Thomas Family Newsletter – September 2008 from Woodstock School in Northern India
We returned to India refreshed from our summer weeks in the U.S. re-connecting with family and churches. Thank you for your hospitality and interest in our work. Please pray for continued health and strength throughout the school year.
Chris (17) and Coleman (14) are both in High School this year, and are preparing for the demands of cross-country running in the hills of Mussoorie. Pray for wisdom and resources as we help Chris prepare for college next year, and discern our next steps as well.
Pray for the school’s new principal, Dr. David Laurenson, and all the new students in this residential school. Pray for peace in this region, with political and religion-based bombings and violent demonstrations surrounding us – mercifully, not in our state, but we worry about some students and their families.
We are excited about our involvement with a mountain village school established by a nearby church – we will report on our first visit after the rainy season.
We are grateful for your prayers and support. Please let us hear from you!
Correspondence: Donations - Please make checks out to:
The Thomas Family Presbyterian Church of Pleasantville
Woodstock School memo line: Thomas India Mission Fund
Mussoorie, UK c/o Doris Kersten, Presbyterian Church of Pleasantville
248 179 India 400 Bedford Rd.
barbarathomas@woodstock.ac.in Pleasantville, NY 10570
This special offering is for all who will work children and youth this year. The poem by D. O’Malley is a confirmation of our calling to educational ministry. --Barbara & Jeffrey Thomas, teachers at Woodstock School
By nature and by grace,
You have been called to nurture the spirit of young people
In a world of crude measurements,
Of superficial images of success and celebrity.
You have been called into the personal mystery
Unfolding uniquely in the lives of each of your pupils.
You have been called to be a teacher
Not just to tick registers and write lists,
But to walk with young people,
On a shared journey into the heart of education.
On that journey you are both a leader and a learner.
Together with your pupils you will walk
The well-known paths of an academic year.
You will be surprised by the gifts, passions and problems
Unfolding in the lives of the young.
For these children do not arrive enpty-handed.
They carry the blessings and burdens of their short history.
Experiences of success and stability
Will sit alongside confusion and uncertainty,
In the heart of each member of your group.
How will you recognize the gifts among the grief,
In the silence of shy students?
How will you manage the noise of joy and jealousy,
Echoing in the exuberance and aggression of the young?
How will you sort the wheat from the chaff?
To bread the bread of life, each day with them?
Only by embracing the wisdom of the spirit,
Will you feed their gifts and help them to grow.
Only by seeing with spiritual eyes,
Will you recognise and heal the hurt
That only loving kindness cures.
For your vocation is personal,
It is your personality that opens up
The ocean of goodness and strength in young lives.
It is only you who will engage
With one of these pupils in a way that sets them free.
Only you who might plant a seed, a hope or dream
That will burst into life in the hidden years yet to come.
You will be working in faith for a future not your own.
You will be nurturing potential that you cannot control.
You will be workig with loving kindness,
For other people’s children.
Your life will be poured out
In joy and generosity,
In patience and frustration,
Hour by hour, you will bear the heat of another day,
Another term, another year.
You will be living a Gospel mystery:
For it is only when your life is poured out in love
Can you be filled with the utter fullness
Of the God for whom your life was made,
The God who has called you
To this vocation of teaching.