She Smiled

She wouldn’t even look at me.  Keeping her head down as she told me her name, Mary*, and her language.  We sat on the floor in a circle.  Six women from five different languages, gathered together to learn to read Hausa, the Language of Wider Communication in our part of the country.

After reading a devotional in Hausa, I wrote the reading lesson on the white board and we began. Mary read “ki” and then said the sound of “i” was “ah.”  We went over the syllables again, and she kept repeating the sound of the letter “i” as “ah.”  “No problem,” I said in Hausa, “We’ll come back to it, and you’ll get it later.” 

The next time we came to Mary, she hesitantly began, haltingly, reading every vowel perfectly.  We all cheered.  She looked at me and she smiled.

This literacy class is going to be a joy.  We’ve told the women to invite others. It is a triumph, a victory that many women have not experienced.  As each sentence unfolds, I pray that their confidence in themselves, and ultimately in God to teach and build them up will grow.  Pray for Esther, who will be carrying these literacy classes forward every Monday and Tuesday morning in the Orange Hat.