Student's Farewell

Yesterday was a great day. Not only was it EK's birthday but the WISE students and faculty really spoiled us.  They made us our favorite meals for lunch and dinner (Roti and fish with breadfruit) and the students prepared a special farewell for us.  You can see the video below, it pretty long but its a good one!

We feel so blessed to have all of these wonderful people in our lives and we will carry all of them in our hearts wherever we go. 

New Ground and Planting Seeds

This picture above is a large field that is right behind our apartment. When we first moved here it was simply an over grown open pasture.  Many people would bring (and still bring) their goats and cows to feed on the land.  A couple of months ago a man started to till and weed this massive portion of the hillside.  We enjoyed watching him transform the land into something new.  He used only a hoe and machete and the end product was this! That is a lot of time in effort in my opinion and a lot of sweat in the hot hot sun.

I was admiring his garden this morning and watching the the plants begin to push out of the ground thinking soon they will start bearing a variety of veggies.

I started to reflect on the last year of our lives. A year ago today we were preparing to come to St. Vincent not really knowing what to expect or what God was going to teach us.  Over the past 11 months God had tilled and molded our lives; we have grown so much in our faith and with each other.  We know he has allowed us to produce fruits (and veggies :) ) during our time here by touching the lives of the WISE students, the preschoolers, and families in the community.  We are so thankful that God is our provider, our refiner, our Shepard, and our "gardener".

It is hard for us to believe that we only have one more week to spend in beautiful St. Vincent. We will miss all of the people we have been blessed to work with throughout our time here. We know that God has used this experience to make us new creatures and our prayer is that He will continue to do so as we move on to our next chapter in life (and we know he will).

We will be spending some time with family when we return to the U.S. and then our plan is to move to Atlanta, GA.  We are not sure what God will have us do in Atlanta yet but we know he will reveal his plans for us.  We ask for your prayers as we transition that we will find jobs quickly and become connected with our new community.  Please pray for safe travels for us this summer as we are visiting family.  We cannot express how THANKFUL  we are to all of you who have supported us, loved us, prayed for us, and encouraged us along the way we could not have done it without you. Thank you for being apart of the wonderful ministry of WISE. We love you!

Schools out for Summer

Well I woke up this Monday morning and was missing my usual walk to the preschool.  Last Friday was our final day of preschool and we also had graduation for out students that were moving on to elementary school, or primary school as they call it here.

It was a great last day we had lots of fun playing games with the students and then we had a nice turn out of family and friends to encourage the little graduates.

We had some fun handing out their diplomas...they first had to "slide down" into primary school and then they got their certificate!

I was proud of all of our students and they preformed the ABCs and sang "I'm in  the Lord's Army"...their favorite part yelling "yes sir!"

All of the parents were very thankful which was refreshing, and one of our students grandmother, Mrs. Tims, said many sweet words to the teachers.  She said she wished her grandson could continue to go to our school and learn about Jesus, she said she loved that we taught and showed him the love of God and asked that we would continue to pray for all of the children that they will grown to know and love God. I ask you to join us in that prayer!