Friday, February 20

Each morning, as I sit on the porch enveloped in a cloud of mosquito repellent, I drink my coffee with my Bible in my lap and watch the sky change as the sun comes up.  Sometimes the sky streaks with apricot and sometimes it is gray and foreboding.  The light reflects off the water and I can tell which way the current is moving.  A few days ago, I could here the surf crashing at the end of our island, but here in our little harbor, the water almost always gently laps at the shore.  Today, a little rain shower from one little gray cloud made everything sparkle just as the sun rose above the horizon.  It was a beautiful way to start my day.

We have eight weeks left in the Choate school year, and Sarah and Benjamin finished the dissections for biology today.  It's been so fun to watch them work together and to enjoy their delight and fascination as they learn.  They have been a good team for a long time.

Thanks to all of you who have been praying for our kids' residence permits to be finalized.  SITAG's director has been spending hours in the immigration office on our behalf.  She has also been fighting for permits and visas and all kinds of paperwork for several other SITAG teams.  Here's part of her update that showed up in our e-mail inbox today:

The next challenge is trying to finish off the permits for the Choate kids. This has been going on for months and was held up due to the change in policy and new required forms. It is no exaggeration that over the past few weeks I have been making 1-2 trips a day to follow up on these pending cases. Documents seem to be getting lost in Immigration and it's been an ongoing challenge, but one that I think we have nearly 'won'.