The Lord Provides

Mothers are teachers by nature.  They teach their children how to drink from a cup and how to hold a spoon.  They teach them how to brush their teeth and how to dress themselves.  They teach them how to say please and thank-you and how to behave in public.  Mothers teach by example so that their children will grow up to be decent and self-sufficient human beings, and teaching them by example comes naturally.

Home-schooling my children was a whole different kettle of fish!  I had taught at the Bequia Anglican High School and it had not been easy, but as I had been given very little in the way of teaching materials that was understandable.  Luckily the Calvert School Correspondence course I was using for Vanessa and Rachel supplied ample teaching guides, because I was forced to study just as hard (if not harder) than Vanessa and Rachel! The material I had to teach them was very American and that took getting used to, it was definitely a learning curve for a Canadian teacher and her two West Indian students.

We had set up the classroom in our living room, which was bare except for two school desks for the children and a table for me.  The best time of day for classes was during the morning, the mid-afternoon sun made the room too hot.  Unfortunately, mornings were my busy time at the Pizzeria, and I had to juggle teaching Vanessa and Rachel with the daily baking, banking and prep work that was required each day.  At least the Calvert School course allowed a great deal of flexibility, classes could be held whenever I had the time, but I often felt like a human yo-yo as I bounced between the Pizzeria and the house!

The teaching material in the early days was pretty straight-forward, I was able to teach the girls English, French, Math, History and Geography without too much difficulty. I DID have to tape arrows on the living room wall indicating north, south, east and west – I had a terrible sense of direction and needed to refer to the arrows during Geography classes.

Teaching the children was fine in the off-season, after Easter until just before Christmas I had ample time for the classroom.  However, I worried about the approaching busy season; although the Pizzeria was no longer open for breakfast I needed to work from dawn until after the lunch hour, and I didn’t know how I was going to cope.  Vanessa and Rachel were good students, I could leave them with work to do in my absence, but I knew it wasn’t an ideal situation.  They needed guidance, not a teacher who wasn’t there!

I spoke to my Mother and Father about my dilemma and they came up with the perfect solution.  One of the Bequia Mission’s work-play tour volunteers was returning to Bequia, this time for the entire winter, and she just happened to be a retired school teacher. The lady’s name was Patricia Wilson, and when she agreed to teach Vanessa and Rachel I just KNEW she was heaven-sent!  Mrs. Wilson would teach the girls each morning, have lunch with them, then devote her afternoons to Mission work.

Mrs. Wilson became a part of our lives for a few years, arriving early in the morning each day once I had gone to work.  Vanessa and Rachel adored her, and under the kind woman’s tutelage they did well.  Mom and Dad had been right when they told me that the Lord would provide, Pat Wilson was definitely the answer to a prayer!