The Reason I Teach

Wow! What a week! Last week was really rough, but after the events of this week, I know it was all worth it. I had the awesome privilege of leading two of my students to the Lord this week.
Thursday we had a special chapel with a guest speaker from North Carolina. He was incredible. He spoke for an hour and my kids had no problems paying attention! That's saying a lot! After school that day, two of my students stayed after school to talk to me about being saved. One child, we will call him Brian, was just asking a lot of questions, but the other student, we will call him Tim, said he was ready to be saved. I, of course, was a bit nervous as I had never done this before, but I knew that the Lord would give me the words to say. And sure enough, the Holy Spirit had done the convicting, and Tim was ready to be saved. It was an incredible experience! I didn't think it could be any better than that! Until the next day.
Today, I was able to lead another child to Christ! He stayed after school and when I came back in the room and asked him what he needed, with tears in his eyes, he replied, "I'm ready to be saved". My first thought was, "Oh no! What if I do it wrong?", but I quickly changed my attitude and knew I could do it with the Lord's help. I sat down with him and started to talk with him about it, but every thing I would say, he would say, "I know Ms. Oldenettel. I just need to get saved." I cut the whole speech short and got right to the point. I asked him if he had any more questions or if he was ready to be saved. He assured me again that he was ready. So we prayed together. After we prayed, we were sitting there on the floor talking about heaven, and all of a sudden, he was crying, and looked over at me and launched himself at me to give me a hug. Now, this is a pretty huge deal for him, because he does not like to hug or be close, or be emotional in any way. He hugged me for at least a minute. Then we talked about how we can have fun in heaven together. It was the most incredible, amazing experience I have ever had. That was by far the best moment of my school year thus far. The Lord is definitely working in my classroom and I am so thankful that He led me to this school. My heart was originally in the public school because it is such a great mission field, but I can definitely see that my mission field this year is in the Christian school and it is just as great a mission field.
All of those bad days last week are pushed toward the very back of my mind because this is the reason I teach. I teach to make a difference. I teach because I want these kids to go to heaven and if I can influence one of them to love the Lord more, it is all worth it in the end.

Where Are You John Deere?

Walruses are brown, but wait, you already knew that anyway. This is my corner of the internet where I can share my joys, trials, and ideas with the world.

To start things off right, I thought I would begin with a story from earlier this year. Recess had just ended and the first and second graders were lining up to go inside, when I heard one little boy shouting in the background. He was holding up a green sweatshirt and saying, "Someone left their sweatshirt on the fence!" After taking a look at the front of the green sweatshirt where it had a yellow and black emblem, he said, "John Deere, you left your sweatshirt on the fence! John Deere, I have your sweatshirt!" Of course, I found this to be quite hilarious, but he was genuine in his search for John Deere. I finally just had to say that we would put it in lost and found and the owner would find it there. Kids can be so funny!