We're Finished!!!

Finals. Are. OVER!!! Yep, we made it through our semester of French with flying colors. We're not fluent or anything, and we know that our time as students of the French language is far from over, but God has blessed us with what we need for right now.

Language learning is such a funny thing; different people learn in totally different ways, and we are perfect examples of that. April can tell you anything you want to know about grammar or vocabulary, but Brett can speak with a lot more fluency and confidence. The two will even out eventually, but for right now, we are the perfect complements to each other, just like always. It's not up to us anyways, because language is not a possession to be acquired by our money and hard work; it is a gift that is the Lord's to give, and we thank Him for what He has given us so far....

We'll get our grades on Friday and if they're good, we might just post them :)

The Blessings of Church Family

Yesterday we watched worhsip services at GracePointe via webcam. To "be" there really was an amazing blessing! At the end of service, our webcam video was put up on the big screen, and our church family was able to see and hear us LIVE! I think just seeing Caden sent people into tears...After the service, people could come up to the webcam and say hi to us, and we saw it and heard it in real time. This was the best Christmas present we could have received, and it filled our hearts at a time when we really needed it. Thanks to my brother, Chad, and all the other GP'ers who made it happen. We love you!

We leave for Togo on January 4th, a little over 2 weeks from today. We are sad to leave France, but beyond excited to be in with our teammates in Togo, exactly where we have wanted to be for months and years now. We love it when a plan comes together, and God's plans always do. Peace!

Have You Ever...

...started to get ready to go to the store, and you couldn't remember what country it was in??? Sounds strange, but it happened to us yesterday. We went to Geneva, Switzerland to get Caden a yellow fever shot and to apply for Ghanaian visas for April and Caden. We had to stay overnight because the doctor's office that gives vaccinations was only open in the afternoon and the Ghanaian Embassy was only open in the morning, and we had to have the shot for Caden before we could apply for the visas...

So everything in Switzerland is quite expensive. Depending on what international data collection agency you ask, it is somewhere between the 5th and 10th most expensive country in the world. Since we had to stay overnight and the hotels in Switzerland are way overpriced, we stayed in a hotel just across the border in France, which was a mere 5 minute drive from Geneva and about 50 euros cheaper.

Anyways, that night we decided to go out and do some shopping at a Carrefour we had seen on the way home from Geneva to our hotel just over the border in France. Carrefour is kind of like a huge Super Walmart on steroids. Seriously, it is huge. So as we were getting ready to go, I casually asked April, "Do you remember what country that Carrefour is in?" This is a question that probably never crosses the lips of most Americans, or most people in the world for that matter. It's a question that is somewhat unique to Europe, where everything is close, the population is very mobile, and a whole other country is never that far away. Just another cool little quirk of our 3 months living here so far...