Praise the Lord with us for the Summer's remembered blessings and September's coming opportunities!
June: We had an encouraging visit from Rex Trogdon (full time worker at one of our commending assemblies) and our mutual friend Derek Watson from Ireland. A team of 11 teachers visited Discovery School for a week, teaching model lessons for the students to enjoy and my Burundian staff to learn from. We enjoyed safe travel to Kenya and Tanzania for Jesse's family reunion and were blessed by the break from routine and the wonderful fellowship with his siblings and their families.
Jesse's Family at Steven's graduation in Kenya
July: We returned just in time for Jesse to attend and speak at a regional conference in the east of Burundi. The conference was hosted by churches planted by returning refugees in a rural, very poor area of the country. Around 800 people were in attendance each day, with close to 3000 coming out each night for the evangelistic film showings. We are thankful for this sign that these assemblies are growing and becoming established in this region that historically has been very resistant to the gospel.
August: The start of this month brought a fruitful week of teaching a course on Spiritual Disciplines at the Timothy Bible School. This group asked particularly good questions, and Jesse loved the resulting in-depth discussions. Definitely many summer blessings to remember.
After that we plunged headlong into the prep for the start of the new school year. How can I describe it…? Have you ever played musical chairs?
Music plays and you walk slowly around the circle, eyes tuned to the slightest movement of the person standing over the CD player. Sudden silence, a mad (yet enormously exciting) scramble, tension… Who will be left without a place? Will it be you? Then the feel of the chair beneath you. Success. A moment of peace…
Take the mad (yet enormously exciting) scramble part of musical chairs and imagine it extending for a month instead of just a second or two and you will be left with a pretty accurate picture of the month of August at Discovery School. Just about everything is up in the air. Here are a few examples…
· The identities of our new staff members are unknown, pending results of the hiring process. Returning staff don't know what grade level they will be teaching, because I must first figure out where our new staff members might be able to succeed and then fit the returning staff around that as needed to create strong teaching teams.
· The salaries for the coming year are undecided, and Jesse must determine how much of a raise we can afford to give everyone, and what the starting salary for new teachers will be, balancing inflation and the rising cost of living with the need to keep the school self-sustaining and contributing toward other ministries.
· Grade levels must be shuffled into different classrooms to accommodate the two new grade levels we will be adding in September.
Here (from the front and back) are the two new classrooms God provided for this year. For perspective, they are behind the playground.
· New desks must be built for these new students, and workbooks for each grade level prepared, printed, and bound.
Desks in progress Stacks of new workbooks ready to go
· Needed building and repairs must be completed. This year that includes sub-dividing two classrooms, moving the office to a new location nearer the school entrance, turning the old office into a classroom, moving the computer room to a new spot, and putting in a drainage pipe so that we don't' have a river running through the middle of the school all rainy season.
Dividing classrooms= new doors New office (previously two classrooms) Drainage Project & "bridge" to the current office
Phew. It is truly a mad scramble. Looking at the place now it is hard to imagine that we will be open for business on Sept. 2.
Yet, it is also an enormously exciting scramble. Teachers keep popping in to see what's new. A constant stream of parents head to the office (wobbling across the drainage project in progress on the improvised plank bridge) to enroll new students, ask questions, or buy uniforms. Their eyes are wide with happiness, and they all comment on the school's growth.
Parent leaving the current office Parent asking questions about supplies Picking up a uniform
This year we will have over 700 students. We praise the Lord for the opportunity the school affords to impact each one of these lives for Christ. And that's not all. We will have eleven new employees. Their new jobs will support and influence their families, help many of them attend university, bring some of them out of abject poverty, and bring them into a Christ-centered community where they can be mentored by us and by others who have gone this way before them. September's coming opportunities are enormously exciting.
New students entering at the elementary level attend summer school to study English in preparation for the coming year.
Now we just have to make it to September J. Here are some specific dates you can bring before the Lord as you remember us. Pray that we will daily see His strength being made perfect in our weakness, and that in each of these situations we will have ears to hear God's voice behind us, saying, "This is the way, walk in it."
· New teacher training—August 19-23
· Whole staff returns for professional development, teaching positions are assigned for the next year, salaries are set—August 26-30
· Open house for new preschool students – August 28-29
· New teacher welcome at the lake—August 30
· First day of school at Discovery and also for our boys at the Belgian School—Sept. 2
Knowing that HE is the one controlling the CD player, stopping the music so that everyone ends up in the chair he has chosen for them, we look forward to the end of September when school is going smoothly, everyone and everything has found a chair, and we have a moment of peace to sit and look around at what has transpired. We are confident that, as in the past five years of the school's operation, the way it all comes out will be a clear testimony of His greatness. We look forward to telling you about it!
Thank you again for partnering with us in these endeavors through your prayers and support!
Jesse, Joy, Zach, Micah, and Elliot Johnson
