After the meal was finished and
pictures were taken, we all agreed to go for a walk around the
lake. This was a wonderful opportunity for last one-on-one conversations
with my students. It was a chance to encourage them and to express
my bright hopes for their futures. Some of those students I’m
incredibly proud of—they’ve worked hard and achieved
a lot during the time I’ve known them. Others don’t
have the skill level I wish they did, but my father always said
that a teacher can only work with what the students have to offer.
I’ve done what I can to make these students more prepared
for the world beyond college and, without a doubt, their English
is better for having had me as their foreign teacher than had
they not.
With English as a common tool among them, they will branch off
in many directions. One top student has found a job as a translator
for a Chinese company abroad. Several are headed to Guangdong
to earn their fame and fortune in the business world. Others are
headed to richer provinces to work in middle schools of high repute.
But most of them will find their way back to their hometowns,
because being close to their families is what is truly important
to them. These are the students who lie closest to my heart because
it is in them that the future of China is invested. What they
teach their students is what future generations of Chinese people
will come to think of the outside world. I hope it’s a good
impression we’ve left.
As they all go out to make their own way in the world, I have
hope for my students because they’re bright kids, and they’re
good kids. But I also have my fears. Because they have studied
hard in school, this means they’ve spent so much time with
their noses in books that they haven’t spent much time experiencing
the world around them. As they go forth from the protective walls
of academia, they will meet all kinds of people from whom they
will learn all kinds of things, both good and bad. Please join
me in my prayers that these students, and graduates like them
all around the world, will find enough success to encourage them
and enough failure to inspire them, enough friendship to bond
them yet enough freedom to allow them to pursue their own dreams,
and enough dishonesty to keep them honest but enough love to know
that there are always those who care. May they find God’s
peace and grace in abundant quantities as offered by His children
worldwide.
Sincerely,
Rebecca Montgomery
The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
86 |
