LORD, WHAT WILL I DO?

 

                                                  LORD, WHAT WILL I DO?

Rien left for the garden every morning at eight o’clock.  His work of training three young men to grow vegetables for profit, thus bringing agricultural economic development to the reserve, was the main reason we were there.  Yet I, too, had committed to being a voluntary service worker with the Mennonite Central Committee on the reserve.   We would both try to make friends and live out our faith in a positive way in the community, and I was involved now in the Cape Croker United Church Sunday School.  Yet, as I sipped coffee one morning after Rien had left, I wondered whether I would be doing anything more.

“Ri-i-i-n-n-n-g!”  My co-worker Gwen was on the phone, telling me about a meeting of the community ladies about starting a nursery school for the three-and-four-year-olds.  There had been one before, called “Playschool”, or “Babies Playing” in Ojibway.  Kindergarten tables and chairs had been donated by a United Church, but for some reason the Playschool had stopped, and the ladies wanted to start it again.

I cared very much about giving preschool children a good preparation for school, and I thought it would be doubly important here.  So I enthusiastically attended the meeting.  I had no idea that they wanted me to be the teacher!  My teaching credentials had again opened doors for me. 

I was excited.  What could be more important than teaching preschool children songs and stories to increase their vocabulary and concepts; to teach them number and language readiness, science and art; to get them used to being in a group and following routines; to help them with creative play, fine and large motor skills; to just plain love them and have fun?

But what amazed me was the way in which God had prepared me for this work. Unable to find a teaching job at first, after graduation, I had worked both in a daycare, then in a nursery school for underprivileged children run by the Family Services Agency where I was shifted around among three city locations, thereby learning three times as many songs, ideas and approaches as I would have learned in just one.  This work with early childhood professionals helped my kindergarten work greatly when I did get a teaching job.  But now I was totally ready to become the Playschool teacher and fulfill my passion for helping the reserve children get a head start.  God had prepared me for His purposes on this reserve long before I ever knew that we would be coming here. 

Again: All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.(Psalm 139:16 NIV)