Dear family:
I’m going to see if I can jot off this letter. Ben has been invited over to
the Plowmans for this Sunday afternoon, so I have a little extra peace and
quiet. Sundays are different than the rest of the week, but not necessarily
filled with free time. By the time we get home from church and have lunch, it is
well into the afternoon. Then we usually call Daniel and I also call Ethel
Houck. There is the Sunday paper to read, and before you know it, time for
evening church. In the evening I try to get things set up for the next morning,
and the week begins again.
This past week began with about 17 inches of snow. Peter had two days off
from school. I try to keep Stephen and Christopher working some on snow days
just so we don’t get behind, but Stephen did spend most of Monday outdoors. It
was a very wet, heavy snow.
On Tuesday mornings I take Ben to story time at the library. While he is
listening to the stories, I collect the material for my MAFA lesson. From time
to time, and this week was one of those times, I discover a serious hole in the
library’s collection. My topic was Prussia, and the library had nothing. (They
are weak on almost all European history of the 17th/18th century. So I ended up
getting my material off the web at home, and joined Ben for story time. The
subject was supposed to be hats, but as a special treat, the Tooth Fairy came in
full costume and talked about the importance of brushing, etc. It didn’t go
over very well because the children of this age group have not lost any teeth
yet, so don’t have any knowledge of the tooth fairy, and they were vocally
disappointed that time ran out and the stories about caps and hats didn’t get
read.
We discovered this week that Ben has taken to wandering up to the office when
no one is there and phoning the Badorfs in Philadelphia. They are the bottom
button on David’s speed dialer. He loves to talk on the phone and often asks
to call someone. I’m sure he was delighted to figure out how to do it on his
own. David had to put a firm stop to that!
I got a hankering for Mom’s Chinese cookies, so I made a batch for the RSF
study Wednesday night. We began to wonder if anyone would show up, because
throughout the day David was receiving emails from students who said they would
have to miss because they were sick. The cold/flu is sweeping through the
campus, and just about everyone has a symptom or two. We ended up with a full
group, however, as some new students came and some showed up who probably should
have been in bed. A second Bible study is starting for students who can’t make
Wednesday nights. David also has his weekly leadership team meeting well under
way, so added to the Sunday School class he is teaching, he is quite busy
preparing these sessions. The students wanted to do a social event each Friday
night, but that has not been as well attended. Lehigh is probably one of the few
campuses where a Bible study draws more people than a social event!
This weekend is Pacing Break, and David invited the students who stayed on
campus to come for dinner Saturday night. We had four of them over and then
"the men" all went out to see a movie. It would be nice to have
students over for dinner more often, because they are very appreciative of a
family meal. David said they probably would have liked to come back to the house
after the movie, but he was tired and needed to prepare his Sunday School
lesson. Unfortunately, he found that his brand-new computer hard drive crashed,
and the printer also wouldn’t work. Computer problems have been a dominant
frustration and time-waster this semester, a real curse. We need to pray that we
solve these problems once and for all (if that’s possible). It’s
particularly essential to have reliable email because that is about the only way
the students communicate these days.
Another problem is, I’m sure, God’s sense of humor in humbling us. As a
teenager I remember laughing at what I thought was the silliness of some prayer
requests in the Saturday Night meeting. The ultimate, I thought, was when
someone requested prayer for their big toe. Well, David woke up in the middle of
the night because his big toe was causing him great pain – some infection had
gotten under the nail. He put on a drawing salve and that helped, and since then
some friends have suggested effective home remedies, but I must say that I
remember my youthful scorn with sheepishness now.
Peter’s Bible teacher asked David to come to the high school and teach his
classes tomorrow, to introduce the students to the Greek language. David called
Dad to get some advice about what to cover in a one-shot, 45 minute class
period. I think Peter is just hoping that David doesn’t embarrass him too
much. I told the boys about the time I came twenty minutes late to my college
mythology class, only to discover that my dad was substitute teaching! So Peter
had better not decide to cut class. He did get on the high honor roll again, by
the way, even with the sickness interrupting his semester exams. Since he is not
working at KFC now, David has hired him part-time to do work in the office. The
office badly needs attention, and I was very encouraged to see piles in David’s
part of the office being organized – that is, until I saw that they had simply
been moved out to be piles on the floor in the front office! I think David needs
to hire secretarial help that will be considerably more ruthless – like me!
I had a surprise on Thursday when the national director of MAFA walked into
my history class without any advance notice. As I mentioned before, my topic was
Prussia (Frederick William, the Great Elector; Frederick I, Frederick William I;
Frederick II, the Great). I must admit that I knew next to nothing about them
ahead of time, and it took me quite a while to sort them all out (Frederick I
was at first Frederick III, for instance, and Frederick William and Frederick
William I are not the same person but grandfather/grandson). So it wouldn’t
have been the subject I chose to be my showcase lesson. Nevertheless, I did find
the material unexpectedly interesting once I got into it, and the class went
well. I am struggling with whether or not I should continue teaching next year
because of the amount of time it takes, but I confess that I am learning a lot
that I either never knew or completely forgot.
Christopher, Stephen, and I went to see The Glass Menagerie at
Moravian College this week. I think the last time I saw or read the play was in
high school. It was unnerving to discover that seeing it now as a middle-aged
mother myself, I was much more sympathetic to the mother. Yikes!
On Friday nights Stephen and Ben go to Awana, a Bible club. This week we took
along a church friend of Stephen’s who then spent the night. He is a very
keyed up kind of boy, and my nerves were pretty frazzled just being in the car
with him! Then they were loaded with sugar as the Awana club celebrated
Valentine’s Day. Ben’s class had a giant pinata and fully half of his class
was out with flu, so he came home with a big bag of candy.
I was very happy to escape the next day to the genteel atmosphere of a fabric
store, where I went to view the prize-winning quilt that Phyllis and Charlene
(Coleman) made this past year. It was not only beautiful, but very creative and
original in its design. Phyllis came in from Ohio for this local showing on its
national tour, and the Coleman’s hosted a lunch so I was able to visit with
her and Charlene afterwards. That’s the week in review!