Jon Felipe's Birthday

My parents drove out to Iowa for the weekend to help us celebrate Jon Felipe's birthday. Unfortunately, they both came down with colds on the day they drove out here so they weren't feeling their best. Still, it was so nice to see them, even if it was only for a short visit. Several months ago, they had made a promise to Jon Felipe that they would come out for his birthday and he had been counting the days. He would have been so disappointed if they hadn't been able to make it. So, I'm glad they made it for his sake, but I'm also glad they made it for my sake. I miss them. I wish we didn't live so far away. I wish I could see them more often. I wish I could just drop by their house for a quick visit and a cup of tea. Talking on the phone is good, but it's not quite the same. Thanks Mom and Dad for making the long drive to see us!

Wordless Wednesday - Pumpkin Carving

Host Family

This year we signed up to be a host family for international students at Dordt. We were matched up with these two sweet girls. Chan is from Korea and Aziel is from Mexico. There was an organized host family get together in September and the plan is that we will continue to do things with our host students about once a month or so for the rest of the school year. Today Aziel and Chan came over for Sunday dinner after church. Then we made sugar cookies and decorated them. They enjoyed doing this and were pleased to be able to take the cookies back to campus to share with their roommates. We look forward to getting to know them better over the course of the year.

The fall weather has been beautiful here. Last weekend we headed out to the Dordt farm to get some pumpkins. Don't you wish your place of work had a farm with a pumpkin patch?

Missed

Do you think maybe they missed me just a bit? Thank you all for your prayers for my family while I was gone. They did great!

Home

I am grateful to be home! Travel did not go as smoothly as could be desired (true for both the trip there and the trip home) and my luggage is in Houston somewhere, but I got to hug my children tonight. What a blessing! I will post more about my trip in the next couple days.

Nicaragua Conference Pictures

As promised, here are some pictures from the workshop. Thank you again for your prayers. The workshops were very well received. The director of a Christian school association here in Nicaragua attended the workshops along with several facilitators from his schools. He oversees more than 100 Christian schools here. The facilitators will take these ideas back to their schools. He asked if I could try to find a way to come back and do follow-up workshops that his teachers could attend, so perhaps I will have the opportunity to return to Nicaragua in the future. The teachers at the workshops told us how grateful they were to get this information and to have ideas that they could take back to their classrooms and put in place right away.

With all the rain, we are having internet issues so this all for now.