Two Full Weeks

Wow, these last two weeks have been so packed with things happening and God working. We've been falling behind on our blogging lately, it would be easy to blame it on all the business but it always comes back to time management, doesn't it? The good thing is that we have a mostly established schedule now, it always takes a few weeks to get everything arranged. There are still kids who don't fit into our schedule because of class time conflicts that want to learn English so we are working on figuring that out.

Youth group continues to go well, we've had around 25 kids so far, it's a lot for one apartment living room, but we make it work. Our amazing race challenges continue, this week they had to find matching pairs of socks from a big pile.

We are working on creating posters of the kid's dreams, by drawing and using magazines. We are trying to encourage them to think more about their futures and to realize that they can do a lot with their lives.

With the younger kids we have many classes, like character development and craft time.

In the spirit of fall we had the kids do colorful tracings of leaves.

Rebecca and Sanda teach a combined class about geography and biology.

Then of course we have many english classes, we are going through the alphabet and having the kids draw pictures of things that start with each letter.

They always want to write on the white boards so we thought it would be a good teaching tool if we could use it in class.

Here is a very interesting elephant!

The other business has come from our apartment search. Praise God that he has provided one for us! We moved in this week and have been working on cleaning it up and putting together all of our new furniture. We had to go on a shopping spree to furnish the apartment (ouch!) but we're thankful that God has provided for us so we were able to do it. We really like our new apartment and it is like a burden has been lifted from our shoulders. We are so thankful and want to thank you for your prayers and support! God has really provided for us and we know now that this is the place he had in store for us from the beginning. It is awesome how He works.

God also provided for us on another front. When we are home soon we will be traveling quite a bit so we need to borrow a car from someone. Up until Sunday we hadn't heard of any car being available. We were talking with some family about it and were saying that even though the time is getting near and we didn't have a car yet, we knew God would provide one for us in His timing. Right after that conversation we got an e-mail from some friends saying that they had a car we could borrow. Their mom doesn't use her car anymore and it is just being stored and she offered it to us to use. How awesome is that?! We can tangibly feel the joy that God is giving us through his providence. Truly wonderful. When you trust in God he is faithful, we have seen that in our lives time and time again!

Start Of The Year

Wow, it's the middle of October already, and now we know it's fall because our beloved nice warm weather has left and the cold has come in it's place. But I guess that is to be expected in October. Eight years ago when we got married it was pretty cold already, dare I say nearly snowing that day. We celebrated our anniversary with our new couples, and amazingly Steven and Haley's is the same exact day.

Josh and Missy made us chicken parmesan and apple crisp, and I made the second dessert of cinnamon rolls.

The hours it takes to make these are worth it, they are sooo good, if I do say so myself.

We started our programming this week and worked a lot on scheduling. We started with a plan and knew that it would change a lot, but it actually didn't too much.

We are working in all of the locations in this area now, with many more kids than we worked with last year. Since we are staying the whole week we have much more opportunity. We are teaching English, math, biology and character to kids of all ages. The hope is that this will not only help them do well in school but get to know us better, and through that will be pointed to God.

At youth group we did Amazing Race games and challenges, complete with authentic looking envelopes and clue cards.

The kids had to put together a puzzle according to the picture...

...Solve a word search with each person missing one of the senses...

...And keep drinking pop until they found the one with the X in the bottom. They all had a lot of fun. It was pretty crowded in the small living room with 30 of us in total, but we're used to that from last year. We hope to be able to have an impact on these kids even though we have been forbidden by their director to talk about God. We know that God will work in spite of that and will do amazing things.

The last three weeks have been an emotional roller coaster with the apartment search. We have been so close to finding a few but each time something hasn't worked out. Right now we have a great prospect, one that is very nice and the price is right and everything seems to be in order, except that the owner lives in Italy and he didn't leave the legal papers with his brother-in-law who is in charge of the apartment. We would love to move in there but need to have some sort of contract with them, so we're trying to figure out how to do that. Please continue praying for this to be resolved. We know God will provide as he always has up to this point. It's just hard to put aside our worries and stresses after having such a hard time finding anything. We appreciate all of your support and prayers as we go through this, thanks!