Year 9 here we come!

I remember 9 years ago TODAY distinctly as if it was yesterday, arriving massively jet lagged at the Prague airport.  The smell in the air, the sights and sounds, trying to buy groceries in a foreign language with the fog of jet lag over our heads and collapsing into our bed with Zachary in between us and sleeping for an hour before a meeting with the rector at IBTS for lunch!  To this day I can't tell you what we talked about, I am sure we left a very strange impression to him!  All I could think was "what have we done?"  "What is God doing?"

That was a long time ago... and a lot of amazing things have happened through the years, we have encountered, taught, laughed, cried with and befriended more students and leaders from 50+ countries than I could count.  What a gift to be able to have such a scope and breadth of ministry placed in our care with His watchful care over us.

I would never call a year "routine" as there are so many things that happen in the run of a year that are new and difference and exciting.  Then there are those things that we expect to happen in its time and rotation.

Its funny we always see the "beginning" of the year as starting with September.... rather than January!  The kids start school (Zachary in grade 8 and Matthew grade 1), our new students at IBTS promise another exciting and interesting year.  We have students again from so many places, Korea, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, Belgium, Italy and on and on....  It always hard to see students go but this year we had 4 students from the Certificate program from last year and enroll as Masters students and that is exciting to see.  So here is to the academic year of 2010-2011 and beyond!  Lead us Father!