I’m busy, busy, busy.  With the start of the fall semester I am enrolled in 4 classes—Old Testament Survey, New Testament Exegesis (Greek Translating required), Faith and Human Development, and Religions Encountered:  Hinduism and Buddhism.  The Hindu and Buddhist class is very intense and requires “field trips” to the respective temples.  I’ll let you all know how they go.  I have even made my first appearance in Chapel after being asked by my work-study supervisor.  It was an enactment of the story of the paralytic.  I did it!—stage fright and all.  I practiced my part with Charles the night before to make sure I was speaking loud enough since we all could not wear microphones.  I think I’ll lick the stage fright fairly quickly since I have a non-credited class on Scripture Reading this semester too.  It is to help with enunciation, stage fright, clarity and so on before we get into preaching class next semester.

The good news, over the past few weeks, is that Charles has been offered a contract with SunTrust Bank.  That should keep him busy for a while.  Right now, his background check has been really slow coming through and he hasn’t been able to start his new job.  Still it will be good when he starts so that the income can come again as his last full paycheck was back in the middle of August.

Charles’ birthday was a quiet affair and the celebration (cake and ice cream) was postponed for 2 days due to the busy college schedule.

We took part in the Seminary’s start of year dinner held outside on the “quad” and everybody was well fed.  The kids even gave up eating their ice cream because of the size—those things were huge.  During the dinner, we had the opportunity to sit with a visiting scholar (Norman Shanks – former Chaplin of Edinburgh University and Iona Community scholar) & his wife from Scotland who will be here for the next few months. Charles was able to catch up on the latest from home and to work on getting his accent back.  Norman’s kids had all attended the same school as Charles, a few years behind him.  It is so cool when you get to see how small the world really is.

Spiders continue to appear in S’s room and Charles has done his best to take care of them as they appear, fortunately they are getting smaller as opposed to the big ones that we first dealt with when we arrived.   S got to the point that he didn’t want to sleep in his room, but it has been getting longer between visits from the spiders.

Yesterday was Charles’ first day as a Webelos Den leader for S’s den in scouts.  They both look so cool in their uniforms. Despite our move, we are glad that S has continued to pursue this important developmental group and has expressed an interest in continuing in scouts for the Eagle award.  At the pack meeting, Charles even ran into another Scotsman who married an American and is now “serving his time” in the states due to her desire not to live in cold Scotland.  And no, that isn’t a reflection on me; I’m ready and willing to move to Scotland.  So long as I can find some of those day light bulbs or get over claustrophobia enough to lie in a tanning bed regularly to counteract the lack of sunlight.

We have been trying to dodge the heavy rain showers over the past week that seem to come on just about the same time we walk to meet the kids from school. Good news is that our patio cover has held up-- thanks to the engineering efforts from my Dad and Charles.

We are looking at new places of worship again as we try to find a place that we are comfortable at.  Someplace that will challenge us & the children. Unfortunately, it is a slow process since our neighbors all bring different experiences and expressions of church to Seminary.  Asking for a recommendation from someone else hasn’t provided any easy solutions.  So we go around visiting different places and meeting all the different people is really neat, but I’m ready to have a steady place.  The children tried a new Wednesday night program, which they seemed to have enjoyed.

Now that we are settled in somewhat, Charles is beginning to look at his final school project that he has to do so that he can graduate and then consider his future at Seminary.  The project has to take at least 6 months and involves a 12,000 word dissertation at the end.   Hopefully he will be able to make concrete progress on this as it has been hanging over him since the beginning of this year.

We found one more thing that does not transfer to GA--Health Insurance.  Because of the state laws regarding health insurance our BCBS of NC will not transfer to GA.  Neither are we able to roll the policy over to a GA policy.  Since Charles is a contractor he doesn’t receive health insurance through his employer, so we have to go through the application process for private insurance again.  We are covered until the end of the year so we have some time to work that out.  Fortunately, I am eligible for the Board of Pension coverage through the PC (USA) as an inquirer and it is much less expensive than a private policy.

On a final note, Charles wants you all to know that Scotland is doing very well at soccer and beat France 1-0 in Paris last week.  Obviously, he is quite proud of this since Scotland hasn’t historically done well.

 

Thanks for your continued support and keep us in your prayers as we continue to grow and adjust to life at Seminary.