Life, in general, has seasons or tides that come and go. Leviticus 26:4 says “I will send you rain in its season, …and the trees of the field <will yield> their fruit.”

First, I would like to acknowledge the donation of additional microwaves for student lunch use by Anne Le Roux and Rosemary Beale. We are grateful for these gifts that allow our children to have hot meals for lunch.

I wanted to inform you of some personnel changes and plans for the future. There are teachers who have finished their season at Hope. Jan and Bruce McKerras are returning to New Zealand to be with their family. Alvina Harrison –Wells is retuning to America to retire again. I don’t think she will stay retired for long…Genevieve Garreau is retuning to America to continue her professional development as a teacher. Paul and Sarah Steinke are returning to be with family, go to graduate school and explore the future, Phil Shaver is getting married this summer to Sharla Bartel and later will return to Kyrgyzstan to work in community development. 

There are also teachers who are entering their season of work at Hope. Karen Dominguez is well known here for her youth development through camps and English teaching. She will be teaching in our middle school grades 7-8. Valerie Haas will join us from Nebraska to teach second grade. Mervyn Neal is from Australia but living here has been substituting and will be teaching in our elementary. Liz McKinnon (Australia) was teaching at Hope 4 years ago and now will be teaching 5^th grade for one year. Valerie Ting is from Australia and planning on coming early 2009 to teach English to our high school. Jeff Schwartz is slated to come from Oregon to teach 7/8 social studies for one year. Aubre Killman, a recent graduate from Texas who has been here before, will teach social studies in high school. Roberto Rodriguez also hails from the “great state of Texas” and can teach elementary or work in administration. We need him in admin so pray for another elementary teacher. Elspeth Sheahan, also from Australia, will temporarily give us consultation on expanding our school to 11 and 12 grade. 

We do not have a director, high school English teacher, or one more elementary teacher for next year. Please pray for these urgent needs. 

We will be dividing our school into an elementary school, middle school (6-8), and a high school for this next year. The elementary school (1-5) will move to the second floor of our neighboring building that we have rented for next year. The kindergarten will stay where it is and 6, 7, and 8 will move downstairs. The high school will occupy the second floor. The middle school will be released at the same time as the elementary school. The high school will be released at 3:40.

Our school has begun a pilot online education program with 3 students that will hopefully expand to more possibilities in the future. 

While we are experiencing change and challenges for the future we want to celebrate the fact that Hope continues to grow. It has been 10 years since Hope organized. We will celebrate this milestone at school the week of April 14 and have an event for our neighbors on April 18. We will have a larger celebration as Hope families and friends on April 19 at the puppet theater. There will be more info to follow.

We are in the final stages of approval for building. As of March 12 we have received the general right to build in the city. Now we have to face more specific construction permissions. This will take more time but is fairly straight forward. We can worship God for this and continue to pray and give and work together.