For the last two weeks, we have been involved in intensive teacher training programs in the area of learning difficulties and special education. For many years we have accepted children who could not make it in the public schools and we have been overjoyed to see them do well in our school. But many times we have felt inadequate as we attempted to help these children. So with the generous help from Paul Odham, we decided to do something about this.
Paul traveled to Colombia two weeks ago and we immediately began to train our teachers and open the conferences up for teachers in the public educational system as well. We generously include Biblical texts and Christian principles in our teaching as well as standard methodologies. In this way we not only help with improving education but we open doors for the Gospel as well.
We began as soon as Paul arrived, preparing the very next day to leave for Villavicencio and to work with the school there. We traveled down to Villavicencio in spite of the serious land slides blocking the roads after the severe earthquake in late May. We began our seminars the next morning for our own teachers and any public school teacher who was off in the morning. In the afternoon we had a session directed at the public school teachers who worked in the morning. The evenings were filled with seminars directed at parents and the ways in which they can help. The seminars lasted the entire day with only a very short break for lunch. In order to fit in all of the seminars we skipped supper.
We traveled back up to Bogotá and began seminars here that next week. We had two seminars in a large public school in the South end of Bogotá. The teachers were thrilled and literally begged for more. Paul generously agreed to come back next year to help them out. We heard reports only days later that they were already using and benefiting from the teaching. They were effusive in their praise and thanks. Brother Paul had done a great job and they were thrilled.
The latter part of the week we headed up to a private school on the North end of Bogotá that caters to the very wealthy. Not even their teachers had received any training in this area and so they were very appreciative. This seminar also served to open many doors to ministry in areas and ways we could never have imagined. They even offered us the free use of their 2,000 seat stadium for the conferences next year.
After working Paul to the point of collapse, on Saturday I took him and Dewayne Liebrandt, up to the mountain top outside of Bogotá, where they could appreciate the immense size of Bogotá. It was the first time either had done any sight seeing, as we normally use all of the time for work. On Sunday Paul had an excellent teaching on the Biblical principles of sound business practice.
It was a great end to two great weeks of teaching and sharing. We took Paul to the airport this morning and with him he carried the appreciation and gratitude of nearly five hundred teachers and parents who had been impacted by his teaching and by the Gospel. God truly opens great doors of service for us!