It's really hard to mix friendship and business. It's a really hard balance and it's hard to know where to draw the lines. Something can make sense as far as improving business but that same decision will mean a possible decline in the friendship.
Right now I'm dealing with one of these decisions. It's really tearing my heart and mind apart. I am starting a school and have to make the wisest choices possible to stretch what little funds I have to go the furthest. I want to have a second teacher helping me but at the moment it doesn't look like it's going to be worthwhile. The number of children are few.
And the biggest reason I wanted a second teacher was so that I would have someone who spoke the same language as the children. Now the person which I had "hired" to teach has informed me that she doesn't speak the language. She speaks another one and she doesn't want it to be in the language of the children because then her son wouldn't understand. Her son is only 2 and not officially enrolled in the school. I was just going to allow him to come to save her the cost of a baby-sitter since I don't have much money to pay her. Again, this would add another expense to the school. And I'm wondering why should all the other children be forced to use a language that they don't know because of one child? My thought was to use both the local language and English so that the children understand what is going on until they have mastered English. If both languages are being used, her son would understand what is going on since he is English speaking.
But, where there is friendship and business involved, I'm learning that people will quickly take advantage. Since I'm her friend I should just let these things slide by, at least from her point of view. From my point of view, I feel like I'm being taken advantage of.
Now the dilemma is: do I still have her to come and teach even though she doesn't meet the needs that I have and being that the children are so few? If I tell her that at this point I'm not going to need her, will it be like I'm a person with a divided mind who can't make up her mind? Will we lose friendship over it? Or will she understand?
It seems this has been a recurring theme in my life over the last few weeks: having to stand up to people. It's not pleasant and I hate disappointing or annoying anyone but at some point I have to stop letting people take advantage of me. Please pray for me as I make this decision and confront the issue
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