It is what Jake has been stressing this school year with our teachers and our students. Which is slightly ironic as we definitely are anything but consistent when it comes blogging. Oops!
The past couple of months have gone well at school. I, personally, am excited about where things are headed. The new English curriculum that I've been working on putting together has gone well. It is roughly based upon the TEKS (standards) of Arlington ISD. It has, however, been difficult for some of our students to adjust to speaking and writing so much in English. But, I think this is a good problem to have because eventually they will be accustomed to the amount of English they practice!
Our student population is about the same as last year at 162. We have quite a few new students, including a few returning students. We have accepted a couple of difficult students. Not they themselves are difficult but their family situations. One of our objectives as a school is to be a light unto our community and sometimes that means we have some dysfunctional family situations.
One of our freshman girls has just returned from a year long stint in rehab and counseling classes. She has been doing extremely well in her studies and relationships with others. We also have a former drug dealer we are trying to work with and get him graduated along with helping his family. While these situations and families can be difficult to deal with, we are confident that God can work through us and our teachers to change lives.
We have been blessed to host Jake's mom, Karen, the past 3 months at our house and at the Academy. Karen retired from teaching this past year and decided to come down on a visitor's visa. She has been such a big help getting together our K-2 English classes together. She also has been teaching our current K-2 English teacher on how to complete the lessons and how to work centers. A million thank you's to you Karen for being willing to leave your husband and home and join us here in Ecuador serving these kids.
From the Kindergarten class to Ms. Karen
1st grade
2nd grade
Unfortunately we haven't been able to take Karen around sight seeing too much because our car is still having issues. Actually, this past week we have found a buyer and accepted an offer which will be final next week. However, we did make a trip out to Guayaquil to visit with the missionaries that our home church, Woodland West coC, support. Two members of the missions committee, Hal Pendergraft and Ryan Dill, came to Ecuador (Guayaquil for 5 days, Tabacundo for 1 and 1/2 and Quito for 2 days) to visit and encourage the work. Although it was busy, most of our time filled with meetings, we enjoyed being somewhere different for a few days. Especially with the warm coastal weather.
Visiting with missionaries in Gauayaquil
Another thing we've been enjoying is our church family. The Tabacundo coC meets at Camp Bellevue, just down the hill from us. We generally have about 75-100 in attendance on Sundays. Recently we've developed some new ministries with the hope that we are able to develop more local leaders. We have instilled 9 ministries (Youth, Children's, Women's, Worship, Outreach, Counseling, Finances, Formation of Leaders, and Evangelism) with one or two couples who are in charge of those ministries. Jake was appointed one of the leaders of Finances and I am co-leader of the Women's Ministry. Jake has also been put on the rotations of delivering the message/leading class/giving the Lord's supper meditation. Today he deliver the meditation all in Spanish! We have enjoyed being more involved in the church.
Women's Ministry doing a cooking class. We made cheese empanadas and colada morada!
This week we are sad to say goodbye to our good friend and fellow co-worker Courtney Hard. She has been the case manager at the Children's Home for a year now and is returning back to the States on Wednesday. Courtney, we are gonna miss you so much. Please come back soon! As as your punishment for leaving us... this photo of you will be published, which is also still my desktop photo.
Thank you for all your love and support!
P.S. If you have not already liked the HOH Christian Academy and Hacienda of Hope Facebook pages, you should! There are a lot of great pictures and information being posted.
Ecuadorian Flag Day
Doing fire extinguisher training
Teachers during our Teacher "No-Talent" Talent Show
8th graders making volcanoes explode
Kaiden Reeger, Justin and Jauna's oldest child, was baptized on October 13th. We are all so proud of her!
Maria being Hercules for her English class final exam.
Freshman students doing a little work on the soccer field during PE.
We've been donated 300 books from a couple at Livona coC in Michigan. It has been a HUGE blessing for our kids to be able to check out books from the school library!
Jake turned 39 in October!
3rd grade students working on their geography.
We had a Halloween Community Fun Night at school. There were over 200 people that showed up!
Thank you to our former Sunday morning Bible class at Woodland West who put together a care package for Jake and I. Included in the package were Halloween decorations we used for our community event.
