My Eye-Opening Experience At A Nigerian Boarding School

Doing the wash at a Nigerian boarding school.

I wanted to share a link to a post I wrote for my missions work over on another blog I've launched with the Transformational Education Network. It's an inside look at my eye-opening experience at a Nigerian boarding school. It was one of those experiences I will never forget. It's something I believe can be a call to action for those of us who follow Jesus Christ.

Check it out here: Boarding school

Subtle Differences Between Boys And Girls

It's frequently that I give Julie a hard time about her childhood. Her childhood comes up typically when her sons are doing things that are completely foreign to her, which can involve anything from belching and other bodily function contests, to new and inventive uses of small explosives. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating about the explosives, but it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities. I mean, now that the statute of limitations has passed I may have participated in some Fourth of July sparkler bomb manufacturing back in the day in Bend, Ore.

Julie, however, fondly recalls games with her three sisters of "Beauty Pageant" and all-night dance-a-thons and baking contests. Really? Fond memories of my friends and me entail menacing the rural Bend sagerat population with BB guns, golfing in the cemetery, peeing contests (length and duration of whizzes were compiled, with bonus points if you could write your name in the dirt) and games of tackle football that were really good when blood was drawn.  It's really entertaining when our older boys get together, which happens all too infrequently now that they are college age and older, and reminisce about the good old days. Typically the reminiscing involves petty thievery of household items and goods -- their favorite is when they pilfered the TV out of the downstairs living room in which a visiting auntie was sleeping and managed to haul it up to their bedroom to play video games all night -- boxing matches, small-time gambling over board games with the loser typically forced to strip buck nekkid and run around the outside of the house, terrorizing babysitters and various combinations thereof.

Now our teenage girls can laugh and giggle all night about their shenanigans as well. Craziness such as playing mermaid in the bathtub, their secret inside jokes that still make them cackle, all-night mani/pedi parties and when things got really out of hand marathon sessions of Pride and Prejudice movie watching. Somehow our girls have survived all that madness!!!

This all came to mind the last couple of times I visited Target and Wal-Mart with a bunch of my kids and hit the toy aisle. Take Olivia, my 6-year-old. She goes right to the doll section and eyes all the dollies and clothes and bling and accessories and mercy sakes can it be excruciating for her to try and settle on just one or two things with her birthday money. On the other hand there's Judah. He's 3 and you cannot imagine the sheer thrill he experienced when he came across the Despicable Me "Fart Gun." When he first pulled the trigger and that "gun" emitted the sound that can entertain little boys -- and big ones, too -- for literally hours on end the sound of his maniacal laugh filled the stores. That gun passed so much gas in the hands of Judah the earth's temperature rose measurably. I am thankful Julie didn't make those trips when Judah was blasting away. I'm sure she would have been horrified, even after two decades plus of raising boys. As for me? Well,  I admit it. I grabbed a gun and started pulling the trigger, the howls of laughter peeling forth.

I Know What Causes That

Somewhere along the line my wife Julie and I decided to really go for it. When we married our initial ambition was to have two kids. It seemed like a good number at the time and we figured we'd have two boys who would be best friends and do what boys do. You know, things like play Legos together, wrestle around some, take their shirts off for no apparent reason -- typically in a grocery store or at church -- and drop their britches in the front yard and pee as the neighbors drove by. The boys would wave, of course. I wouldn't want them to be unneighborly when they're peeing in the yard after all. Anyway, they would do all of the things that boys do that horrify their mothers, especially mothers like Julie who had no brothers and was uninitiated to the rather crude, aggressive, obnoxious and yet lovable ways of little boys.

But things got a little crazy in the Sabo house. Somehow, shortly after the arrival of our second son Julie got pregnant with a third son. I say somehow because the #2 Sabo, a lad named Taylor, was just 5 months old when the immaculate conception occurred -- while she was still nursing the wee boy no less! We'd been told she wouldn't get pregnant while nursing. Let me just say that is complete bunk. Nursing and pregnancy go hand in hand with Julie and I say that from experience.

Anyway, after the third Sabo, a chap we named Ethan, who followed the firstborn Brenton and Taylor, the thought occurred to us that if we had our way we would be Ethanless. Which I admit on some moonlit nights, when he pulled all-night, colic-induced fussing sessions, didn't sound so bad. But we loved Ethan in that crazy way that parents love their children. That thing where you hold your baby and sniff that sweet eau de baby and caress the softest, most beautiful skin you've ever felt and listen to those quick little breaths and there's peace and joy and love and unbridled affection all at once. There's nothing else like it in the world. Truly our children are gifts from God.

And so we thought three boys would be perfect. Until somehow Julie got pregnant with Claire. So we accepted Claire as God's blessing in our lives. Now things were really perfect with three boys and a little daddy's girl. Until along came Evie. It was at this point that we quit dabbling, somewhat ineffectively I might admit, in birth control and accepted God's desire for us to have kids. Lots of them. We took to heart the Biblical concept of "Go forth and multiply" and did our best to live it out.  So the pattern of Sabo child birthing continued pretty much unabated, not just for years mind you, but decades. Yes, decades. Julie has given birth to 14 little blessings, spanning four different decades. The '80s, '90s, '00s and '10s have all been graced by the arrival of little Sabos, who presently number 9 males and 5 females, ranging in age from 25 to 18 months.

Over the years, the number one comment from people who learn about our extraordinary number of offspring is, "Do you know what causes that?"  My answer is yes. Yes I know what causes that. I reckon we're pretty good at it.