Adjustments

Thanks again for all of you who are praying for us.
We are transitioning slowly but steadily here. Some random info follows.

The pictures my wife posted are of the campus here, the outside of our apt and the inside as well.The apt I think used to be a duplex or a triplex but they repartitioned the apt and made it a sixex. You have to go down the ground floor of the building to enter our apt, but then go back up stairs to the kids bedroom and our office/playroom. There was not room for us to get our bed in the other upstairs room. The downstairs is the kitchen (super tiny) our bedroom, the bathroom and a living room. IT was furnished for us including some dishes (which we were not expecting)

You would not think that Canada would be a big culture change but it is for us...at least Quebec is. The obvious thing is the French of course. Getting your oil changed, changing money at a bank, and buying groceries take on a new spice of adventure when you are not sure if the person across from you can help you out with a little anglais.

Another thing is that a lot of stuff costs more here than the states. Gas is about $5/gallon (or 1.33/litre if you are scoring w the metric system) and normal staples run a bit higher as well. Fortunately the american dollar is a bit stronger than the canadian one now.

Another thing is the newness of evangelical Christianity here. IT makes sense once you think about it but Catholicism in all of its ritual and little of its spirituality ruled strongly here and still does. The average person here is still sketchy on the whole Christian story idea.

Then there is language school itself. Anna and I are both having cramps in our mouths after trying to make the correct sounds for the words in French. We spent the first week doing phonetics of the language and now we jump into a mish mash of phonetics continued, grammar, conversation memorization and also some scripture memorization in French.

Needless to say all this adjusting has had us praying a lot and as we try to make the sounds, frantically search for body language clues as people talk to us in French, and send our kids off to a new school with unkown students and teachers. Who wouldnt pray then? God would probably find it refreshing to have us live that way without needing a transitions to put us there. Continue to pray that for us and I pray that you would experience the very real urgency of the importance of prayer without experiencing any of the crisis that would normally have to drive you there.