After spending the last week down in Spanaway with Lorraine’s parents, we’re up in Everett, with mine. Lorraine had a wisdom tooth out on Monday, and she’s still recovering (apparently the dentist spent the last half hour of the surgery saying “oh, wow, that’s bigger than I thought!”). In general, we’re happy–we’ve bought an enormous stack of paperbacks to take back to Brazil and we have our little orange dog with us, so life is pretty good.

Our flights (from Rio to Sao Paulo to Washington DC to Seattle) all went smoothly, and we, plus our luggage, came through safely. Thanks for all the prayers & well wishes.

If you could keep those going, we’re actually already thinking about our flight back to Brazil. We’re on a wait list for tickets to leave on August 3, which we really need. So, if you could pray that those tickets come through, we’d appreciate it.

Curiously, even though it is fast approaching winter here in the southern hemisphere, everyone at school refers to the vacation we’ve just started as “summer” break. As in “Have a great summer, see you next year” being written in all the yearbooks we passed out on Friday.

Speaking of yearbooks, the end of the school year is always a time of goodbyes. The goodbyes at ICS-Rio are particularly poignant, because our students don’t just move out of town, they move to other continents. We are sad to see some of our most beloved faces leaving right now, and will miss them in the coming school year. In some ways, I feel like we shortchanged them because we got to school so late. We’ve only known these kids six months, but we still love them.

I will lead worship at Union Church one more time before we leave, then there’s Tim’s birthday on Monday, frantic packing, and we fly out at 6 PM on Wednesday. Please pray for a safe journey for us, and for all the students and staff who are leaving us right now.

As impossible as it is to believe, the school year is winding down. This is particularly difficult to believe down here, where we are entering winter, rather than summer. Lorraine & I are both wearing fleece jackets right now, if you can believe that.

Finals are coming up at the end of this week, and so most of our attention is bent towards that. Once finals are done, we still have a week of classes (no, it doesn’t make a lot of sense), and we’ll be flying back to the NW on the 18th.

I’d like to take this moment to reflect on a year of teaching but I can’t. For one, I’m not done–I still have plenty to do between now and the end. And for another, it’s only been half a year! I am definitely looking forward to running my own classes for an entire year, starting in August.

Despite the illness that has dominated this weekend, I do have some great news–my first mystery novel is available for purchase! I’m pretty excited about it. It’s entitled After the Service, and here’s my awesome promo text:

When David Kelter started his internship at Seattle’s Grace Baptist Church, he thought it would be a fairly useful experience, if not very exciting. He would get the credits he needs to finish up his senior year at Seattle Pacific University, he’d have a chance to gauge his interest in pastoral ministry, and maybe—just maybe—he’d meet some girls.

But when David stumbles upon the body of a troubled parishoner after the service one Sunday, things change. Now he finds that his internship duties include things like catching a killer, saving the church–and staying alive.

Learn more at the book’s website www.gracebaptistseattle.com.

Things have been rather unhealthy around here recently. About two weeks ago, I came down with nasty sore throat. That hung around for about a week, at which point Lorraine promptly got food poisoning and missed school on Monday and Tuesday. Things seemed just about recovered for her by Friday, though. But apparently I picked up some kind of virus, because by the end of 3rd period that day, I was just about dead. I came home and slept for the rest of the school day. When Lorraine got home, our conversation went something like this:

LORRAINE: Here, drink this cup of water.
TIM: I don’t want to.
LORRAINE: But you need to, drink it.
TIM: Fine.
[Tim drinks entire cup of water.]
TIM: That was too much water.
[Tim vomits.]
[Tim vomits again.]
[Tim vomits again.]
[Tim vomits again.]

So, yes, that’s been lots of fun. The real irony is that I’m in the middle of teaching a unit on the immune system in Life Science.

Yesterday, we took the jr high & high school students to Familia Santa Clara, a sort of group home/orphanage for battered, abandoned or orphaned children. It’s a pretty remarkable place, with over 60 children, and run by just a married couple with whatever assistance they can get from the community. The students gave them a bit of that assistance yesterday, painting an outside wall, playing soccer with the kids, and drawing pictures with them. We were just there for an hour and a half, but it was a really good experience for our students and, hopefully, the kids at Familia Santa Clara.

We’re hopeful that next year, the school will have an ongoing relationship with them, and that we’ll be able to spend a lot more time there, and do a lot more for them than just paint a wall. Previous service days have consisted of people coming in from different ministries & projects and talking about them. It’s exciting to finally be giving the students an opportunity to actually serve, rather than just hear about other people serving.

Unfortunately, our camera’s batteries died just before this, so we took no pictures. We’ll try to beg, borrow or steal some from the others who were there, though.

Saturday, we went on our first hike in Brazil! We’ve been posting “hikecasts” of our hikes for a couple years now, but this is our first from the Southern Hemisphere.

You can also check out photos from our hike, if you like.

One of the perks of being a science teacher is that I get to burn things when the mood strikes me. A student took video of the rapid, exothermic oxidation of propane.

Ahh, education

One of the things we’ve been stressing about has been raising enough support to return here in August. One of the other things we’ve been stressing about was raising enough support to get from Seattle to Memphis for an “pre-field orientation” thingy for NICS. That was going to tack on another $500 at least to our total need, and probably much more. Additionally, it was going to take away from time with family (and time with the mountains).

But we are happy to report that NICS has released us from our requirement to go to PFO, due to the crazy situation we dealt with this year, and the damage it did to our financial situation. In some ways, this is like someone handing us a check for $500. It’s better than that, though, because it gives us back two weeks in the Pacific Northwest summer, which are worth a lot more than that.