Back to School

Wow, what a day! Owen, Elie and Grace all returned to school. At the last minute we were piecing together their uniforms but we made it. Owen returned to his 1-3 grade combined class. He has a a new teacher and seems to think she is great. It is not common for a teacher to stay in the small towns for long and from what I gather the district (which covers many towns and schools) can send the teachers wherever they please. For the parents this can be very frustrating, there is no continuity and it seems that whenever there is quality instruction that teacher is relocated. As a result many of the parents send their children to private education. After much thought we decided to enroll Elie in the private school in Las Varas (an agricultural town about 15 min away). She leaves with a friend every morning at 7:30 and gets home around 2 pm. Even with the language barrier she made tons of new friends loved going to the school snack store on recess and most of all she looked fantastic in her uniform (Allison is a happy momma).

Grace also started at the Kinder. She handled it very well. Her typical day is playing with friends on the playground, reading books, having snacks, and coloring. When I picked her up at 12:30 she said I had been gone too long and the kids only spoke Spanish to her. I am so proud of all the kids. It is not easy going into a new school with all new faces, procedures, cultural differences and terrifyingly a language that you only speak a handful of words. The hopes will be that someday they look back at this accomplishment and say "I can do anything".

We are all getting quite an education, whether it be learning the language, the culture, construction, survival, etc. Things here do not just magically appear as they do at home. The process just to have water at the house you see daily in action. There are days that I look back and can't figure out what exactly I did and then along will come my supportive wife and remind me that we are doing so much. Just getting hot water that day is an accomplishment. But the greatest thing we are learning is about what God has planned for us personally. We are able to listen instead of just act all the time in the hustle and bustle. It seems that daily we are growing closer to Him and each other. Last night I was invited to a Bible study. They were showing the movie End of the Spear. If you haven't seen it, please do. It is the story of the missionaries in the 50's that went deep into the amazon and were killed by a very confused group of people, yet through God's grace and forgiveness these families continued to share with this tribe and work together as God intends us to do. As the Wuadani tribe did, sometimes we just do what we have done for years because it is all we know or it is acceptable in our culture. This doesn't always make it right. But when we follow a path that has been laid out before us we are able to make the right choices.

Wow, I have gone way off topic from the first day at school. I need to get back to figuring out if we are having water today or not.

Adios

The Millers