Figuring it Out

"Turn off the light when you leave a room."
"Did you wash your hands with soap?"
"Speak slower so that I can understand you, please."

I have said these phrases and other similar ones more times than I can count within the last month since school started back. I'm starting to sound like a parent and since there are nine girls ages 7-15 in my house, I think I've started acting like a parent too even though at times I slip back to my "resisting adulthood" self by playing in the rain and having water fights.
It's been a long lesson to learn but I am figuring out that being in charge of a family means finding the balance between just loving and loving but still disciplining.
I don't like disciplining. I don't like giving punishments when my girls don't listen or look at me in defiance and challenge my instructions. But when they tell me no when I ask them to do their chores or choose to do exactly what I told them not to do, I have to correct them because I love them and want them to learn to obey in order to give them a better life down the road.

I use to always dislike verses in the Bible like, "The Lord loves those He corrects and "Spare the rod and spoil the child" but I now completely agree with them. It's because I care so much about them that I try to correct their behavior.
I don't like how adult-like this post is sounding or how my blogs are more serious and less stories but being a student missionary has changed me. I'm still figuring out what those changes are and trying to sift through what changes that I want to keep that are positive and which changes I want to throw out. And although I am changing and being stretched beyond what is comfortable I am growing. I just pray that I am growing more towards the person God wants me to be and that this experience as a student missionary will only help me grow closer to God and my relationship with Him.

Something that I have noticed in the last two weeks is that I've finally reached the point where I have won the confidence of some of my students and the girls that I live with. It took a long time, excruciatingly long to the point that I wondered if everything I was doing for them was going unnoticed but I've formed deep relationships with them and only within the last few weeks have I started to see the results. They confide in me their fears, boy problems, what they're scared about and will walk with me to class and tell me about how they are feeling. I feel so privileged to have just gotten to this point with them and although it's taken seven months to reach this point, I think it's been worth the wait.