Team from our Church in Jacksonville

We had the joy of hosting five from Chets Creek Church who came to serve in a variety of ways at our school.  Chris, Bill, Pam, Megan & Delaney did everything from labeling and cataloguing books for the library to assisting teachers in the classroom and speaking to groups of students in class or at the middle school retreat!

We miss them already and look forward to our next opportunity to host... them or YOU!

Dance Recital

Grace and I are empty nesters now, but that doesn't mean we don't get invited to our kids' performances.  Last night, it was a dance recital in the Municipal Theater that will host our school's first high school graduation December 2nd.

Featured in the photo is one of our 6th graders (in green and red).

Will Visits

Sure was fun having our youngest son, Will, with us this week... he's the first of our five to visit since we made Matagalpa our newest base of operations almost exactly two years ago!

We have a team of six from Chets Creek Church in Jacksonville, Florida coming to help at the school in two weeks...

The photo was taken in the bell tower of the beautiful main cathedral in Granada.

Grace Reads to First Graders

...in SPANISH!!!!
I'm so proud of this girl... DuoLingo still says she's 50% fluent; she contends they're being generous, but the fact is she's doing GREAT!

She has also been God's provision for the need we had in the library.  I have no idea what we would be doing if it weren't for the fact that she has dug right into the job of running things there... labelling, printing bar codes, entering new additions to the database, managing circulation, re-shelving returned books, reading to the kids, etc.

Visitor from ACA

Grace and I are constantly inviting former students to "come see us!" here in Nicaragua...
Last week, we had the privilege of hosting Gib Jeffries of the Asheville Christian Academy
Class of 2011!
He took a week off from his job as a Mechanical Engineer in Cookeville, TN to come see his old principal... how cool is that!
We worked hard all week at the school and still found time to do a little exploring... this photo was taken on the rim of the Masaya volcano... from where we were standing one can turn and look into the mouth of the volcano and see this:

Calling All Teachers!

God has always been faithful to supply us
(in HIS timing) the talented, hard-working missionary teachers we've needed to teach our English classes at NCA.
One of those is Shannon Horn (#10 in the photo).
Her team plays tomorrow night @7:00 for the city volleyball championship.

She came here to fill an emergency need we had for one semester, and has stayed two years, but she will be going back to Ohio in December, so we need someone mid-January 2018... Volleyball skills are optional!! nca.edu.ni/matagalpa

We're Legal Residents!

Not that we were "illegal" before the issuance of the residency cards we are holding in the photo, but it has been a complex 20-month process, and we are thrilled that it ended in success last Friday, which explains the smiles on our faces... Jairo is the man in our business office who handles all the paperwork to make sure all the foreign nationals who work at the our three schools are legal, which explains the fact that he is not smiling... this was his third day in a row spending 6 hours at the immigration office, and he is not done!

We wanted to include the sign in the photo to show that we need more English teachers... let us know if you would consider joining our team!

High School Retreat

"Spent the weekend with 43 teenagers" is not a common a lead-in to a positive blog post... my bunk was in the back corner of this dorm room at the beautiful Young Life Camp in Jinotega, Nicaragua, and I did get a couple of hours sleep on the night this photo was taken.
The theme for the retreat was "Retados"... and they were... challenged to die to:

Self/Separation from God

Hypocrisy

Life without purpose

Teaching Trig

OK, so it is not in the typical principal's job description... not even in mine, but when the high school Math teacher is sick, and there are no qualified subs on the list, someone has to step up and cover, right?

Don't worry, though, kids... I've got this! SOH-CAH-TOA... It's coming back to me now! :-)

Giving Back!

Today was fun... the Valedictorian of our Class of 2004 was back in country with a medical mission team doing a clinic at a public school in our area... as Dr. Darling Jill Aragón!

The team provided a variety of medical services to the families of the staff at a coffee farm in La Dalia with the able assistance of the other three young ladies pictured, who served as translators.

5:30 Bible Fellowship

Not the best picture ever taken, but the ten of us did have a great time early this morning in
II Corinthians... "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." -4:16-17

L2R: Jeremy, Dennis, Ben, Leck, Nathan, Eric, Gary, Bill, Gene & Greg

Back to Work!

We kicked the new school year off with a conference for the staffs of our three campuses in the gymtorium of what we refer to as the "main campus" in Managua... it takes a lot of people to run three schools with a student population of around 1,100 (including teachers, bus drivers, guards, custodians, librarians, maintenance workers, office staff, food service people, board members and administrators.)  Great start!

Worship in song led by one of our alumni (Wendy Gómez, NCA International Class of 2009)