I write to you looking forward to this coming week of Thanksgiving, excited to share with you the overflowing thanks in my heart for what God has been doing, and what He continues to do.
As I shared a little bit in my last letter home, life here has not been a picnic, it’s been more difficult than I’d like to admit at times. The week of parent teacher conferences was the hardest because I was sick and had so much stress that kept building up, as well as tough stuff going on with kids in my classroom, which I asked you all to pray for.
Since that low point, God has been slowly giving me small successes which were building up to a huge miracle that happened in my classroom this past week.
THANK YOU for praying for me faithfully! In speaking with my mom this past week she passed along messages from many many people asking how I am doing and sharing that everyone has been praying for me. I can’t really express how much I feel these prayers, but I do, and you help me to look to God for each moment of every day and I can feel the extra strength on the hard days. I don’t deserve your faithful love and care, but I am blessed by it.
So, this week started out with a hard day on Monday, I was discouraged yet again. However that afternoon I spoke with a friend online that I had been praying for throughout the past 5 ½ years to come to Christ. I hadn’t talked with her in about a year, so I asked her about where she was spiritually and she said she has just started going to a Christian church….which is an incredible answer to prayer that came completely unexpected after so many prayers for so long. She’s so close to taking that step towards salvation! Tuesday I woke up without motivation and wishing the week would just hurry up and get over.
I came to my Heavenly Father and told Him I was tired, inadequate, and feeling like a failure.
He brought me to Psalm 121—which armed me with words that I needed to step into the day ahead with confidence that my Jesus was walking with me, and that He wouldn’t let me stumble or fall. I wrote in my journal, “Felt God wrap His arms around me today in a real way.”
Wednesday morning I decided to share with my kids about the prayers God had answered with my friend during devotion time at school. God led the discussion and opened up their hearts like never before. I talked about how God can change relationships, He can change hearts, and He can change lives and habits of sin…but sometimes we have to pray with faith for a long time before God answers….in my case over 5 ½ years. The kids caught on quickly and shared about parents who weren’t getting along, or father’s that were smoking, and a few other tough situations the kids were dealing with….reminding me that it’s not about what I’m teaching the kids academically, it’s about what I can help them understand spiritually, and they embraced it wholeheartedly.
Thursday morning started out normal. I have to get on my knees every morning and claim the Lord’s strength and power over my job, because I honestly can’t do any of it on my own, and if I do it is a disaster!
During devotions Thursday morning my two boys that have been trouble all year got into a fight, it was too big this time to overlook, and the whole class was involved. So I stopped everything and said, “lets talk about this, we can’t go on like this. Something needs to change. What do we need to do to help each other get along.”
We stepped into a huge discussion. ALL the kids were participating, trying to help the two boys get along, and work together as a whole class. There were many tears on the part of Josué, and the kids were surprisingly mature in so many of their ideas of how to get along. I refused to “separate” the boys from one another always.
So the discussion went on for about 25 minutes, it came to the point where I was reminding the kids that we couldn’t love one another on our own, we could only do it with Christ’s love through us and they brought up two key things I had been teaching them in devotions.
1.) Extra grace required people – people we just need to extend extra grace to in order to live and dwell in unity within a community.
2.) Prayer for God to change the relationship
The KIDS reminded me of what I taught them yesterday and so we decided to pray. The kids stretched out their hands towards Roy and Josué and began praying over them, praying for their relationship, praying for us as a class to love one another and encourage one another.
The Spirit of God was definitely in the midst of us, I could feel it through the whole discussion, through the way the kids expressed the truth to one another, and how they decided all together that they needed to love one another, extend grace, and pray for one another.
At the end of about a 20 minute prayer session I prayed and then we had a big “group hug.”
Then the kids had Spanish class, and then PE class. When they came back from PE the teacher said, “Roy and Josué were talking to one another today!” I was really surprised, but decided to keep my eye on them. During Math, not an unkind word was said between them, and at lunch time Josué pulled his chair up to Roy’s desk to eat lunch with him. They were talking and laughing together and the whole class was freaking out watching them.
We realized right then and there that God had done an incredible miracle. The kids said, “God answered our prayers and we didn’t even have to wait!”
THEN, at recess later that day, my class organized themselves into two teams and played kickball all together with no help. They came back and said, “Miss Nyhoff, we feel like a class today.”
I was so proud of them and couldn’t stop thanking the Lord for His mercies, greater than I could ask or imagine.
As my mom said, “Those are the days you live for and pray for.”
I’m still treasuring this in my heart, realizing that God is truly at work in hearts, in lives, and He is using me with this group of kids.
So, that was a long story, sorry to draw it out so long winded, but I wanted you to get the full picture of what God has done.
I am claiming that Josué and Roy’s good relationship will continue, that through God’s power their attitudes have changed towards one another, and that they will not return to their old ways of treating one another. ONLY by God’s power over our classroom.
I have the opportunity to share tomorrow morning at teacher devotions about some of these answers to prayer and I’m a little nervous. Will you say a prayer for me when you get this, that I would be courageous in encouraging the other teachers to pray and take leaps of faith, and watch God work?
This Thanksgiving I’m headed down south to Nicaragua to spend the short 3 day break with my old partners in ministry and beloved friends in Managua.
I’m still praying about what this time will look like and how to spend the short time with everyone, as well as dealing with the stress of traveling 7-8 hours by bus to get there. But I’m excited to take another step with those relationships.
Please pray for guidance and protection.
When I come back we will jump into the Christmas season and have 3 short and crazy weeks before I am home for Christmas!
I can’t believe how the time has flown by, but also how God has been working so much in relationships, in the time He gives me for each day, and in the strength He gives when I am weak.
Thanking God for EACH of you as you are a huge part of what keeps me going here, and the support that I need.
I miss you, I love you, and I’m already beginning to pray about time over Christmas and how God is going to orchestrate time with each of you.
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