The weeks are going by so quickly. We are making progress at the school and with the Bible Study translations. We are actually right on track; thanks to God's help and a wonderful translator. Naphtali is also very excited about the progress and is happy to be a part of both the school and the translation.

Now that dry season is here, we are making steps to begin the work on the concrete floors at the school. Special thanks to a very sweet lady in Porterville! It just dawned on us that once we have the new floors, we won't have to pour water on the floors every week or so! (That's how you keep a dirt floor under control.) It will be so nice to have concrete floors especially at the end of the dry season when everything is so very dusty.
Gregory is our main man for the floor project. He is still studying with Steve about twice a week and is planning to leave his Baptist church pulpit at the end of this year and join our church! What amazing things God has done!

Today and yesterday all of us teachers attended a Teacher Workshop in Nkor, a small town about 30 min. drive away. Nkor is the headquarters of the Noni subdivision. The District Officer (otherwise known as the D.O. or the "Dew") and the IBE (Inspector of Basic Education) have offices there. It was a change of pace for us as we had to close school for the two days. The point of the seminar was to teach teachers how to write test questions. It sounds like the IBE will be asking us to submit test questions to accumulate in a test question bank at the national level in order to formulate standardized tests. It was mostly interesting. We were "invited" (required) to be in Nkor yesterday by "8 am (prompt)." I was a bit nervous as we arrived at
8:35 am. Anyway, the meeting did not begin until 12:45 pm! We heard that the administrators/teachers who were giving the workshop did not arrive until about noon, instead of the previous day as planned. Oh, well! Delays can and do happen. We actually had a nice time hanging out at the Nkor Literacy Center (similar to a library) and reading books for hours! It was quite funny-all of us Americans must be starving for books, because within a few minutes all five of us were deep into one book or another! One really neat thing at the workshop was when the teachers sang the national anthem-it was really beautiful! There was some wonderful bass harmony, etc. I wish I had a recording of it!

Well, bye for now. Love to all. We are missing you!
Carol (and Steve)