It's December already?!

I've now officially lived in Guinea longer than any other country besides the US. Actually, I'm at about the 2 and a half month mark, which is about a month longer than any other country I've been to with my family.

The first semester at the mission school is coming to an end this week, finishing off with a grand finale of midterms and class Christmas celebrations. My teaching job is basically done for this term, since my class was an elective and doesn't require an exam. My high school student finished off the term with a well-written Python project to emulate an interface for a media player, and he even asked me if I could come up with things for him to do to continue practicing Python scripting over the break and into next semester. The two middle schoolers finished off their typing -- Phil claims speeds upwards of 58 wpm, but I think it's only maintained for the first few words of the "home row" lesson. Overall, though, I'd say their typing has improved, as well as their programming skills in Scratch. I find myself getting excited when I give the guys an idea of what to add to their latest game, and they're able to think through what it requires and add it in themselves.

Other than teaching, my other computer responsibilities are going relatively well. I've even had people bringing me other small electronics (a cd player and a travel DVD player) to fix -- I think it's probably from telling too many people how exciting it was to open up a Macbook a week or two ago to do a DVD extraction.

In non-computer-related news, I've recently had some cool opportunities to interact with the local Landuma people. Carol, one of the missionaries here, has started doing Bible lessons with a lady in a nearby village, so when she needed someone to go with her one night, I volunteered to go along. Although I don't understand any of the lesson since it's in Landuma, it's still a lot of fun to try to interact with the people, and to see them listening intently to the lesson. After the initial trip out there, the next time I came prepared with some candy for the little kids and a camera to take their pictures. They love having their picture taken, especially if you let them see what they look like, so I have a lot of pictures of kids making funny faces.

Some prayer requests for this week:

* A trip to Conakry this weekend. Jen and I are going to go along to the airport with Martha, who's flying back to Colombia for a few weeks, so we'll be traveling down to Conakry on Saturday and coming back to the mission center Monday morning. Pray for safe travel there and back and for Martha's travel home.

* Field conference. Every year around this time, everyone who's part of New Tribes in Guinea congregates at the mission center here for a time of encouragement, sharing, and fellowship. Pray for the safe travel of everyone who doesn't already live here, including some people flying in from the US and Canada to help out. Also pray for the conference, that it can be a good time of learning and that everyone can finish feeling refreshed and encouraged.

* Health. For the last month or so, it seems like there have been a lot of different bugs going around and various people getting sick, so please pray that everyone can return back to full health, especially in time for conference.