Finally!

From Jeff:
It took some time, but I have finally pulled ahead of April in one of our classes, Phonetics, thanks to a stellar performance on our last exam. Of course, she is leading in Grammar and we are about even in Lenguaje, but I must relish this potentially short-lived supremacy! Praise God she can't trill her "r's" yet!

The papers here are saying we are headed for water shortfalls beginning in January. Most areas are between 20% and 40% under the normal rainfall for June through September. This means April will not be able to take her normal 20 minute shower and I've decided to only take sponge baths to help out. I am beginning the search for a nurse to bath me. Really, though, the whole country suffers when it doesn't rain because so much of the infrastructure here is related to the agriculture industry. However, it has been raining for the past 5 hours, so maybe we could catch up a bit!

Prayer points: Our kids are having a bit of an adjustment to actually going to school. They need prayer in the area of forgetfulness. As in they forget their books, forget their homework, forget they need supplies for cooking class, forget they need to bring.... We would also appreciate prayer for our meeting with our 4 Costa Rican UB pastors. We are taking all of them out to dinner on Friday! And finally, that April would actually apply some of the knowledge we gained in our PeaceMaker Seminar (see below).

From April:
Jeff almost cried when I kicked his tail in grammar so I decided to back off a little. I don't want to destroy him this early in the trimester. Saturday we had an eclipse of some kind. It was cloudy, so it was hard to see exactly but it made a large ring around the sun. It looked like a rainbow in a circle. It was pretty cool.

Yesterday it was pretty hot. Ellie said, "It's always hot on Sundays, that's why they call it SUNday." Makes sense, doesn't it?

Today, I get to give my first piano lesson to a 14 yr.old. boy from La Carpio (the Nicaraguan slum). They call him Lapiz, which means pencil in English. He is a gifted musician but hasn't had any formal training. I am looking forward to it. Steve, the missionery in La Carpio, hopes that music could be Lapiz's ticket to a better future. It is exciting to see what God will do.

I told you Jeff and I attended the peacemaker seminar on conflict resolution. We learned some really good stuff. The lesson we both appreciated most was the one on confession. We learned how to apologize in meaningful ways like: 1. I'm sorry if you're hurt. 2. I'm sorry if I did something wrong. 3. I know I said something wrong, but what about what you did wrong? 4. I'm sorry you are so sensitive. Jeff and I are already experts in this area but it was good to be reminded. If you want to take advantage of this wisdom just make sure you use key words like if ,but, and maybe in your confession and you too can be on your way to a successful marriage.
Well, off to my piano lesson in Spanish! Adios