SEW

...stands for Spiritual Emphasis Week here at ICSB. It's a week in which the school sets aside one period every day to listen to a guest speaker talk about whatever the Lord lays on the heart. It's a really special time, generally, and the kids take it really seriously. I'm excited to experience my third since being here. But more than anything I wanted to ask for prayer for the hearts of these kids, some of whom do not hold Jesus as Lord of their lives. May the Truth be heard loud and clear! and may we all come away encouraged and equipped to live out our faith.!

I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God

Now that you have the song stuck in your head (sorry), let me explain my reason for gladness...no, excitement...no, sheer delight! that I'm part of His family. Since August, I have been sleeping on a mattress that is lacking in so many ways. The mattress is relatively thin and I can feel every single spring. It has no box spring, and while it has enough wooden slats to support it, the mattress itself just sags in the middle. Another issue that exists to compound this less than happy sleeping situation is that the windows in my room are very drafty (again, they don't believe in sealant over here) and even with towels stuffed around them, my room is very cold, and I feel it most THROUGH my mattress. So, early on I was on the hunt for a mattress pad, to no avail. Shortly after coming back from the states, one of the teachers here, Elaine (another mid westerner, hails from Minnesota), popped her head into my room with a big, excited smile on her face and said, "I ordered you a mattress!". What??? She had also been back in the states and had come across a really good deal on one of those memory foam mattresses at Kohl's, and so she ordered it for me! She even refused to tell me the cost, saying that she just wanted to bless me! and that it should be arriving in a couple weeks. So, it's been a couple weeks, and just today, she popped her head into my classroom again, and with her she had the mattress topper that I CANNOT WAIT TO USE!. I wanted to ditch school right then and go try it out. I'm so excited. But more than anything I'm SO incredibly touched by Elaine's generosity and evident love for Jesus. It is a good thing to live in this community.

Pulling out

The decision is made: I will be moving back to the states at the end of this school year.

It was after a semester of thinking and praying through the decision that I came to this conclusion. I have known that teaching here was a temporary situation, although somewhat open-ended in duration. I didn't know at first that I would sign on for another year, and then yet another year after that. But I'm so thankful and blessed to have been given the capability to do so, to stay on for three years. This has been such an incredibly rich time for me, and I will most certainly leave part of my heart behind when I say good-bye. It's gonna hurt. But I feel very good about this decision! I have a sense of peace about it and about what the future holds, as I hold His hand, even though I have no idea what lies beyond June... I'm confident that this is the step that the Lord would have me take, and I'm actually very excited to see what is in store for me when I return.

So one of my New Years hopes (I've stopped using "resolutions"... =) is to keep my blog updated more. Haha, I'm off to a GREAT start, nicht war? Well, I do have some Christmas photos to share, but in the next post. For now, here's the annual family shot: