First the house...
About a month ago, my cousin and I began looking for houses in Watts, Los Angeles. Because these houses are not generally advertised for online or in the paper, we spent an entire weekend driving through every, and I mean EVERY street in Watts. When we saw a house that had a "For Rent" sign in the front or "Se Rente" one of us would yell, "for rent!" and the one driving would slam on the brakes and back up until we could read the address and phone number on the sign (there was some fence hopping involved in this search). Finally we had our list of approximately 15 houses. We started calling leasers, and each time the leaser would either laugh at us or try to convince us that we weren't talking about the same area. Finally we were able to start viewing homes, however, God showed us that there was something clearly wrong with each of the 15 houses. Finally, we had crossed out all the houses on our list.
The day we crossed out our last house, I was feeling discouraged, and so we decided to just drive around a bit. We saw a lady selling really nice looking couches in front of her house, and for some reason, not like I had the money to buy a couch, we decided to stop and look at the couches. As we were looking, we started talking with this lady about how we had been looking for houses to rent and how we could not find anything that was just right. She looked at us for a while, I think trying to make sense of why we wanted to move to this specific area, and then she said, "You know, the house next door is for rent." Joanna and I looked next door but saw not "For Rent" sign up. She continued "The owner is very picky about who he lets rent from him, but you seem like nice girls so I will give him your contact information if you give it to me." We did just that and soon the owner called Joanna. We viewed the house last weekend and we knew that this was the house the Lord had hand-picked for us. The owner is now mailing us applications and we plan to move in the beginning of July (pictures to come)!!!
Next, the job...
I had applied for probably over 30 teaching positions and interviewed with about 3 places, with not much luck. Research shows that the teaching market has not been this bad since the 1970s. Yikes! A few months back, though, when Joanna and I were completing our student teaching at Grape Street Elementary School, the assistant principal called his friend who was the vice principal of Audubon Middle School (LAUSD) in Leimert Park in Los Angeles, recommending us to him. Little did we know that Audubon, although not advertising, were looking for new math teachers. We were contacted by THEM and set up a three day teaching interview. I taught three sixth grade classes and one eight grade class and Joanna taught all eighth grade classes. Let me say this was one of the most stressful experiences of my life, because my graduation was the weekend before and Joanna and I had to move out of our apartment in the midst of these three days. In other words little sleep occurred!
We came back to the school on Friday for a final debriefing with the principal at which time were were both offered positions as 7th and 8th grade teachers. Now maybe you are wondering how I am able to teach 7th and 8th grade with only a multiple subject credential. Well Audubon has a "gifted/magnet" program in which I will be teaching. Because this is a specialized program, LAUSD will allow me to teach despite only having a multiple subject credential. However, the school does want me to receive my single subject credential in math within the next year (something I had been wanting to do already).
But wait, there's more...
I spend my Wednesday evenings helping out at a children's bible study in Imperial Courts Housing Projects held by World Impact Ministries. I love helping out because a lot of the kids from Grape Street go to the bible study and we have been building a rapport with each other. I have been mentoring a little third grade girl who is so excited to spend time at our new house over the summer and I have build a behavioral contract with a little boy who used to get kicked out of the bible study once every two weeks or so because of his behavior. This child has been improving his behavior tremendously which has been not only a blessing to me but also to the bible study leader who was not sure how to deal with this child herself.
I found out a couple weeks ago that the World Impact intern who usually leads bible study had to leave to go home permanently and that they were looking for a replacement. I asked Jesus to please let the pastor of the church say no if He did not want me to lead the bible study. When I asked the pastor's wife, she was so excited and told me that she would love me to lead the study. I start in July (pictures to come)!!!
So I suppose that I can conclude that when I asked God to build His ministry through me and my life in Watts, He knew exactly what He was doing. I know that this is where he wants me now I continue to pray that His will be done and His ministry be built. As my adventure begins I can not wait to share with all of you who read this blog, the faithfulness and power of Jesus Christ, Jehovah Jireh!!!!
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