ὁ διδασκαλος here...
Well, Lesson One of Paihia Baptist Church's first New Testament Greek class went swimmingly!
There was an excellent turn out: five dedicated students representing three different churches, one caterer-slash-lovely assistant (my wife, Sandy), and one “rain check”—our blessed pastor Bill, who had to postpone his Greek learning in order to help his wife celebrate her birthday (if memory serves, it was her 35th again). We, as decent Christians filled with the spirit, will, I’m sure, deign to forgive him (and pray they both had a wonderful time!).
Most of the students were able to enjoy the marvellous homemade Greek meal Sandy put on before class. There was succulent roast lamb, mashed potatoes, Greek salad, meze, stuffed grapevine leaves, and much more—and yes, of course, the ubiquitous olives made an appearance. There was a delicious baklava for dessert, but everyone was too stuffed to eat it right after the meal, so we had to have it during the coffee break.
The actual lesson went just as well as the meal. Despite a quick change of venue—the sanctuary rather than the dining room—due to the brightness of the sun making the PowerPoint a bit difficult to see, we managed to get through the entire Greek alphabet without any major hiccups, albeit about ten minutes over the 2½ hours we’d scheduled.
As for the Greek alphabet, we all agree that Zeta is hard to write, Xi is hard to pronounce, and Ksi is by far the ugliest letter in the bunch. And the class optometrist thinks the cursive letters make an attractive Eye Chart:
For me personally, I found it all an edifying experience! I learned heaps. For starters, any material that clocks in at 20 minutes time at home will be about twice that long in actual teaching time. I’m indebted to Sandy (again!) for telling me the night before to cut out 90% of my intended introductory notes (you can read them by clicking on the “Intro for Students” just under the blog title above) and get into the meat of the lesson as soon as possible. This proved wise advice. If I hadn’t listened to her, I think we’d still be there—somewhere between zeta and lambda….I also learned that people are extremely gracious to a newbie Greek teacher. I want to thank them all here for their kindness and patience. Thank you Gina, Larry, Colleen, Jocelyn, Trish, and, of course, Sandy, too, for blessing me by making my first class a wonderful and encouraging experience. Thank you all.
And don’t forget to practice those alphabets!
God bless,
Ιακωβος
