First of all, thank you to everyone who prayed for us during the rough transition we had back to the field. Claire's anxiety is greatly diminished, and we have all been thriving. So thank you. We know your prayers played a major role in that.

Well, the kids are out of school. Any of you who are teachers know that our teaching work is only half done now; we have (at times literal) mountains of assignments to grade and give feedback for. This break has come with more post-semester grading than I've had yet, even though I only have Humanities assignments to grade. I'm finally "growing up" as a teacher and giving written assignments. Some of you may laugh, but this is a big step for me. Up to now, I have avoided written assignments like the plague, mostly because I know I am not good at grading them quickly.

This year I bit the bullet and have given written assignments (not that I had much choice, really; all of these assignments were created last year for Humanities while I was gone). In the process, I've grown quite a bit in my own consistency and diligence. As I write this, I can feel Claire laughing over my shoulder; she knows -- as do I -- that I have a long way yet to grow. All the same, this semester has been a time of significant growth for me.

As for Humanities, the semester has ended, but the class is just now beginning to take off. The students are starting to figure out how to employ all the various skills we've been teaching them, and most of them have grown tremendously over the course of the semester. The spring promises to be an exciting time for them (and for the teachers!) as we start to tackle more complex material (Prophets, the Life of Jesus, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, and more!). As a final group activity this December, the students were put in charge of creating a station to help the class focus on the Advent season. Themes included Incarnation, Messiah, Gifts, Covenants, and many more. While the results were mixed, the students were forced to wrestle with communicating theological concepts outside of the classroom setting.

Reflecting on the experience, one student wrote,

"Advent is super special to me, its kinda like seeing your dad that you've never seen before, the dad that you have been longing for and believing in, and then he´s there right in front of you, coming to bring you to your real home in paradise."

We pray that all of the students come to see God more clearly through all that we're doing in this class!

In other news, Leia is pulling up on everything. I think she's only going to give a passing nod to crawling and go straight to walking. We'll see. However it plays out, she is pretty much able to get where she wants to go; we'll be baby-proofing sooner than we expected.

Our other kids played Parent-Run Soccer again this year, and I ended up being the de facto coach of Ian and Micah's team. Our season will finish in January once school is back in session, and we'll see how we're able to finish (we're currently 3rd or 4th in our division of 6 teams).

Hopefully you've been able to see many of the pictures from our semester; Claire is quite good at keeping photos up-to-date on Facebook. If you want to see more pictures of our kids and what we're doing over here, let us know!