January 26th, 2012 by Kim

This morning, I am sitting in the quiet! It is 8:15, dishes are done from breakfast, lunches packed, kids are gone (even Hampton). Wow, it’s really quiet! That is the first news I have to tell: Hampton has started preschool! My other kids all started preschool after they turned 5 and it worked good for them to have 1 year of Slovak in preschool before entering 1st grade. However, with Hampton, he is so sad after all the kids leave for school, he was asking me over and over if he could go to school also. So I began looking for a school that would take him in the middle of this year. It was a problem. Preschools here are all funded by the state and are VERY full. Since they are at no cost to the parent you can imagine even finding a free space even at the start of a year. I decided to let this be my indicator if he would start “early”. If a space was open, then I would send him. So I was not aggressive in pursuing this, just told a few of my friends. After about 2 weeks, 1 friend called to say that the school her daughter is in has an opening. So I went the next dat (last Thursday) and signed him up. He went on Friday for just a few hours (i was able to go with him) and again on Monday. Tuesday was his official “first day” of school! He is happy, although does not like the food nor the nap! After minor adjustments (sending his lunch with him, and picking him up BEFORE nap time) he is off again this morning, happily! I would appreciate your continued prayer in this area for Hampton. It is scary to enter a place at such a young age where no one understands you and you understand very little. We are encouraged with his enthusiasm.

A few other things i would like to report on so that you can know better how to pray:

Emili’s school– I told you how excited Emili is to be back in school full time. Although that is still true, she has seen the reality of missing 3.5 years of formal Slovak language class. She is very frustrated and it seems that we need to get her a tutor. As before (during the 1-4 grades) her other subjects seem to be suffering because of her lack of Slovak language skills. Obviously, she isn’t so familiar with the terminology of Physics, Chemistry and even Math. I was trying to help her this week, and although I believe she would be able to do this work if it was in English language, it is very difficult to do in Slovak. So we are praying for the right thing to do. We are considering finding a tutor to help Emili on a regular basis We must make a decision before February 1, if she will be “full -time” or continue home-schooling part of this. I already see that she hardly has any homework, and I worry that she is not studying enough. When I ask her, she tells me that the teachers have not assigned anything. Or even, like yesterday, the Math teacher wasn’t at school, so they didn’t have math. We are considering finding a tutor to help Emili on a regular basis.

Housing– Although we have not signed a contract still on this house yet, we are moving forward and we are in constant contact with the owner. He is making many decisions now about the house and asked us for our decisions on paint colors, appliances, cabinet color, even design of the kitchen! We are excited about this. Yesterday, we were able to take from the storage place many of our kitchen appliances (oven, stove, refrigerator, dishwasher) so we can use them in the new house and not have to buy new ones. The owner believes the new kitchen can be finished in 1 week and the house ready to move in at the end of the month. We believe that it will more likely be by the 15th of February. In the meantime, we seem to be getting into a routine here at the Dorms. IT is so convenient to live so close in the city. The kids are walking home from school and to their after school activities. Laundry is a bit of a challenge in this small space. Since there is not a dryer (most Slovaks do not own one), we have clothes out drying every available space! Thankfully we were able to buy everyone enough clothes for at least 5 days before we left the States. That takes the pressure off to have something washed and dried in 1 days (which can not happen here)!

Kim

Slovak lessons– I got an interesting email last week from 1 company i had contacted back in 2010 about Slovak lessons for me and Zac. We had chosen to to use this company because they were very expensive. However, they wrote to me last week and asked for a meeting. They purposed that we exchange services. We would teach English for them, 2hrs per week, and they would give us Slovak lessons the same (2hrs per week). Although we have raised the money now to pay the full expense. We believe God has brought this to us. Giving us another opportunity to share our faith in the classroom setting. The contract is with one local international company. So the “students” are adults. This will be a new experience for us and we look forward to see how God will use us there. We begin lessons February 8th.

ALSO, I just remembered i forgot to tell you: some of the women in our church asked me to lead a women’s bible study, weekly. I have done this before and so i was honored they asked me to do it again. It will be on Fridays, here at our house (and at the dorm while we are here 🙂 I have 1 book someone gave while i was in the states and recommended it. It is by Pricilla Shirer, “Discerning the voice of God” and “He speaks to me” I need to look at other resources online and decide if i will do the audio tapes (for myself) and if there is a leaders guide. It will be a little complicated translating it into Slovak.  I just need to spend some time making decisions about this. We are meeting for the first time this week! I am really excited. Here is a link if your interested to know more about this author http://www.lifeway.com/n/Popular-Authors/Priscilla-Shirer

Thank you again for your prayers and emails!