Drex’s life is an interesting blend of abundance and deprivation: as an only child (for all practical purposes) with two parents working from home, he sees a lot of his folks. Often—probably more often than if he shared them with siblings—he gets their attention. He lives in a stimulating urban environment. His is a genuine international education. He has travelled extensively for a person his age. Yet he has been repeatedly deprived of close family relationships and friendships. There exists neither culture nor country where he is not a stranger, a foreigner. The largest open space that is part of his daily life is a narrow cobbled street. Sometimes I envy him, sometimes I’m afraid of being arrested for child abuse. We are completely dependent upon God to make it all OK, and to make us sensitive and responsive to Drex’s needs. Thanks for your ongoing prayers for our parenting.
With respect to that international urban education, results thus far are mostly encouraging. Fifth grade at Fernão Lopes in ’06 seems considerably more violent than I remember fifth grade at Wing Lake Elementary School in ‘72, but Drex, hardly the most aggressive kid crammed into the school’s tiny temporary quarters, seems to bear up with remarkable equanimity. While we walk home together he enthusiastically acts out from whom and under what circumstances he’s received the new marks on his face, sometimes handing me his back pack and insisting I stand still on the sidewalk to get the full effect. Thing is, students are more readily held back here, so it is common to meet children one, two and three years older than most of their classmates. The oldest student in Drex’s class is fourteen. So you’ve got a lot of young adolescents, for whom school has not been a crystal stair, with a lot of negative energy, looking out over the heads of their smaller colleagues like so many heads of wheat ready for harvest. I’ve trained Drex to end altercations by tackling low and driving with his legs but that’s a little nuclear for the school’s confined spaces and often not practical. So Drex ignores my advice and makes friends of his enemies instead. Where does he get that? Please pray for his protection and for his enemies.
He’s doing well enough in class. First semester grades are out and Drex’s GPA was 4.6 on a scale of 5, including the only 5 in his Portuguese Language class. Much of the credit goes to the head teacher, Professor Cláudio, who has transformed Drex’s attitude towards school. Debbie and I met and fell in love with Professor Cláudio last September. He is manly, gentle, radiant, encouraging and engaged with his students. He’s been teaching twenty-two years. Though Portuguese by birth, he grew up in Brazil, where he seems to have caught that country’s contagion for life. He believes the way out of Portugal’s present difficulties is paved with little acts of benevolence on the part of its citizens, especially its younger ones. Drex likes him as much as we do. May God bless him in his ministry.
Thanks for praying for us. May the Lord bless you this week as well.
* from Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
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