Celebrations

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!  This is a GREAT time to remember that we are BLESSED not STRESSED.  Right?  Lots of celebrations here lately - We celebrated Thanksgiving early so we could be together as a dorm.  I love it when I have an opportunity to show kids a part of America that they have never experienced before.

We also celebrated Cale's 9th birthday.  That was amazing!  He keeps on surprising me at his depth of spiritual insight and care and concern for others. He has such a tender heart, such a love for people, such a desire to be who God made him to be.  Last night he wanted a few more minutes before bed so he could look up some verses.  I LOVE THAT LITTLE GUY!!!

On Saturday we will celebrate Garth's birthday...I won't tell you how many...Haha.  I will tell you it is quite a bit more than me.

We are celebrating the start of Christmas here as well.  This week there is no school since all of the teachers are at a conference in Korea (freezing!). The dorm is closed this week, so the kids are all with family or guardians.  This is the first time some of the kids have been home since school started August 13th.  It is a much needed break for us all. 
We pulled down the Christmas tree from storage and have been making decorations for the walls.  A big THANK YOU goes out to those at Cornerstone and all the rest of you that sent Holiday decorations with the Skibbas this summer.  I am so excited to have all this stuff to put up.  Remember last year when the dorm decorated the tree with cups because we didn't have many ornaments? HAHAHAHA!  I didn't mind until church asked to borrow our tree for the Christmas Eve service and the kids brought it up there, cups and all. Great memories, huh?

Anyways,

We are still having trouble with our generator, and keep losing power.  The parts needed to fix the generator came but it still doesn't work.  Not sure what that means.  We have been eating meals by candlelight and learning how to do things with flashlights.  It is so funny here - when the power finally comes on I am like, "Quick, fill up the sinks, refill the water pitchers, switch the laundry, go to the bathroom..."  But, one thing we are all enjoying about these power outages is running outside to look at the stars.  The other night most of the dorm was out gazing at God's big, amazing sky.  We saw so many shooting stars!  And it is so COOL to see a totally different section of the sky with constellations at different angles...you would love it.  It is breathtakingly beautiful.

Here are some pictures of the last few weeks:

Picture day for the dorms.

Hostel 2.  Just thirteen of us.

Cale's ninth birthday.  Sixth one celebrated in Indonesia.

We had a great Thanksgiving feast.

Some satisfied Thanksgiving customers.

The Becks and the Lees were our guests this year.

Seun, Emma, and Yohan enjoyed the feast.

Cale dressed as a Disney character for the Fall

Concert.  Do you know who he is?  Zoom on the

iPad for a clue.

Cale had a countdown in his desk on this sticky note.

The fam at the beach.

Cale is the birthday boy!

On our way to the "Inside Beach."  It was a beautiful day.