Ah, rest.

Thanksgiving break = deluxe.

• Tuesday, November 24: The Armstrongs host a "Godfather" themed murder mystery dinner. Whodunnit? We're still not sure.
  
• Wednesday, November 25: Suriname Independence Day. Parade through the center of Paramaribo includes army tanks, a constant foghorn, a couple people carrying their pet sloths around (yes, you read that right: sloths), and a nice walk back to the Rav4 in the rain.
• Thursday, November 26: Thanksgiving feast! Tag-team turkey-cooking worked like a charm (better, actually), monstrous party with the entire staff of the International Academy of Suriname culminated in a pleasant nights' sleep.
• Friday, November 27: Christmas shopping in the morning. Take a break, folks.
• Saturday, November 28: Swimming at the pool downtown, playing some board games. Consistently being beaten by Amy. Visited a fair not far away, sampling many delicious goods.
  
• Sunday, November 29: Went to church, ate most of our left-overs, did some lesson-planning, realized school started back tomorrow.

Bona sera!

Our Mission Field

During parent-teacher conferences, one of the few fathers I met said the following words:
"You're probably only going to be here for a couple of years, right? And you're teaching history? How much high-school level history do you think [the students] are going to remember? But if you're getting involved with their lives, if you're really ministering, that's a lot more important than what you teach." I've been thinking about that lately. Amy and I have been given the official job title of "missionaries," but we focus on teaching first and seeing if we can throw in the Gospel, if we have time. So backward. We do integrate the Bible, but we want to integrate the basic truths. Here's a little about our mission field:

• Maybe one in five of my students are Christians.
• The students have almost all moved internationally more than once.
• Parents are generally non-religious and anti-Christian, sending their kids to the only air-conditioned school in the country.
• Most students speak more than one language.

So much of our time is spent on building education, but the strength of our faith is that it's about extending grace.

New Things

"Funny how the new things are the old things."

-Rudyard Kipling, in With the Night Mail

After a short romp through the Amazon, we have returned to Paramaribo to start out the second quarter of the school year.  Teaching's normal now, for both of us, and we think we're becoming abler with practice.  The rainy season is approaching, and cooler days (maybe even down to the low 80s!) smile at us from down the timeline.  As we become accustomed to life here, it's funny how much we still have to depend on God's grace.  The temptation is to be sure of ourselves; the call is to be sure of Him.  But that's no surprise, though, as Kipling points out, it is funny.

• Our three days in Brownsberg (the jungle mountain)included enjoying beautiful scenery, laughing at exotic animals like agoutis, small monkeys, howler baboons, harpy eagles, and taking lots of breaks.
• Parents have already responded to students' grades, and we've had plenty of opportunities to respond with gentleness, patience, and charity.  I guess we're really all just called to love our brother anyway, so it really is good, though difficult.
• Conner finally created a worksheet that looks like a worksheet, i.e. it's not all in 12 point, Times New Roman font and filled with short answer questions.
• Amy is running out of room on her wall to hang up the pictures and notes her students have made for her.