Issue #53
April 13, 2000

Dear Friends and Family,
The last trimester of the year has begun. The kids arrived on Tuesday. They were very excited to be back with their friends. The excitement wavered somewhat at the return to schoolwork. Everyone is slowly getting back into the swing of things.

The next two weeks will be a little different. Next week all grades will be taking the Stanford Achievement Tests. This is the first year for us to do this achievement test and for all grades to take it. I know that a few of the kids in my class are really going to struggle with this. The next week the accreditation team will be here. They will be looking at the school and meeting with students and staff to see how we are doing. There is much preparation going on now to be ready for this.

I did have nice vacation. (Some of you have already heard this story.) I spent most of my time here getting ready for this trimester. Two other teachers and I did go to Abidjan for a few days to shop and relax. One of the teachers, Lizzy, was also going to her mission's Spiritual Life Conference. This actually provided us with quite an adventure. We had been given directions on how to get to the place where the meetings were being held. To say the least, the directions didn't work for us. We drove all over this neighborhood. We would go to one place and ask for directions and they would send us back the way we came. I finally thought we were on the right track, but the dirt road we were on got really bad and there was a huge truck blocking the road. We decided it wasn't right after all. We then ended up at a Catholic monastery or something like that. The Father or Priest sent us back to where we had been before. We saw a truck with CMA mission tags on it, so we stopped there to ask directions. I found out that earlier when I thought we were on the right track, we actually were. I just had to drive up the huge hill with the rough road and squeeze around the big truck. It only took us an hour and forty-five minutes to find a place that is less than ten minutes from the mission guesthouse. We had lots of laughs though.

Please remember the kids as the test next week. Please be in prayer for the accreditation meetings. Pray for safety for the team as they travel here and while they are here. Pray for all the preparations happening between now and next week, and pray that the meetings will go well.

In Christ,
Traci