dear friends and family,

How is everything going for everyone. We are enjoying nice hot weather especially today! But we all also talk about fall, pumpkins, apple picking and everything that goes along with fall and such and kinda wish for that a little. But that's OK the beach was awesome today. Friday afternoon the guys left for a annual camping trip so today at the beach all the lady's and the children were with us at the beach so as you can imagine that was a rather festive time! :) It was fun to kinda have our beach trip changed up a little. Another interesting thing that happens at the beach that day ( because i am now writing this on Sunday) was watching some fisher men cast there net and then pull it in. The kids stood around and watched and i have to admit we ended up standing around rather fascinated looking like tourist. and then the kids could no longer contain them selves so they ended up trying to helping the fisher men pull the nets then. I don't know how the fishermen liked that but they didn't seem to mind to much... here are some pictures of it all happening we got to see then catch a starfish which they gave to one of the Fox boys to keep and an octopus, fish and lots of sea eggs...we didn't stay till they were done so i don't know if they caught a lot of fish or not then.

       Monday i woke up to an amazing view out of the kitchen window. So that was an awesome way to start my Monday.

 This week was my turn to lead all the school chapels so Monday i had to lead a few songs and introduce the speaker which was Pastor John.The day went well and we enjoyed having Shavoni over for the evening!

     Tuesday i came to school to find a rose on my desk by my sweet little student Renel. She can be such a charmer always bringing miss a rose and giving me hugs but on the playground now and then you hear of things going on. She also had been coming to church a few Sundays but now she has kinda quit and i keep asking her if she is coming but so far she hasn't come again.

Tuesdays we also have art class so today i tried an art project that i had done a year ago at art in the park in York. It went pretty good i thought.....its were you mix paint, soap and water and then blow bubbles till they are up over the top of you cup and then you stick your paper on top and get the imprint of the paint bubbles....

So anyway than after school me and Amanda walked down to Hope Dale for kids club which this month is my turn to lead out and do it. So that was kinda interesting being on that side of it. It is hard to keep there attention and then if you forget that you normally sing first things don't go to well ether then. But oh well hopefully this Tuesday it will go better.

      Wednesday I had to do the whole chapel for school that morning so that was kinda interesting. i had thought that what i had prepared was to long but when i presented it it was shorter then i thought and so i had to dismiss early so that was kinda embarrassing but other then that it went pretty good. That afternoon we went to Grand Anse for groceries. And then that evening we went to a elderly lady's place for cottage meetings.

      Thursday at school as far as i can remember was pretty much a hum drum day but then that evening we went to Sarah and Lori's place for supper and then they had girls bible study at their place because it was Sarah's turn to teach. She had a really good devotional about not prioritizing your time. She then got Ryan to buss us all down to the beach to watch the moon which had been full moon the night before so it was nice and big!! it was a lot of fun walking down the deserted beach at night and learning to know the girls better..

 ok so finally a pic of Shavoni for all of you who want to put a face to the name. (she always comes over on Mondays for bible study with Amanda) And she has been talking about it but finally today in church she stood up and said publicly that she would like to be baptizes and become a member!!!!! So that was REALLY exiting! I would ask all of you to pray for her. She faces a lot in her life..she is in collage and it can be a challenge and her family can be hard to get along with. But through it all she finds something to be grateful for with her family or she rises to the challenges in collage. And now another big thing to pray for is that Satin would not get a hold of her and discourage her in the decision that she is making.

 Natalie with pretty much all of the girls somewhere in the pic.

 pretty much full moon and lights of Grenada

        Friday was a wild day of leading sing along devotions (which was fun) and then working hard with my students to get done with our work till lunch time, since we only have a half day of work on Fridays because of cleaning and games class. And let me tell you i was very proud of my students they got a LOT of work done. And let me while i'm on a roll say that my kids are amazing so on Friday at second brake several of them decided they wanted to stay in a clean the class room so i let them go ahead i was outside for brake and so when i came back in things were looking pretty spiffy! So then after lunch when it was time to do cleaning there was very little to do so i told my students that they could sit quietly on there chairs and read a book..well some of them decide to get their Reading books and have a reading class it was so cute and it wasn't disturbing so i let them go right a head and do it. it was kinda funny cuz i overheard some of them conduction it like i would in actual reading class and i hear Mr. Doodlebuger mentioned for those who know that story. :) just as background we read this story a few weeks ago and my kids LOVED it!!! Actually i think i can attribute this story for making reading our story in Reading start being a fun time for my class. It actually started with my boy who struggles the most with reading, (score i love when this happens!!) he started reading the part if Mr. Doodlebuger in a deep voice and did very well at it and made every one laugh including teacher. And so since then exceptionally when they or my self point out some fun way to read the story they have a ball reading the stories and actually groan when i say i'm going to read the rest of the story!!! By the way i know that Reading time is time for them to learn how to read but because of our tight schedule and because Reading always has us read it twice i always make  them read half of it and then i read half of it and then the next time i read the half they read and they read the half i read.

 their little reading class (L to R Darrell, Cyle, and Renel)

 Nella above and Leadon below looking at books...

       Then me and Amanda had games class we played a game with all to student and then we split them up younger ones on one side of he court and older ones on the other side of the court so that the younger ones would have more fun and there was less of a chance of them accidentally getting pushed over. I took the younger classes and played red light, green light with them. That evening as i said earlier the guys left for brother camp so we single girls decided to do some of our own special thing and go out to eat at a higher class resort restaurant. We had a lot of fun that night walking around and looking at the big yacht,taking pics. and having some nice girl time, and unwind from the week..well i guess that's what we did. Since teaching is our life right now it was the topic of lot of the night but it is always nice to compare notes and i love getting tips and advise from them since they taught before and i haven't. so here is some more pics.

Natalie and me cheesing it up!:) 

 blurry but love it anyway :)

 my supper ya i took some of it home....:P btw that is a mango drink i have there and it was really good. but then i like pretty much anything mango :)

Ok well that covers Friday and i talked about Saturday so i guess we will move on to Sunday. Well i got to church for prayer meeting so that was a good thing :P Believe me after last Sunday i have 9:20 in graven in my mind! Kavona and her children came to church again so that was exiting!!! And then the whole thing with Shavoni made my day! And then Natalie made an amazing lunch of salad with chicken and bread sticks. We were all ready for salad because for the last week we did not have salad because the store had been out of lettuce the beginning of this week...this afternoon i was in my room doing my update when i hear out side "miss! miss!" so i go out to see who it is and there is Rashad! If you don't know who he is he is a 7 year old boy who is always liming around i don't think normally anyone is home and his mom doesn't normally cook cuz he is always asking us for food, sweeties, or our football (which we don't have with us anymore cuz he went and lost it or something..) anyway he had a football (not ours) and told me i needed more coaching in football (he has tried teaching me tricks with the football normally it ends up him trying to show me something new and him messing up :P) so i played around with him for a while but the ball kept going in the drain and getting all muddy so we gave up on that and sat on our steps and ate cookies and juice and played uno....i had asked him when he asked me if i had food for him if his mother was home or why he didn't go home and he said his mom and siblings were gone. and then i asked him 'so were does that leave Rashad?" and he said 'by you!' its sad what lot of the kids normal is here. 

 my coach Rashad scrubbing his ball trying to get all the mud and grass off of it...

   This evening then us teacher wanted to do something so we and Shivoni went around and sung to some older lady's..it was a ball let me tell you! old lady's are sooo funny!!! And one old lady i guess was so confused that when we asked her if she had any songs she wanted sung she picked a Christmas song!! she must have thought time was flying faster then she thought and it was Christmas time...i mean why else would people come sing for her?? and at Miss. Jeans we got to see a really pretty sunset! not a very good pic but anyway.. we then went back to the guys house for the rest of the evening..we brought a pizza and they made pancakes and apple filling to put on it so we had a very interesting but scrumptious snack or rather dinner i guess..

Oh by the way praise the Lord this week Leadon (if you read my earlier post you may remember me talking about him) actually got exited about two different things this weeks and talked to me more then just answering my questions!!!so that was awesome!! cuz he has prolly only did that once or twice before the who rest of the time. Also pray for me that i would be able to love him more and not get frustrated when he acts out or spaces ALL the time in class...I heard different things this week that convicted me that i have failed to consistently show him love in all circumstances...once in teacher chapel and an other time from a house mate who said.."students who are loved at home come to school to learn, but students who do not get love at home come to school to get love" and one way they try to get that is testing you and seeing if you will follow through with what you said as far as punishment and doing it in love. because when they act up at home they get punishment but not in love....I'm not saying that this child has a bad family life i honestly don't know(i would love to know) i hope not but knowing how most family's operate around here there is a high possibility that he doesn't have an ideal home life. any way i have rambled enough so i guess i'll go. Love Crystal