5 days left

Well, summer here is officially winding down - we have 5 days until the girls start showing up. We have had a great summer, full of fun and lots of memory making things. Kids had a great summer, but are ready for their friends to come back. Faith is excited

We have 12 girls in the Fall and then 2 more come in January so it is not too big. We have 2 seniors, 3 juniors, 1 sophomore, 4 freshman, 4 middle schoolers. So it is a pretty young dorm. We are very excited to start this new transition and look forward to experiencing the differences between parenting a group of girls versus guys.

The electricity has been a constant source of aggravation for us - it is a little bit better now, going off for 2-4 hours a day. Unfortunately alot of those times are at 10 pm - ugh. It hasn't rained that much for rainy season, so I suspect that there will be a lot more rain coming soon - hopefully it will help the heat - we start sweating the minute we wake up, gross!

We have only minor things to do for the dorm to be ready thanks to our predecessors! We will try to be better about blogging - our internet is a little slow, but will try to post pictures soon.

Our plans for furlough are starting. We will be leaving here around June 10th and flying into Washington DC - we will be in Maryland and also go to North Carolina to visit our friends there!
I know it is a while until that happens, but want to get things lined up - does anyone have a vehicle that they would be willing to let us use/rent for the 7 months we are in the States? We are trying to reserve a vehicle with some of the companies that rent out to missionaries, but they are all booked right now, but will keep looking. We are also looking at some options for housing - anyone have a guest house, missionary apartment or in-law suite (preferably with separate entrance or kitchen)? Please email us if you have any information - we are just starting our planning, but wanted to throw it out here first.

We are starting our planning for visiting and speaking at churches as well, if you would like us to visit your church and speak, please email us!

Summer

Wow - it is hard to believe that it has been a month since I last posted. We have been jet setting in Spain, moving, taking a French class and trying to relax with the kids by the pool. We had an amazing time in Spain. We started by going to Madrid for 3 days and enjoyed some museums, parks and fast food. We then flew to Mallorca - a little island off the coast of Spain. We rented a car and drove around this amazing little island. We saw beaches and mountains and lots of beautiful countryside. We spent 5 days here and we all felt that we could have stayed longer. The beautiful Mediterranean Sea was absolutely gorgeous. We then headed back to Madrid for another week. We saw more museums, went to malls, drank Starbucks, walked through parks, went to a zoo, and enjoyed amazing architecture. Overall it was an amazing opportunity, one our kids will hopefully never forget.

As soon as we got back, we started a French intensive course at the university. It is 8-12 everyday for 5 weeks. It has been a huge boost in our language, but our brain hurt at the end of the time. We also joined a pool here and that has been fun. We meet the kids here after class and hang out for a few hours to play and swim.

In the midst of all these things we moved to another apartment. Our new apartment was painted, and it looks great. It was a good opportunity for us to clean out some things, go through clothes that were too small and reevaluate what we are choosing to keep around us. So overall it was a really positive experience.

The kids are having a good summer too - they are spending the night at friends house, enjoying some independence while we are at class and love being lazy. Ron has been taking the time to hang out with some of the nationals and practice his French while drinking tea. It has been good to try to build some good relationships.

Well, in the next post I will put up some pictures from our summer. Internet and power continue to be an issue, although this week the power has been much better. The president promised to keep the power better since the last riots and demonstrations. So hopefully it will continue! Enjoy your summer! Drop us a line if you have some time.

Off to Spain

We are heading off to Spain tonight - we are very excited. We will arrive in Portugal and spend the day touring Lisbon and then we will head to Madrid. We will spend 3 days in Madrid and then we fly to Mallorca. We have rented an apartment and will basically soak up the Mediterranean sun and relax as well as see the museums and culture. We then will travel back to Madrid where we will spend a week touring the city and getting a little Western culture. We arrive back on the 29th and then proceed to finish moving upstairs to our new apartment. We are really excited about this opportunity and will post lots of pics and info when we get back. Thanks for all your support for our family. Love and miss you!

4 more days

We are winding down the year here and only have 4 more days until graduation. The kids are taking exams as I write this! Graduation is Thursday and then we end the year with a 50th anniversary celebration. Our summer plans consist of 2 weeks in Spain and then a French class at the university. It has been an exciting year for us filled with challenges, but lots of good things as well. Our internet has been less than stellar, so I have been having a hard time posting, so sorry for the lack of communication. We will be sending out an update soon, so be on the lookout for that! But here are some current pictures:


Faith sporting a new hat from Nana.

Zach's soap carving of a Raven!

Faith won the French award for her level.

Luke as Mr. Incredible for a Disney party!

Luke played intermediate basketball this year - he really liked it!

Beauty and the Beast

Zach was cast as Lefou in Beauty and the Beast this past weekend. We wanted to show you one of his big solos. He had 2 other solos, but this was the biggest. So if you are interested, enjoy! This was more for the grandparents!

8 weeks to go

The year has really flown by. It is hard to believe that we only have 8 more weeks of school before the we will have completed our second year of dorm parenting. It is amazing how much this job teaches you about yourself and others. We have lots of events that will eat away the time - spring musical, Junior/Senior Banquet are two of the big ones. I know that I will be sitting here with my head reeling in June wondering where the time went. For the past 2 weeks it was Spring break. I sit here now at the end of it and wonder where the time went. We enjoyed a week at the beach at a little villa outside of town and just relaxed and swam and hung out with our kids. It was nice to have that time away.

The electricity has been better and as we speak the generator is being installed. The man installing it allowed us to put a deposit down and we are continuing to pray for the money. It will be a huge help in getting all of the laundry done and not having to walk around with flashlights! The internet has been painfully intermittent which makes communication challenging. It is not strong enough for a decent skype call most times, but hopefully that will improve with time. In a place where the infrastructure is growing beyond the country, it makes it difficult for the country to keep up. I think that is where Senegal is currently. Internet, electricity, water all continue to be a challenge for the ever growing country. It is still our biggest challenge, one that we continue to have to be stretched to not go crazy by it! There have been many days that I would have packed it in, but I know that this is where we are supposed to be so we deal with it!

We continue to miss our family and friends and though we haven't started counting down - realize that we will be back in the US in 14 months for our furlough. We continue to thank you for your prayers and support of our family.

Happenings

Life continues to be busy here at school - below are some pictures of an event called Sr. Cafe, where acts perform and all the proceeds go to the Senior class. I performed as well as Zach. Zach is in the Chamber Choir and also performed a little medley - both videos are on Facebook.
Also Zach and Faith participated in a 3 school tournament which includes track and field, volleyball and soccer. Faith ran the 800 meters and did so great. She lacks my competitive spirit so we were working on that with her and she got 4th out of 10. She did great! Zach's volleyball team got 3rd in his age group and he played great!


Faith dressed up as a cat for the cafe. The theme was Jammin in the Jungle.







Spring break is coming up for us next week - this is where all of the boys go home to their families and we get to relax for 2 weeks. We are really looking forward to this time to regroup as a family. The electricity has been horrible - last night we lost power for over 12 hours. The day before we only had power for 4 hours. The school is in the process of trying to raise money for a generator for the dorms. When we have no electricity - no laundry gets done, when it is in the evening, the boys have to do their homework by a some lamps. We are currently running a battery setup up but with the long outages they are not able to keep up. We are praying that God provides the money as it is very difficult right now. We are praying that Senelec (the country electric co.) can figure out what needs to be done, but we have heard that it is only going to get worse. It is very trying on everyone's patience!!! The school is putting in a generator today for the school, but they don't have enough money to cover the dorms as well. So please pray with us that the funds will come in.

Thanks for continuing to lift our family in prayer and we continue to thank you for your support of our family!