Beth wasn’t anything like my ex. 

 

As the time got closer I was kind of getting excited, I still had my plan with God, but I didn’t know how Beth fit into this plan that I thought God had given me.  Usually I didn’t have anyone ride with me, so I was used to quite for 7 hours other than the occasional call from home or to home telling them where I was at.  This trip however would be different; we talked the whole 7.5 hours home nonstop.  We talked about tons of different things, likes, dislikes, family, friends, past relationships, you name it.  It was pretty cool, but as we got closer to home, Beth became quieter and quieter, she was kind of scared to meet my parents, there wasn’t anything I could do to change it either. 

 

We finally made the last right turn and were home.  There were big hugs waiting for both of us.  My parents and Beth hit it off really well.  Better than I had thought possible.  We did all sorts of stuff over the break, we walked the dogs, we went to museums, we played games, watched movies, and most of all got to know each other. 

 

I asked Beth one question important question…no not to marry me, you are jumping way to far ahead in the story….I asked her why my email had sparked that much interest, it didn’t have any spark in it, I made sure of it.  What she said scared me, she said I know, that’s what made part of it.  The other part was God was pointing her toward me for the past 3-4 months or so.  That was her last test, and I guess without knowing it I passed with flying colors.  That break to I got to meet one of Beth’s cousins, Mic.  She was about to fly out to Washington I think, and she and her boyfriend Andrew met us at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.  We had a ball of a time, it was so much fun.

 

It was after that week that felt that it was Gods plan that we should persue a relationship together.  We didn’t know exactly how it was going to work, but we decided that as long as we both kept God #1 we would be ok with it. 

 

The second toughest day of the year or so I thought came about 3 months later when I said goodbye for what we knew would be quite some time.  I don’t think either of us realized how long it would be or how hard it would be.  Beth headed to North Platte to do her open water cirtification and I was heading home to spend a few days of break before heading to LE for the summer. 

 

The 2 months of LE seemed to go extremely fast, the communication between Beth and I was kind of difficult, we did our best, but our schedules didn’t mesh that well, once a week was about max, but we learned to deal with it and dare I say thrive on it.  Soon enough the summer was done.  The stories of the summer are totally amazing and need to be told, but in another place and another time. 

 

The hardest day I had ever had was when my parents dropped me off at the airport.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the next time I would see my parents, I’d be a very changed man, emotionally, physically and spiritually.  Some would have a hard time recognizing me later on.  The first leg of the trip wasn’t to bad, I sat next to a very nice older couple who go from Illinois to Texas every year, they used to drive, but got to old for that so started flying, we talked most of the way to Dallas, so it didn’t give me much of a chance to think.  The second leg of the trip did however give me time to think, we were in bound into Hawai’i and that is a longer flight.  The “fun” of the trip was still on me though, so I didn’t feel it yet.  It wasn’t until I landed and called my parents to tell them that I had a safe trip that I realized how far from home I was. 

 

WE spent the better part of 3 days in Hawai’i and most of that time was in meetings and activities that were supposed to “help” us when we got to our schools, I’m not so sure it helped, but it’s a nice thing to think.  The thing that made it seem less like half way around the world was Pastor Rich and a few of my friends that were there.  It kind of just felt like just being at some sort of Union event. 

 

I didn’t realize it during the summer, but only being able to talk to Beth once a week really worked out to our advantage, it made the transition to the school year were we only get to talk once a week also a lot easier. 

 

Soon enough the 3 days were over and we were having to wake up at 2 am just to catch our flight to the islands.  We boarding our plane and taking off.  That flight was a bit of a slap in the face by reality, I was leaving some of my friends, but I still had a few with me.

 

Our island is the first island that is stopped on, so my flight was shorter than the rest of the groups.  I’m not sure that reality was really working at that point, I was in a jet lagged state and all I wanted to do was sleep.  But like a good traveler I adjusted to the new time zone and went to bed in the new time zone.  The next morning reality hit me again when I realized that communication with the mainland would be very tough.  I talk to my parents very often normally, but here…….not so much.  I did make brief contact to say that I was here safely.  The next few days were spent in getting classroom, lesson plans, and appt set up.  I was also working on getting communications up and running better. 

 

Teachers are always told that the first day of class is the most vital day; it will tell you what the rest of the year will be.  So the first morning I walked into my classroom with an Iron Fist.  By the end of the first day I was feeling pretty good.  It wasn’t the easiest day, but it wasn’t the Hellish day that some of my esteemed collogues said they had, so I thought this is going to be pretty easy.  I’m not so sure now that easy is the right word, but for me, teaching defiantly isn’t the hard part. 

 

Having been pretty closely tied to teaching my whole life I’ve picked up skills and resources.  Having taught in many different levels has given me some experience.  This isn’t to say that I know everything about teaching, but I think I have a good grasp on it. 

 

I would learn in the later months that teaching wasn’t my hard part, it was friends here.  I don’t make friends that easily.  It takes a lot and it’s usually easier for me to make friends that are girls.   I leaned a big lesson during the summer that I had to be especially careful about how I treated girls lest they get the wrong idea.  Knowing that I made myself very distant for a long time until I felt comfortable that no one was going to “jump” me, and get me in trouble with relationships.  As I would later tell my mom, “Beth is THE priority; I won’t let anyone get in the way of that.” 

 

There are way too many stories to tell from the first 5 months of my life here in Majuro that I’ll tell as I get time. 

 

I’m writing this at the end of the first 5 months; just too kind of chronicle the first half.  I know from experience that the second half goes faster than the first, and I hope that continues to hold true.  I think most of the teachers here are ready to head home for some time of rest, but we all know that we have 5 more months.  As for me, I have 7 more months before I go home.  I fly straight to Denver for my summer LE job again.  Then I get some time at home.  But Denver is 1/10^th of the distance I am right now and certainly in the Verizon network. 

 

I guess that’s what I’ve got for now.  I’ll add more when the end of second semester comes I guess.  

Has it really been a month?

I have noticed something very frustrating; it's been a long time since I’ve been able to update my blog. This isn’t for lack of trying to, but the internet connection here isn’t the greatest and it just makes it very hard. I’ve been sending emails to some of the people I have time to do, so I think I’ll just take excerpts from them and post here. I hope all of you are doing well.

So I had just about the coolest experience that I’ve had since I got here. It happened on Friday. Every Friday there is a bake sale for one of the graduating classes. This past week it was the kindergarten class, they have to “pay” for their graduation. I let my class out a bit early so that they could go and buy; mostly it was just sugary stuff so I of course didn’t buy anything. I cam back to the appt. to change after school so that I could go run so errands before Sabbath, when I went back by one of the teachers was like come over here and buy something. I had already eaten lunch, so really wasn’t hungry, but those little kindergartners are so cute, so I was like ok, fine. They had some banana bread so I was like how much is it? They said it was $1.50 so I walked back to the appt., and I grabbed a $10 bill. I had fully intended on just buying one, but they were like if you buy 3 then you get a free drink, I don’t know why I did, I wasn’t thirsty, but I did it, I also said something else that kind of surprised me, I said keep the change, I paid with $10 and my stuff didn’t cost more than $4.50. They were stunned and I walked off. I then started to wonder what I was going to do with 3 loaves of fresh banana bread. I saw one of my fellow teachers that I don’t get along with very well and threw one to him. I then saw 3 of my students sitting in the grass and they didn’t have food, so I went over and I gave them 2 loaves to share. I left feeling really good, I walked back toward my classroom and they stopped me again and said that since I’d paid “so” much they wanted to give me one more loaf. I then told them that I hadn’t bought them to eat, I bought them because it was a good cause, I’d just given all 3 loaves away and if I was given another one I’d do the same thing again. I left them stunned again. It was pretty much the coolest thing I know.

I hope this experience blesses you as much as it blessed me when it happened to me. I know that it was God working through my actions. I didn’t want to buy, I didn’t need to buy, for sure didn’t need to leave them the change, but I did all of that, I can only say it was because of God. I don’t know of any way other than that to describe it.

So we heard someone speak from the Diabetes center here, the statistics were alarming. 35% of those that are 15 have diabetes, and once you get to 35, you have a greater chance of having diabetes than you don’t. It's pretty sad, most all the diabetes here is type 2, so as you know it's preventable, but no one cares. That’s the even sadder thing.

Yesterday I had someone from the accreditation team sit in on one of my classes, it was kind of odd, we were just working on homework, so he sat and watched us work on it, at the end he had a couple questions then he left. This, so far, is the easiest accreditation I’ve been through. They are so laid back it's not even funny, they didn’t even ask to see my lesson plans or my grade book. That is usually SOP, but hey I’m not complaining, if they would have asked, they wouldn’t have found anything to exciting, just that I’m exactly where I should be and everything is up to date and entered.

The above has been kind of an excerpt from what I’ve been doing for the last little bit. Now I’m going to add what I’ve been doing recently. Things have been going really good, I have absolutely no complaints. I was asked by one of my friends back at school if I at all regret coming here, and I have to say no I really don’t. As hard as it is being away from family and friends, I know that God has blessed me far beyond my imagination could ever say.

I was saddened as most of you were by the news that 4 young men died in a car accident. They were all students of PUC. As you know, I don’t attend PUC, but it hits us all that they died. One of the teachers here was good friends with all of them, so she is taking it pretty hard. I looked at the comments that have been left on the PUC website and it was amazing the support that everyone, not just PUC students are giving them. There were students, faculty, and divisions that were all stopping by to give condolences. It was really touching. Even though we are “rival” colleges, it's nice to know that in everyone’s time of need that the other colleges are there to give support.

Well, I should probably wrap this up; I’ll update this when I can. I hope you guys are all doing well, and I really apologize to my loyal readers for not getting this updated any sooner.