Be Here Now

I’m sooooooo glad to be in this country! I like to teach my intermediate class a lot. Today we were discussing what it is to have a live changing experience. After an introduction I asked the class to write a short paragraph about their own life changing experiences that they had gone through. They all went deep! Every one of them sheared some extremely powerful and sometimes tragic stories. One student talked about the day he watched his girlfriend get hit by a car, another told about how heard it was to move to Kiev and leave all of her family behind in a small country village, she described in how lonely she gets sometimes (I could really related to her). But the most powerful of all of the stories was from one girl whose best friend tragically died only a month ago of “a terrible sickness.” There were many other stories sheared that evening, but every one of the students seemed to have the one thing in common: how their struggles in life taught them to appreciate the gift of life all the more more. Each one of them echoed that they want to cherish every moment of life, and every person they meet and every thing about life, down to the smallest detail. This is a lesson I feel that I am learning more and more and deeper and deeper every day while I’m here. Impart because I am away from the people I love most. But most of all I sense it in the not so profound connections I have with people. Like with my students, and with the new friends I am making here, and even the woman I help onto the mini bus on the way across town. I really just want to cherish everyone and every moment and every thing about this life because it is the only chance we have to experience God.