Greetings from the Balkans where we celebrated Thanksgiving on November 7th. Thanksgiving was our school's theme for the month, and we’re now approaching finals and gearing up for Christmas holidays trips.  As one of our chapel choruses repeated, we have “so much, so much to be thankful for!”

Smooth Transitions

We thank God we’ve quickly acclimated to our 2nd floor apartment within the quaint Serbian village that houses students, staff, and classrooms. Our landlord and neighbors are incredibly friendly and generous (always sharing fruit from their gardens or offering us homemade wine/alcohol). Most are older and lead a quiet, slow paced life.  Learning and using their names and greeting them in Serbian elicits smiles and simple conversations.  And George’s greater attempts to communicate even resulted in several kisses on his head the other day by an elderly widower kitty-corner from us! :-) He’s working harder than his parents at speaking and even writing, which delights our cook and others with whom we interact.  We’re also learning our way around our gorgeous city surrounded by mountains in the southern, Herzegovina part of Bosnia.

Being familiar with Chinese culture made it easy for us to connect with our 32 students and the Chinese staff Mark is serving with. We’re thrilled to report we’ve now learned everyone’s names! Eating with them three meals a day in the school cafeteria has certainly helped this effort!  The students, who range from 13 to 18 years old, study Bible in addition to all the subjects in an American high school and have Chapel each Wednesday and Worship Service on the weekend. Besides academic excellence, they must demonstrate spiritual maturity and life skills proficiency in order to be recommended to study abroad at a Christian high school or university.