Article January 1, 2000 Issue

On alcohol—and learning English

Ngemba Fidel—Luanda, Angola

Here in Angola, many young people drink, and go too far. I don't think drinking brings anything good. And I don't want to harm myself. I also know that God is with me and has already created me happy. This gives me the firmness to refuse alcohol whenever it's offered to me.

There are other things I don't go along with. For example, at school there are some students who don't study in their classes, and at the end of the year they bribe the teachers to get promoted to the next grade. But this corruption doesn't make sense to me. I feel it's better to study and to depend on God.

At the institute where I study, we learn English. The teachers explain everything in English. At first, I didn't understand a thing. I began to dislike the teacher. Every time he walked into the classroom, I would panic. This bothered me. I thought about a passage in Science and Health that says, “Truth not error, Love not hate, Spirit not matter, governs man” (p. 420). I then saw that I should be controlled by Love, and not by hate and insecurity. It was important for me to understand that this teacher was also a child of God, so he had something good to communicate to me. After this, a friend of mine explained some things to me about the subject, and I started to understand more of what the teacher was saying.

Send a comment to the editors