Setting up Classrooms

The start of school is finally just around the corner.  That corner is coming way too fast, though.  Even with school being pushed back a week, we are still feeling extremely overwhelmed.  Justin was able to get into his classroom on Wednesday and get some things going.  I, however, didn’t get into my room until about 2:30 on Thursday.  To say I was frustrated is a bit of an understatement, but thankfully I’m finally in there.  I think the most culture shock that we have experienced has been in the whole construction/classroom work.  I finally got my furniture in my room and out of the Pre-K room, arranged it how I wanted it for the most part, then found out I had to move some things, and that they want to change the wall paper before school starts.  Deep breaths, Megan.  Justin’s room is looking great! He has his library area pretty much set up, bulletin boards going, new lockers in his room (that’s how they do it here), and he is getting rules and things posted as well. 

So prayers are definitely requested for all of our preparations – lesson planning, room arranging, etc. Stress levels are rising, but it is also somewhat comforting to know that most of the other new teachers are feeling the same way, so we’re not alone.  We are very thankful to have met some great people in our school who we get along with well.  We are also thankful for returning teachers who have been very helpful and encouraging.  I am especially thankful for my co-teacher – the Pre-K teacher – Lydia.  She has been teaching for a while and is very helpful and encouraging.  It’s a blessing that we are team-teaching! 

I apologize if this post is a little bit of a downer.  We really love being here! We are in a beautiful city, surrounded by mountains and sea, and are meeting wonderful friends that I see us having for a long time – both from school and church. Our apartment is wonderful, our commute is quick and easy, the food has been good so far, and we have somehow managed to keep in touch with people at home despite the lack of a real internet connection in our apartment.

Pray for good rest these next few days and surprising energy as we work at school.  Pray that the clock ticks slowly, or that we just work quickly and efficiently.  Thank you for being such wonderful friends and family.  We know we are lifted up in prayer.  We think of you all often and prayer for you as well.  Thank you for continuing to be part of our lives!

Psalm 16:8 I have set the Lord continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Groundbreaking Ceremony

Today we had the Ground Breaking Ceremony for the new building at school.  We were all told to dress up in our formal clothes and to be prepared for a very traditional ceremony.  This ceremony deserves a blog post all of its own.

Thanks to Mrs. Kim, who works at school, we were given a slight idea of what was to come.  She sent us a video which you can find below.  Basically, we knew there would be a pig head and that we were asked to participate as much as we felt comfortable.  As cool as it sounded, the comfort level dropped a bit as soon as we were handed money to stuff in the pig’s snout and then bow to it on the ground.  The money was for the construction workers so that they could go party.  They told us that really we were just wishing for safety for the workers.  That’s all great, but we were a little concerned about bowing to a pig head.  The principal was very understanding, thankfully, and said we could hand our money to someone else and just hide out in the back.  We were told several times that it wasn’t a religious act, but it sure felt like it to us. 

There ceremony was definitely very interesting, complete with a Buddhist Monk.  The director of the school spoke, the Buddhist Monk did some things, and a few other Korean spoke.  Then they did the pig part.  All of this in the rain.  It was very interesting, that’s for sure.  We were also given a gift by the school of a towel with the school’s name in Korean, and the date.  I guess that’s a common gift.

I don’t know when we’ll ever have the chance to see something like that again, so it was cool to see and be a part of it.  Enjoy the photos and video!

The link to the video is here

The Pig Head

The entire ceremony set-up

Pig Head with the money

Typhoon Bolaven

We appreciate all of your prayers and concerns as the typhoon arrives in Korea.  Thankfully, we are not going to be hit with the strongest part of the storm.  So far we have only seen a little bit of rain and some wind.  We have been told several different things in regards to what will actually happen in Busan, but it is looking like it will be less severe here than they anticipated.  We are able to leave our apartments today unless we hear otherwise.  It looks like we'll just get rain and wind, but nothing like what they originally thought.  We are prepared with food and water in case we happen to lose power or something, and we are taking every other precaution advised, just in case.  Please know that we have the best intentions of keeping you up-to-date, but our internet is spotty, and we are still trying to focus on getting a lot of school work done for next week.

If you want to keep posted on the weather, check www.wunderground.com.

Thanks again for your prayers.

It's a Small World After All

We think we have found our home church!  This weekend we tried a different church than last time.  This church is on a University campus and consists mostly of Americans, Canadians, and South Africans.  The pastor is from Ohio and even used to work at BFS! Small world, right?  Then it got even smaller! We met a couple who has been in Busan for two years, and soon found out that the wife has a connection back in Indiana to someone that Justin worked with, and she had even sent us a Facebook message a while back.  Then, after chatting for a bit, I found out that she grew up in Gaston, Indiana!  For those of you who don’t have a clue where that is, it’s about 20ish minutes from Upland.  So that was a fun connection!

We really enjoyed the church service and were so incredibly welcomed by this group of people and were even treated to a free lunch afterwards!  This church just seems to have more of the community-like atmosphere that we are looking for.  It was such a great time, and we didn’t get home until 3:00!  We are so grateful to feel so confident that this church is where we should be for now.  It is such a blessing to begin to have the Christian community around us!

Sunday evening we got to experience a Busan Soccer game.  A group of 10 of us took the subway to the Sports Complex where there is a gymnasium, swimming pools, baseball field, and soccer stadium.  The game ended in a 0-0 tie, but it was still a lot of fun!  There are three guys on the team who played on the Olympic team for Korea, so they did a little presentation after the game, and the Koreans were screaming and cheering like crazy for these guys!  We are excited to go to a baseball game soon.

The rest of the weekend was pretty laid back.  Friday we had a work dinner at a “Mexican” restaurant, which was good.  We got to enjoy a beautiful view from the restaurant and spent most of the evening chatting outside with friends while looking out over the canal, the Diamond Bridge, and several of Busan’s skyscrapers and high-rise apartments.  Saturday was low-key with a trip to E-Mart and an adventurous trip to get pizza.  All in all, it was a successful weekend!

This week is, of course, starting out a little crazy again.  This time it’s not completely because of construction, but partly.  We are still not allowed back in our classrooms.  They are hoping for Wednesday now.  The other reason it has been crazy is because of Typhoon Bolaven.  It is supposed to hit us Tuesday morning (Wednesday night for most of you), and we’re guessing that we’ll be stuck in our apartments most of the day.  They are saying that it will go from a Category 2 in Japan to a Category 1 here.  That still means high winds and lots of rain though.  We are strangely kind of excited to see what it’s like!  J 

As always, we love to hear from you and are so thankful for Skype and Google!

Enjoy these few pictures from the last few days!

River Walk near our Apartment. You can walk all the way up the mountain from here!

Sunny view from our apartment, finally!

Part of Justin's Classroom

More of Justin's Classroom

Soccer Stadium

Soccer Field

Enjoying the game!

We love noticing all of the English words that are spelled wrong! :)

We think these are the 3 who were in the Olympics.

Being Flexible and Open-Minded

This week has been interesting to say the least.  At school we are constantly talking about being flexible and how especially important that is when working in a foreign country.  With that being said, here is the run-down of our past two days.

Tuesday we showed up at school at 8:30 for breakfast to the sound of several jackhammers breaking up the main lobby floor.  After about 30 minutes, they decided that we would take over a space in either a local coffee shop or in some conference room so that we could continue.  When both of those options fell through, we got dismissed early at noon to go work on our own.  The hard part about that was that we had hardly gone over anything, so the lack of information kept us from doing much. 

One of the ELL teachers graciously offered her time to sit with several of us and help us create supplies lists for our classes, talk about students, expectations, and several different things.  She also took us to a teacher supply store that we never would have found on our own.  Later in the afternoon, the Pre-K teacher (Lydia) and I worked on some scheduling.  We are very separate from the rest of the school in many ways because we don’t go to specials or anything.  We are going to be able to basically team teach, though, which is huge!  I only have 2 students as of now and she only has 7.  We were able to put together a rough schedule and feel like we accomplished something.  We were also able to look through a supplies catalog and order anything we wanted for our rooms! 

Justin was able to sit with the only returning elementary teacher and talk through classroom management and discipline and get some great tips! He reworked his schedule a bit, so he was happy with that as well.

Wednesday is a whole new story.  They were able to reserve a conference room in a different part of the city, so we met at the school at 8:30 to catch the school bus.  It was raining, and our bus driver was not there.  So the administration headed over in a car to get things set up, only to find out that there was no internet access, which was necessary for the majority of our schedule today. So we got moved to the computer lab in the school, which meant jumping over all sorts of construction and skipping steps on the staircase to get there.  We finally got settled in there and found out that they in fact DID have internet at the conference room.  So we packed up and headed back out to the bus.  But we still had no bus driver for a while.  We finally made it to the conference room around 10am.  We sat in a café for a while and had gelato and coffee (hot chocolate for me) and then got going with meetings around 10:30 or 11:00. 

The first announcement was something that we were all a bit relieved about – school has been postponed until September 3^rd due to all of the construction and lack of being able to meet.  So that means that next week we will be attempting to have most of the meeting that we didn’t get to this week.  This was especially comforting since we don’t even know if we’ll actually be able to get into our classrooms Friday or not.  That is the plan, but of course, we must be flexible! 

We also had to get our lovely health checks done today at the hospital – the first step in getting an alien registration card.  We had X-rays, hearing tests, eye “tests,” blood pressure tests, urine tests, blood drawn, and all of that fun stuff.  It was pretty humorous to walk out with your cup of urine and just set it on a tray with 10 other cups of your co-workers’ urine.  A bonding experience, I suppose.  Justin got hauled off to a different floor of the hospital for being colorblind.  They also had the hardest time drawing his blood! Thankfully that wasn’t me or I’m sure I would have passed out. 

Tonight we are hanging out with the two other couples……Nick and Sara and Miten and Maggie.  It will be nice to be able to relax and just hang out instead of feeling like there are a thousand things we need to be working on for school. 

We miss you all and hope and pray you are doing well!

First Day of Work!

Our first day of work was very easy-going but informative.  We had a continental breakfast at school and then heard about some Korean culture and different cultural things we will experience.  We broke for lunch at noon, and the school took us to a Korean Barbecue place that we can actually walk to from our apartment.  The beef was delicious and we didn’t have to sit on the floor this time!  J We also ran in to a family whose kids attend BFS, and Justin got to meet 2 of his students!  We have been told that they are VERY excited to have a guy teacher! 

From there they took us on a bus tour to a few places, including the APEC house which has a great park and view.  We are excited to go back and explore more on our own when it isn’t quite as hot outside.  Then they took us to a different beach that is about 15 minutes from our apartment.  It was SO much less crowded than Haeundae Beach, which we heard set a record this summer for having 700,000 people there in one day!

With all of the construction going on at school still, we were not able to work in our classrooms at all.  My classroom currently does not even have flooring down.  Everything has been taken out!  They said we may not be able to get in until Friday!  So pray for stress levels with that.  The planner in me is so eager to really get started. 

Below are pictures of the view from our apartment at night as well as pictures from our school outing today! Enjoy! 

Night view from our veranda

Marina Apartments

View of the Diamond Bridge

At the APEC House, with the Diamond Bridge behind us

Songjeong Beach

Costco, Indian Food, and Church

We decided to be brave on Saturday and get to Costco on our own.  We wrote down the address and got a taxi right by our apartment.  The first guy acted like he didn’t know what it was, but the next guy did.  It was about a 15 minute ride, and cost less than $7 to get there.  Our mission was to find a good, relatively cheap TV, which we did!  We were also noticing some very cheap digital cameras.  We also bought a nice blanket because I was very sad to leave my nice one back in the States.  We got some Tupperware – the first real Tupperware we have seen – meaning that it isn’t glass or $5 for one container.  We also found real bath towels (the “towels” provided for us, which Koreans usually use, I guess, were the size of hand towels, and we only brought one set from home) for $6.  We made it out of the crazy-busy store and found taxi drivers waiting.  We loaded up our new purchases and made it home without any problems! Yes, we were pretty proud of ourselves for making it without any help. 

For dinner Saturday night we went to an Indian restaurant called “Namaste” with a big group from school.  We all met up and walked down towards the beach together and just spent the evening getting to know each other.  While walking down I got talking with a girl named Laura who went to IU and found out that she is a Christian as well! She ended up coming to church with us and the Olsons on Sunday. We both were so excited to find a friend within our school who is a Christian!  We also spent a good amount of time talking to a couple – Miten and Maggie – who live right by us in our apartment complex.  We shared a taxi back with them (a whopping $3 total) and had a great time laughing with them and getting to know them.  It was great to find out that I am not the only one here who isn’t thrilled about seafood – Maggie is the same way.  They will both be teaching in the middle/high school. 

Church on Sunday was pretty good.  It took us about 45 minutes or so to get there.  We enjoyed it, but are planning on trying a different one next week just to see.  After the service, the new people were invited upstairs to have Dunkin Donuts and coffee, so we went.  We briefly met some other new people as well as the Pastor and a few others who volunteer/work with the church.  While we do not know if we will end up going there or another church we are so glad we got started in the process.  It was such a blessing to have other people from school to go to, so for that we are very thankful.  

Haeundae Beach

We spent Friday afternoon at Haeundae Beach with a couple from school – the Olsons.  Nancy will be teaching High School English and her husband, Rolf, is a Lutheran Pastor back in Minnesota and will only be in Busan for a month.  We walked about 30 minutes to the beach and rented umbrellas and chairs because it was SO hot.  One umbrella and 2 chairs costs 5,000 won, just under $5.00.  The water felt great and was so refreshing from the humid air and heat.  We stayed for about 4 hours just talking and getting to know them.  Below is a picture of the beach. It was pretty hazy out, but it was still beautiful.

We ran into a few other people from school, including a couple who lives on the other side of our building.  They also informed us that we get to pick out a new tv, which is great because ours doesn’t currently have a way to hook up to our computers to watch stuff online once we have internet.  We also found out that our $250 settling-in allowance is per contract, so dishwasher here we come! We found one for about $60 that just plugs into the wall.  We also might get a little mini toaster oven so that we can “bake” a few things.  Those things will require a trip to Costco soon because we have heard that it’s cheaper to get some of those things there.

Sunday we are going to church with the Olson’s. We are leaving extra time for getting lost, so hopefully we won’t miss it. J  We are really looking forward to finding a community of believers, so pray that we either feel that at this church or know we need to keep looking.  We are both so used to being surrounded by our Christian friends and family, so we are really craving that. We are so excited to become better friends with people at school too.  There are 14 new teachers – we have met 8 of them or so, I think.

Monday we hit the ground running. We will be at school from 8:30-4 every day until school starts.  They have scheduled part of each day to be in our classrooms though, so that’s good. All three of the Early Childhood teachers are new this year.  In the rest of the elementary classes, there is only one returning teacher.  At least we’re all in the same boat!

We ask for continued prayer in adjusting to the time difference.  We tend to get tired pretty early and then wake up around 6, and we want to get used to staying up a little later for when school starts.  Also pray that we can form good connections with people both at school and in whatever church we end up going to.  Praise the Lord that we seem to be doing so well at settling in and finding our way around our part of the city.  It is such a blessing to live so close to the school and have so many amenities just as close.  We can’t thank you enough for your prayers, and kind words of encouragement.  They mean the world to us!  

Lessons in Driving and EMart

We learned this week that in Korea, red lights are more like a suggestion than a mandatory law.  Most people will stop at them, but if no one is coming from the other direction, they just go.  Part of the reason that this is the case is probably because police officers have little or no authority compared to in the US.  We have seen one police car so far.  We are told that they don’t even carry guns.  When you are stopped at a red light, it is also legal to make either a right or a left turn on red.  Parking spaces are also MUCH smaller here, but they are way more efficient with their parking in that it is mostly either underground or in parking garages.  People also rarely honk their horns or get road rage because they see no point in that.  We were picturing there being a lot more scooters and full, packed streets, but there hasn’t much pedestrian or car traffic so far.  You might be surprised to know that we are in a city of almost 4 million if you saw that. 

The ceiling light in our bedroom went out last night, so we took the cover off and discovered these hoola-hoop-shaped light bulbs.  One was about 10 inches across and the other about 14.  So we took a walk down to EMart today to see if we could find them.  Thankfully we took a picture of the bulbs with the labels so that we could try to find the right one.  However, after looking at the shelves for a few minutes in complete confusion, a wonderfully nice EMart worker came over to try to help us.  We showed her the pictures of the light bulbs and she pulled them out for us in no time.  Lesson learned: always take a picture of what you need to the store. 

Getting to the store and then out of the store was also interesting.  There wasn’t a crosswalk to actually get to EMart, so we went down the metro station hoping we could come out on the other side, which we could.  That was interesting.  Then coming out of the store, we had to go up the escalator after checking out, even though we wanted to exit on the ground floor.  Then we had to take an elevator back down to the main floor.  I can’t imagine this is the most efficient way to get out of the store, but that’s how we did.  Koreans seem to be so efficient in everything that there must be an easier way. 

We are off to the beach for the afternoon!  Finally some relief from the heat without being stuck in our apartment!  We'll post pictures soon! Have a great weekend!

Korean Barbecue

For lunch on Wednesday Ron and Mr. Saunders (the Vice Principal) took us to a traditional Korean Barbecue restaurant. We sat down on the floor to eat and they brought probably a dozen bowls of side dishes.  Everything from vegetables to kimchi to seaweed…and then came this huge plate of raw beef.  Ron then cooked it all on the table (like hibachi) for us to eat.  The meat was delicious!  You could mix it in with some soy sauce, or there were pieces of lettuce-like leaves that you could wrap the meat and other sauces/veggies around.  It really was very good!  A few things were a little spicy, but not bad as long as we had a piece of meat or a drink right after.  They even had Pineapple Fanta (Mom!!) to drink.  Unfortunately this restaurant is in a different town, so I’m not sure how to get back there, and I think it was bit pricy, but it was a nice treat! 

After lunch, they drove us up this mountain where we walked up about 100 steps to this giant gazebo-looking platform to look out over the water and the city.  We could see the beach in the town where we ate, and a good portion of Busan.  As we drove back to Haeundae (where we live…pronounced “hay-oon-day”) we saw Haeundae Beach, which we still need to venture out to see!  It has been raining off and on since we got here on Sunday, and it’s a good walk to the beach so we’re waiting for a nice day for that.  Also on our drive back we went through quite the shopping district, which we are told isn’t even the most popular place to shop.  We saw an Adidas store, Tommy Hilfiger, The North Face, DKNY, “TG Maxx,” Puma, and several others that we can’t think of right now.  It was pretty funny since some of those stores your rarely see in the States. 

After we got back we took a walk around our area and found a bread shop, a farmers’ market-like store that has fruits and vegetables, and found a very nice River Walk.  We walked along the river until we got back to our apartment complex.  It’s good to feel like we are starting to know where things are and where we can buy certain foods and things.  We are hoping to also hike up into the mountains pretty soon.  

It has been good to hear from some of you!  Until next time...

Our Apartment

Here are a few pictures of our apartment along with out apartment layout!

We can see the school from our apartment.  It is the building in the middle with all of the scaffolding.

View of the mountains from our apartment!

The bigger balcony.

Living Room

Master Bedroom.  Lovely curtains, I know.

Bathroom

Kitchen with a door out to the other balcony

The layout!

Hello From Busan!

After nearly 24 hours of travel and no sleep, we made it to Busan! 

In Ft Wayne we had to purchase a return ticket for me (Megan) because I didn’t have a Visa.  Thankfully we were able to buy a refundable ticket.  We made it to Busan around 9pm on Sunday night.  Customs here was a breeze – they didn’t even ask for a return ticket.  He just told me to get my status changed within 90 days!  As soon as we got to baggage claim we saw all four of our bags already on the belt.  It doesn’t get much better than that!

Our new principal was waiting for us at the airport, and we took the school bus back to our apartment.  We are on the 13^th floor of our building, and it technically has 3 bedrooms, although we’re not quite sure how even a twin bed would fit in the third.   We have balconies on both sides of the apartment, and the school even just had air conditioning put in for us!  That was a nice surprise.  There really is a pretty nice cross breeze without it, but it’s pretty hot and muggy, so we are very thankful for AC. 

We tried to stay up as late as we could that first night and finally went to bed at about 11:30.  We were hoping that the later we stayed up, the later we would sleep, but we were both awake by 5:00.  We spent that morning putting clothes away and trying to settle into our new home a little bit.  Thankfully there was also some food already in our apartment for us for breakfast and lunch. 

Around Noon we were picked up to go see the school and to go grocery shopping.  The school has just begun construction on a new building, and they are refurbishing the old building at the same time.  We got to see both of our classrooms, which was very exciting!  My classroom is really small, but as of right now, I only have 1 student!  There is one table with about 8 chairs, a good amount of reading books, workbooks,  worksheets, lots of decorations, and plenty of resources to go along with the ones that I brought.  There is also what the Vice Principal told me was a “small tv” which probably at least 52 inches.  He said that because every other classroom has a SmartBoard.  I have several educational movies, a tiny bathroom, two sinks, and little lockers.  I have my own desk with a printer too.  Justin’s classroom is pretty big (probably at least 3 times bigger than mine) with 13 desks, 2 very nice computers, a whole separate seating area with nice couch-like chairs, all of his textbooks and workbooks, and an entire cabinet of supplies, posters, and hands-on materials.  It was really fun for us to finally get to see what we have been wondering about for so long.  We also got to meet a few other teachers and most of the administrative staff. 

We then went on to EMart, which is kind of like a WalMart and Target combined.  We get $250 for a settling in allowance, so we were able to get an iron and ironing board, a desk, a chair, a clock, some kitchen utensils and other supplies.  We also got some groceries to last us for a few days.  EMart is probably only a 10 minute walk, but thankfully we got to go in a car because we walked out with so much stuff!  There are closer places to get most groceries, but we are planning on going back to EMart soon to look around more.  There are 4 floors (at least) and we didn’t even see everything.  They have these escalators to go between the different floors that are flat inclines like moving sidewalks.  The carts have these rubbery blocks on the wheels that somehow cling to the escalator and you don’t have to hold the cart!  It was pretty cool. 

On the way back to our apartment they pointed out a golf driving range (Dad!) just down the street from us and the school.  There are electronic stores everywhere as well as coffee shops with free WiFi so we plan on using those quite a bit until we have internet.  We won’t be able to get internet or phones until we have our alien registration cards which apparently will take some time. 

We came home from all of that and hauled everything up to the 13^th floor, put it all away, made our first dinner in our tiny kitchen (chicken, noodles, and veggies).  We were exhausted by 6, so we decided to take an hour nap – except that turned into a 2 ½ hour nap.  Oops.  So then we had to get up and try to stay awake as late as we could.  We have a few English channels on our tv, so that’s helpful. 

On Tuesday we spent the morning going through things in our classrooms and unpacking all of the boxes that we shipped to the school.  Thankfully we have received all of them already!  We organized a lot of what was already in our classrooms and are feeling pretty good about getting school started!  We were also able to Skype with my parents for a few minutes at school, so we took them on a “tour” through both of our classrooms. 

It has been a great first few days in Korea!  We are getting more and more excited each day for the start of school!  Thank you all again for all of your prayers and words of encouragement!  We miss you all very much!

Psalm 108:4     For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your steadfast love reaches to the skies.

Ready, Set, Go!

Tomorrow is the big day!  After months of planning and thinking about this day, we cannot believe that it is finally here!  Our flight leaves at 9am tomorrow morning from Ft Wayne and we arrive in Busan at 8pm on Sunday night (Sunday at 7am Indiana time). 

These last 2 weeks or so have been full of goodbyes, and we have been so blessed to have so much support from our family, friends, and community around us.  It is very comforting to know we have people praying for us and thinking of us while we will be away.

Our bags are almost all packed, and we have used every bit of the 50 pound limit in each bag.  Let’s hope that the airports scale is close enough to ours!  It was so difficult to decide what to leave and what to pack!

This week has seemed to pass very slowly.  I (Megan) have decided that I am WAY too organized.  The average person would probably be going crazy this week packing and making several trips to the store to get something else, but because I am so organized, we did all of that last week.  So this week really has been very relaxing, and we have been able to spend a lot of good time with family and friends without being too rushed. 

We received an email from the school this week with a link to a blog that gave us all kinds of tips about living in Busan.  It also had a link to a google map that has locations of everything around us marked.  You can look at it here:   Map of Busan

The school is the first place listed on the map, and our new home, the Jugong 400 Apartments, are listed next.  You can zoom in to the street level and see what our Apartment building looks like!  That definitely got us more excited!  If you want to read some of the blog that we got in order to get an idea of some of the cultural differences, you can go here:  http://koreanewcomers.wikispaces.com/

After we arrive in Busan on Sunday, we have about a week until we have our first day of New Teacher Orientation on August 20^th.  We then have a full week of In-Service until our first day with students on August 28^th.  We have been trying to plan as much as possible for at least the first week of school, but we are really hoping those first few weeks will give us a good amount of time to feel more prepared…if that’s possible.

Thank you again for all of your support and words of encouragement.  Pray that our travels are safe, smooth, and that time will pass quickly.   Also pray that we have no complications with customs and immigration and that all of our bags arrive with us!  We will do our best to get an update posted as soon as we are settled and have internet. 

Romans 15:13    May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.