Homework coming out of our ears!

We are into the rhythm of school, and believe it or not, some of our students already wish the tune would change!  Almost every day 6 year old Nani asks if there is school tomorrow; and when the weekend comes and we can finally say "no" she is so happy she just erupts into shouts of joy.  I do not think this is a very good sign... as we are only into week 3 of school!!

One thing that gets harder every year as our students get into higher grades is the amount of homework that is sent home with the students.  It is at least an hour's worth of work for the youngest classes and then it just goes up from there.  Another difficult thing is that most of the homework is not stuff that was taught in school, it's new information that they are supposed to pick up at home while you are helping them.  On one hand, the fact that the curriculum hasn't changed much since Linda was a child in school makes it easier for older kids and adults to help the children learn the new material, but for someone like me who didn't actually attend school in Haiti; boy it all seems complicated!

Thankfully we have a number of our youth and some adults in our local community who are willing to help us with the homework load.  I wanted to show you some of these "study groups" to give you a bit of an idea of what our afternoons and evenings are like.  So here are some of the people helping our students in elementary classes:

Linda studies with Dieula

Manno has a whole group of students he looks after.  

From Left: Dieunika, Manno, Baslet, Carlos, Chedlyn 

Our Neighbor Brother David is helping Valandjina and Nani this year.

 

Herby (in middle) is helping Gachner and Lovedine

They have a lot of proverbs in Haiti, and one of them is similar to our saying, "Many hands make light work".  Sometimes many hands just create a lot of hassle!  But in this case we are thankful for the many hands that help us get through the stacks of homework that come back to the HOH every day.

We have been able to start preparing our Bible Studies and classes to get up and running again.  Brother David is starting a Bible Study in 1 Corinthians with our older youth on Tuesday nights.  Linda and some of our young men will be starting up the Character Clubs with the boys from our local community on Saturdays.  She will also be teaching the Character studies to our younger kids in Sunday School on Sundays.  I am starting to work on translating some books to be used for future studies.

Recently, two of our younger kids expressed a desire to ask Jesus into their hearts.  Linda spent time talking over this decision with both Nani and Micah, and both of them asked Jesus to be their Savior.  As you can imagine this made us all happy and especially as it is two children who have been with us since they were just days old.  Nani will be 7 next month, and Micah is 5.

Thanks everyone for the prayers and support you gave us as we were raising funds for various projects over the summer.  We received enough funds for the first semester of school, funds to replace all the screens in the HOH, and some funds for chairs.   Paint was the least funded project... so we'll hold off on that for a bit.  School for the semester has already been paid.  The screens have been ordered and should be here in a month or so.  We hope to complete the chair money with some other gifts soon to be able to order them as well.  Next on our project list are new mattresses for the babies cribs... we have had these for at least 10 years, and they are really in bad shape.  The only reason they've lasted this long is that our friends from Simcoe made heavy duty mattress covers with rain coat material!  But even these heavy duty covers are coming to an end of their lifespan.  So be praying about this and the paint!

We were blessed with some very generous monthly gifts over the past few months and they've helped us with our finances a lot.  We'd ask you to continue to pray for God's provision of our monthly financial needs.  We appreciate you all and the many ways you support our ministry.  Have a blessed weekend!