Sanity Aside - (Doug)

As Mandy and I were ‘debriefing’ the year the other night we came to the conclusion that “Sanity aside, this year went really well.” I thought that summed it up it pretty well. Some things about living here drive us crazy. Some things about the way our school is run drive us crazy. Some days we feel like we’re the only ones thinking logically but hey, we’re not from here so we’ve got to “go with the flow,” as Del Griffith once said. So we vented about those things to each other for a while but at the end of it all we had to confess that God is good and He’s been faithful to us and to our school this year.

In a little under two weeks, long about the time that Mandy’s parents set foot in the Holy Land for the first time we we’ll be marking our tenth month away from home. In that time I’ve watched my wife do amazing things with a group of kids that everyone had pretty much written off as the worst class in the school. I got to go into her classroom the other day and say goodbye to them and take some last minute pictures. They were all in there having fun and doing the end of the year party thing. I just had to smile at what God has done through Mandy in that classroom. She had a parent teacher meeting the other day and one of her student’s fathers put it perfectly. He said to Mandy, “You made them love Jesus more and that’s the most important thing.”

In a way I feel bad, like I am bragging about my wife but in another way I don’t. It’s more like celebrating the way in which God has worked through her and used her gifts here.

One of the things we talked about a lot before we left to come over here was that we knew that we would be able to help each other out this year. I’d never taught my own classes before but Mandy had plenty of experience there. Mandy had never been to the Middle East before but I had, so I could help prepare her for that. This really held true this year. I know I couldn’t have done this without her and I don’t think she could have made it through without me. God knew what he was doing when he put us together. Imagine that.