Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Back to School

This month has been a whirlwind at ICS. The month started when the staff left for our annual retreat on August 3rd. It was a wonderful chance to get to know the new staff and to start to gel as a group. The week of the 6th to 10th we started with preparations for the students' arrival on the 13th. We had meetings in the mornings and time to prepare our classrooms in the afternoons.

This is typically a nice week to get things done as well as to continue getting to know each other as a staff. This year things were different. As you know, Betsy has spent the past two weeks battling dengue fever. This started on the 6th. Thus my week of preparations was a bit different. I spent the mornings at home taking care of Aaron, and the afternoons I took Aaron with me to school to play in my classroom while I worked. It was nice to spend some extra time with Aaron, but it was also a bit more difficult to get things done. But, God is good!

At the beginning of the summer I had a great desire to spend time planning how I would work through this school year. I spent quite a bit of time planning the first week or two for each of my classes. I didn't really understand why I was so set on doing this, but I did get a lot of work done. Now I know, God was preparing me to be able to take care of Aaron & Betsy and not have as much preparatory work to do.

The Sunday before school was the day that Betsy was admitted into the hospital, this meant that I had a substitute for the first day of school. For Tuesday thru Thursday (Betsy came home Thursday afternoon) we had a babysitter come by at 7 in the morning to take care of Aaron while I went to school. Then on Friday, she came at 8 to take care of Aaron and to allow Betsy to get the rest she needed.

Even with the craziness at home, the year has started well. The school has now grown to 375 students! (We had 189 students 2 years ago.) We have great new staff to help cover all the new positions and things are going wonderfully. Thank you for all your prayers for the school and for us.

God is so good! God is so good! God is so good, He's so good to us!

2 comments:

Marie said...

God IS good!! I'm so glad we can trust Him to care for you and your family there in a land far away!
Lots of love and prayers for all of you.
Have a good school year.

Cherie said...

I am so happy to hear that Bets is improving and that God, in His own consistent way, is teaching the two of you how He cares for you even when you are not aware of it. He knows the plans he has for you......and he knows how to work them out.

Yippee!