It was early in my first semester teaching in a Chinese high school,
(also my first semester teaching, ever). As a new and inexperienced
teacher I was feeling kind of useless. The fact that the ‘foreign
teacher English classes’ aren’t taken too seriously at my school
didn’t help. Sitting alone in this foreign land, I was often left
wondering, ‘why am I here? What am I doing? What do I have to offer?’

I was giving my first test of the semester to one of my classes. There
was a girl in the class, sitting near the front by the window, and I
saw that she wasn’t doing any work on her test. Sometimes students
have a hard time with these tests, but I thought she was one of the
smarter students in the class. She looked really upset, but I didn’t
know what to do. I didn’t even know her name yet.

Once I collected all the tests back and started marking them, I
realized that not only did she not write anything on the test, she
didn’t even write her name. Not knowing the answers to the questions
is one thing, but not even writing her name, that was another thing
all together.

The next day, I asked her to stay after class and talk to me. I asked
why she didn’t write the test and she began to explain how she had
thought about killing herself the night before the test. She wanted to
take some medicine so that she would never wake up. But when she
thought about her mother and how upset she would be, she decided
against it.

We continued to talk for a while about her life, her goals, her
dreams. How she was often sad and depressed, how she missed being home
in her village, how she had no friends at school and really didn’t
like school. But she knew she must study hard in order to get a good
job and take care of her family. I did my best to encourage her, and
mostly just to listen.

After about an hour, she said, “Thank you. You are the first person
that has talked to me.”

I almost started crying when she said that. After being at school for
6 months no one – student or teacher, had really talked to her? Sure
her teachers had noticed a drop in her grades on the latest exam
scores. But no one had bothered to talk to her, ask her if there was a
problem.

Over the next few months Sarah and I wrote letters back and forth. She
described her home to me, and was always happy when she got a holiday
so she could go home for a few days for a visit.

Meeting Sarah confirmed to me that I was in the right place at the
right time. God really does know what He’s doing. If in the year or
two of teaching in China the only thing I accomplished was putting a
smile on one girl’s face, then it was all worthwhile.