November

(Kasey here)

Hola, all.

An update has been requested and so here I am.

There’s not a whole lot to tell at the moment. Jon is working hard at school. He’s writing about a paper a week, and on Nov. 12th, he’s taking his New Testament comprehensive exam. Before graduating from JUC, all M.A. students have to take comprehensive exams that cover all of the (1) Old Testament, (2) New Testament, (3) Historical Geography, and (4) Hebrew. They’re pretty daunting and a lot of people put them all off until the last second.

Jon got his Old Testament exam done last spring. He’ll take the New Testament one this month, and then the Historical Geography and Hebrew exams, he’ll take at the very end of the exam period in May. The professors who write the exams will ask questions like “What does 1 John 2:4 say?” and “Is from Psalms 2, 21, 53, or 97?” Studying for them is understandably a huge job, and hard to squeeze into all the other class work that’s assigned.

He’ll finish fall semester in the second week of December and the spring semester doesn’t start up until around the first week of February, so he’ll have a nice long break.

It’s pretty much same-old at JHS for me. November 14-21, we’re taking a vacation for Palestinian Independence Day and the Eid Adha, so everyone’s excited about that. Once we get back on the 22nd, we have less than five weeks until Christmas break. Since I’m having my students do projects right before their midterms, and because midterms are right before Christmas (and require reviewing of material), I’m only covering new material until the first week in December, and it’ll be fairly relaxed after that. Our Christmas break will last until about January 8th.

My boss was kind enough to adjust our rent to give us a little more cash, which we’re dutifully saving to try and pay as much as possible of Jon’s tuition. We’re also saving all the money from Kasey’s tutoring and editing job. It still won’t be enough, but we’re doing what we can.

We were recently introduced to Modern Family, which we LOVE and highly recommend. It’s hilarious and full of genuine family warm-fuzzies. We watch and rewatch the episodes all the time.

OH! And we also hosted a Halloween party that was fabulous. We introduced a bunch of our guests to Doctor Who, which for me was like a dream come true, especially when the neighbor family with little girls declared themselves hooked and the girls started running around yelling about “PRISONER ZERO ESCAPING!” for the next couple of weeks. They’re also building them their very own TARDIS out of their heater box ☺ SUCCESS!! (Jon's costume below)

Prayer Requests

• We still need to come up with the rest of Jon's tuition for this semester, all of it for next semester, and enough for plane tickets home. While we and others are working on it, we still need prayer.
• We've been pretty tired lately, especially because the sun now sets before dinner time.

Praise Reports

• We're looking at a couple hundred $$ extra a month because of our adjusted rent.
• Someone (who requested anonymity but does a lot for us) handed me some gift cards to Aroma, the coffee shop, and told me to go on a date with my husband. :)
• We've pretty successfully adjusted to living here. We're definitely looking forward to going home in June, but we've established a good routine and life :)
• We have people working hard to help us through our time here, and blessings keep popping up left and right. WOOT!