A year ago I never thought I would be a teacher, but now I am a month into teaching high schoolers and I am absolutely loving it. Although I know I won't do this for the rest of my life, teaching is still so rewarding because I can form such great relationships with all of my students. Since I am their teacher, I am responsible to be a positive role model to them and to reflect Jesus' character. In doing that, I also have to ensure that I am promoting PMA's mission statement, "Striving to Restore God's Image in Every Student."

Today was the first day it really hit me how important it is to instill God's image in every student. I have a student who started off the quarter great, getting A's on his quizzes and assignments. Then all of a sudden, he stopped turning in any assignments and started failing all his quizzes. Last friday, I brought gummy worms for his whole class. After class, he came to me and apologized for not taking any gummy worms, and when I asked him why he didn't want any, he replied saying, "I don't deserve them since I didn't do my homework." My heart broke. I pulled him aside and told him to never think that, and that his grade does not affect how I feel about him. After talking to him a bit more afterwards and giving him the chance to redo his assignment and turn it in late, I thought he would be fine. Then today I gave a test to his class, and I was instantly worried about him because he was absent yesterday, our test review day. He took the longest to finish his test. When all the students had left and he finally turned his in, I noticed that he didn't finish the last couple calculation problems on the back page. I asked him why he left them blank, and he simply said he didn't know how to do them. I know he's a smart kid, so I tried to help him out and explain the problems but he just had no idea. I then asked him why he was absent yesterday and he sort of just avoided the question and mumbled that he stayed home. I asked him why he didn't come, and he said, "I didn't want to slow the class down with my questions." Again, my heart sank. With tears in his eyes he said, "I just feel like I don't deserve the help and I'm not worth the time." I'm not usually one to cry for things, but I could barely hold it together in front of him as he had tears in his eyes telling me these words. I knew I had to stay strong for his sake, so I kept back tears and told him that he is always worth my time. I said the whole reason I am here is to teach the students and to make sure they are learning. I told him I don't care if I have to explain the concepts a hundred times if that's what it takes to help him understand. I'm not sure if he has the money to pay the extra dollar per day to stay after school for tutoring, so I told him I would personally tutor him everyday during lunch. He said thank you and apologized for not asking for help, and I gave him a hug and told him to come to me any time he needs help in anything. After he left my classroom I closed the doors and prayed to God for strength and guidance. I know this student is very quiet and doesn't talk to the other teachers much, so if he is opening up to me than I need to take that opportunity to help him. I prayed to God to help me reflect Jesus's character and to instill a sense of confidence and self worth in this student. If you are reading this I ask you to pray for this young man, he really needs it. Not only that, but also pray that God guides me to be a positive role model to my student. I also ask you to pray for my roommate Tyler, because he has my student's younger sister in his class and she isn't doing too well either.

As you can imagine, it was pretty hard to teach for the rest of the day after having that emotional conversation with the student. Then on top of that, the high school baseball game got cancelled because the field was flooded from the rain. I am one of the coaches for the team, and I was looking forward to the game. Not only that but I found out our season is basically over because half of our team will be ineligible after this friday when mid-quarter grades come out. Although I wasn't very happy with my players who had bad grades, I had already been planning on taking the team out for pizza after our last game, so since today is technically our last day I decided to take them out today. I am so happy I did that because it completely turned my day around and cheered me up. The other coach(Principal Sanchez) was running late, so it was just the guys and me at first. We ordered a few pizzas and just spent the next couple hours hanging out and sharing laughs. Being able to hangout with the boys outside of school was awesome because we could all be ourselves and just talk. I can already tell that my relationship with each one of them is significantly stronger after today.

After being here for a month I realize why all the past SM's that I know always say that their SM year was the best year of their life. It's not because they were on a beautiful island or because they took a year off of school, but because of the students. The students make this experience one that I will never forget. I could care less about the beautiful scenery, as long as I have my students I'll be more than happy. If any of you are reading this and have thought of being a student missionary, I will tell you now that you will definitely not regret it. You can't trade this experience for anything else in life. If you're worried about missing a year of college, don't worry, school will still be there when you get back. Be a student missionary, you'll love it.

Thanks for reading,

Andrew

These past few weeks have been nothing but busy for us. Today was the first day we've had where we could really just relax and do anything for the day. Since the first day of school, we have all been so busy with lesson plans, grading, and writing lectures that I have not had time to post pictures or post to my blog. Not only that but last week was week of prayer, so there was a worship service at the church in town everyday at 6:45pm. Also, a few of us joined some of the other SDA staff in making a basketball team, so we've been having games at night twice a week.

Although we've been extremely busy, I've really been enjoying my time here. First off, I love my students. I teach 5 class periods which are comprised of 1 period of physics, 2 of chemistry, and 2 of English 3. It's great teaching the upperclassmen because they're all old enough to be responsible and really care about their grades. Not only that, but it's easier to relate to them. I must say though, I was a bit intimidated at first to teach students that are only 2 or 3 years younger than me. That being said, they completely respect me and give me their utmost attention. At first they were all very shy and quiet and didn't say much in class. Now, they are starting to open up and express themselves more and joke around. They're also showing more interest in getting to know me outside of class. While before the students would leave class once I dismissed them, now some stay behind to ask me about myself or even to just tell me riddles. Not only that, but it's also awesome doing morning watch and being able to sit with the students and talk to them about their hobbies and where they're from. I now understand how easy it is for teachers become so attached to their students. I already know it's going to be hard to leave all of these amazing people when I leave next June. 

        Not only have we gotten to know our students very well, but we've also been able to experience a lot of Palau. For instance, a couple weekends ago we went kayaking near Koror. That was one of our first times really experiencing the beauty of the island. The water was crystal clear and the the weather was amazing. In addition to kayaking, we've also done some exploring right here around our campus. Joe, Tyler, and I went walking through the jungle and plants in hopes of trying to get to the ocean. Although we never actually made it to the ocean, it was still a great adventure. We walked through swampy areas where our feet were covered by muddy water, and through parts where we could see around us because the plants were as tall as us. At one point we even had to climb up a tall tree in order to see how to get back to the road. We walked out that day with our arms and legs scratched up and our clothes drenched in sweat. The good thing is that next time we know which way to go so that we can hopefully reach the water.

The last thing we've done was go to the rock islands for our staff retreat this past weekend. We went to the rock islands to an island called Ngemelis, which I must say was basically paradise. First of all, the boat ride there was breathtaking. Not only that, but the water surrounding the island was warm and crystal clear. The island itself was very peaceful and relaxing. We spent all of friday just hanging out around the island and swimming. At night we had a short vespers, and then we all slept in our tents and hammocks. I made the horrible decision of not hanging up my mosquito net, so my knees and arms were completely covered in bug bites by the morning. Saturday was comprised of worship in the morning and then hanging out and walking around the island the rest of the day. Saturday night was awesome because a big group of us went out in a boat around 10pm and did some spear fishing. The ladies stayed in the boat while us guys split into groups of two or three and started fishing. For many of us it was our first time doing this, and it was extremely fun. I fished with Tyler and Joe, so one person had the spear gun, one had a flashlight, and the other just swam along and helped point out big fish to spear. Joe and I were unsuccessful in spearing any fish, but Tyler was able to catch a box fish right at the end. After getting back to camp, the adults cooked up some of the fish and gave us all some to try. While the fish tasted amazing, I could not get the taste of fish out of my mouth that night for the life of me. 

Sunday morning we packed up camp and left the island. On the way back, we first stopped at a drop-off and did some snorkeling. Here we saw several different kinds of beautiful fish, and I even saw a sea turtle swimming by below us. Next, we stopped at the famous Jellyfish Lake. I will post pictures of this place tomorrow because it's impossible to describe how beautiful this place was. When I first got in the lake, there were only a few jellyfish around me. Then as I swam further into the middle of the lake, the numbers quickly multiplied until the point that I could't move without touching any of the jellyfish. Luckily, the jellyfish in this lake do not sting, so you can swim all over and touch them. It was a beautiful experience being able to swim next to hundreds of jellyfish and not having to worry about being stung by any of them. I can now say Jellyfish Lake is one of my all time favorite places to visit in the world.  After jellyfish lake we stopped at an island called Paradise Island. Here we did some more snorkeling, and I was able to see my first shark in the ocean. It was only two or three feet long, but it was still cool to see one. The next animal on my bucket list to see here in Palau is a manta ray. After Paradise Island we went back home and unloaded and had a movie night at Abner's house.

That brings us to today. Since it was Labor Day, there was no school so we had the day to ourselves. In the men's apartment, we slept in and then did some grading in the morning. After lunch we watched a movie on a laptop, and then went into town with some of the other SM's and had dinner at a restaurant called the Drop Off. After dinner we stopped at Surangel's and picked up some groceries for the week. 

Thank you for reading my blog and following my adventures here in Palau. I ask for your continued prayers and support. Also, if you want my address to send any awesome care packages, message me on facebook or email me at louisandrewu@gmail.com. 

Much love, 

Andrew  

Hello everybody, sorry I haven't been able to post anything since leaving Hawaii, we didn't get internet here in Palau until Monday, and even then the internet has been too slow to even load any websites. That also means that unfortunately I probably won't be able to post many pictures to the blog.

Everybody's been asking me how it is here in Palau, so I'll just describe what we've done since we arrived last Thursday night.

Upon arrival to Palau, we were greeted by a large group of locals that consisted of church members, students, and coworkers from the academy. Among this group were also our Palauan parents. These "Palauan parents" are members of the church that chose to "adopt" us for the year. I had the pleasure of meeting my Palauan mom, a widowed older Palauan woman named Naomi. She was so sweet and made me a huge lei made from white and pink flowers, and then also gave me a bag of groceries and said, "this is for your breakfast." It was such a nice gift, and to top it all off, in the bag was a box of my all time favorite cereal, Honey Bunches of Oats!
After meeting all the locals and taking group pictures, we loaded up trucks with our luggage and piled in the school bus which took us to the academy. That first night we all slept in our principal's house.

The next day we woke up and had a delicious breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and potatoes. It also happened to be my birthday that day, so they all sang to me after we ate. After cleaning up, we took all our stuff down to the apartments and moved into the rooms we'll be staying in for the rest of our time here. The six of us guys moved into a 3-bed/2-bath apartment, two of us sleeping in each room. After getting settled into our apartments, we got boarded the school bus and took our first trip into town as missionaries. The first thing we did when we got to town was go to Surangel's, a supermarket similar to Stater Bros or Von's. It was interesting to see the difference between the groceries that the guys and girls bought. For most of us guys, it's our first time ever really having to completely cook for ourselves, so our carts were filled with food that is easy to prepare. This included ingredients for PB&J's, burritos, pasta, rice, and frozen vegetables. Our inexperience quickly showed when we realized we forgot to buy many of the essential ingredients, like salt.
After shopping we ate lunch at a restaurant called "Rock Island Cafe", which is owned by the chief of Palau. Once the waiters found out that we're the new group of missionary teachers, they went to the back and brought out the chief himself. It was quite the experience being able to see the chief and have him welcome us to the beautiful island of Palau.
That night we had vespers in the chapel, and at the end they surprised me with a Red Velvet Cake. My favorite!

On Saturday we went to church in town. We all went and sat with our respective Palauan parents. My Palauan mom, Naomi, called me over and gave me a bag that had a papaya and a loaf of bead that she baked for me. It was great being able to sit with her and ask her more about herself and her life.
After church we enjoyed potluck with some of the church members, mainly the elders. It was exciting being able to try new foods that we had never seen before. The church members were so kind and let us serve ourselves first, and even prepared plates to go for all of us after the meal was over.
After church we went back to school, changed, and then went over to a nearby waterfall where we spent the rest of the afternoon swimming, taking pictures with our GoPro's, and enjoying good company.
The next day we woke up and found out that half of our group had been fallen sick with diarrhea. Due to most of our group being too sick to do much work, we cancelled all plans for the day and let them rest. Fortunately, I wasn't one of the ones to get sick, so I spent the day hanging out in the apartment with my friend Jake who also dodged the diarrhea bug.

Monday was our first day of getting actual work done at school. We were all given our textbooks that we'll be teaching out of and keys to our classrooms. The whole day was spent cleaning classrooms and looking through our textbooks to get an idea of what we would be covering this year.
That night, the girl missionaries called our apartment and told us that we had all forgotten that it was Jazmin's birthday.(one of the female missionaries) Since there were still a couple hours left of her birthday, we all went and surprised her in bed with balloons and a small cupcake topped with birthday candles.

Tuesday morning we drove into town to have a meeting at the elementary school with all the teaching staff. (PMA is the high school where we live at that is located in Airai, SDA is the elementary school and is located in Koror) After the meeting we all split up and had lunch at different restaurants. All the girls decided to go back to RIC, the place we ate at on Fridays. All of us guys went to a restaurant nearby that serves a gigantic portion of chicken fried rice for only $3! After eating, I went with Joey, Rachel, and Linske back to Surangel's so they could buy groceries while I bought snorkel gear in the upstairs shop. Upon exiting the market we found that it was raining sideways outside. The store is a couple blocks from the elementary school, so we tried to run from building to building to not get too wet. This plan failed horribly because the second you stepped out from under the covering, you were instantly drenched by the rain. We got back to the school and were pleased to find that we were not the only ones to get soaked by the rain.
After dropping all our stuff of back at school, we changed and loaded the bus and drove to Melekeok, the capitol of Palau. While driving by the Palauan Capitol building, we were amused to see how much it resembled the US Capitol building. We spent the afternoon there in Melekeok snorkeling around the rocks. Although there wasn't much to see there in the water, it was a good introduction to the waters here in Palau.

Wednesday was spent working on classrooms, unit plans, and lesson plans. Fortunately I'm sharing a classroom with one of the math teachers, so she had already decorated the whole classroom. Therefore I was able to spend more time working on planning out my yearly unit plan.

All in all I am really enjoying my time here in Palau. The people are all so caring and island is absolutely beautiful. Classes start next Thursday for the high school, and we are all nervous to teach for the first time I'm our lives. Fortunately we know we have an amazing and powerful God to lean on and gain strength and wisdom from. I ask that you all continue to pray for all of us as we go through this year, changing our perspective on life and strengthening our relationship with God.

Thanks for reading,
Andrew

Day Three.

We just wrapped up our last day of training here in Hawaii, and you can feel the excitement in the air from everybody. We definitely learned a lot of useful information over these past couple days that will apply to our time on the islands. Now all we have left to do is to board the plane and travel to our final destination where we will live for the next 10 months! The SM's going to the more eastern islands are leaving here around 4:30am, while the rest of us going to the more western islands are leaving in the afternoon.

This morning, I woke up at around 4:45am to go to Waikiki Beach with some students from PUC, WWU, and AU. Many of us slowly staggered half asleep to the parking lot to pile into the van. Somehow we were able to fit about 15 people in that one van! After getting to the beach we walked over to a private beach owned by some really nice hotel and just parked our stuff there. The sand there was perfect and the beach looked amazing. Unfortunately, ground was not as nice once we got in the water. There were rocks everywhere, and one girl even stepped on a sea urchin! Nevertheless we still enjoyed swimming around and watching the sun slowly creep up over the back of Diamond Head. 

Here's a picture of the group of us at the beach: 

After the beach we had breakfast in the cafeteria and then went back to sitting in more seminars. For lunch we went to the Pali Lookout, which had a gorgeous view! Here's a couple pictures from there. Our hair is crazy in the one picture because right at the end of the lookout, the wind was ridiculously strong! 

After lunch we went back and listened to some more worship talks and seminars about the island life. We were then instructed to change into nicer clothing to take a big group picture: 

Following shortly after this was dinner, another worship, and then some of us went to Wal-Mart to do some last minute shopping. Many of us decided to buy Lice shampoo because of the horrible stories we heard in the seminars earlier that day. 

After getting back it was time to say goodbye to all the missionaries going to the islands that are more to the East, like Majuro and Pohnpei. Here's a picture of my friend Chris Doellerer and I. He's going to teach English on a small island near Pohnpei called Sapwuahfik. 

I ask that you all keep this awesome dude in your prayers. He is going to probably the most remote island out of all of us. Wikipedia says that the main island, where all of the estimated 433 people live, is about 0.91 square kilometers in size. That's about 0.35 square miles. He has no running water or electricity, and will only have internet every six weeks when he goes to Pohnpei. Although I just met him yesterday, I know he's going to do an awesome job over there! 

So as we all leave to our islands tomorrow, I ask that you keep us in your thoughts and prayers! Thank you!

P.S. My internet will be extremely slow in Palau, about 220 kb/sec haha so we'll see if I'll be able to upload pictures onto the blog over there. I'll try to update the blog every couple days though to keep everybody updated on how my trip is going. Thank you again for all your love and support!

-Andrew

Day one.

I am currently lying down on a thin foam mat on the floor of the music room here at Hawaii Mission Academy along with the rest of the male student missionaries. Although the mats basically give no cushion to the rock hard floor, nobody seems to notice because we're all exhausted from a long day of traveling and orientation. 

I left my house this morning at 5:30am, my flight took off at around 9:30am, and I arrived in Hawaii at 11:30am Hawaii time. Upon arrival, we were greeted with leis from some of the GMM(Guam-Micronesia Mission) workers. After gathering our luggage, they loaded us in vans and drove us to HMA where we registered and had a small lunch. During lunch I got to meet some of the other missionaries going to Palau, along with the principal from Palau. They all seem really cool and easy to get along with, and the principal even offered to drive us to the beach! 

By the time we got back from the beach, the rest of the missionaries had arrived and we all had dinner together in the cafeteria. Afterwards, we gathered in the chapel and had a small worship talk and some introductions. 

We then split up in groups according to the Islands that we're going to and got to hear from our principal about his experience as a missionary. The rest of the time was spent introducing ourselves followed by endless questions for the principal about Palau. All in all, I am really happy with the group that we have going to Palau. We're already forming great bonds and I know we will work together really well once we get to the island.

To say that I am excited for this upcoming year would be an understatement. Unfortunately, the same thing applies for being nervous. I have never taught a class of high schoolers before, but after today I am confident because I know I have an awesome principal and group of teachers to support me. I'm excited to see what tomorrow holds for all of us! I ask that you keep us all in your prayers as we embark on this journey led by God.