"You'd better soak your veggies, young woman!"

Hey, guys! How are you? I don't have a lot to write, tonight, but I promised to write on the noneventful days just like the exciting ones, so here I am. Let's see. Today I got up at 7 and hurried around to clean my apartment and make lunch because I had guests coming over, after school. Then on the way to school I stopped at the veggie market because I was going to fix chicken salads for lunch and you can always get the best veggies early in the morning. So I had all these veggies with me, when I went to school, and decided to "play market" in my 3rd grade class. I was trying to teach them the difference between "how many" and "how much." It's kinda tricky. Do you know the difference? Well, I had each of the kids come up and ask to buy something from my veggie stand. I'd ask "How many do you want?" and they'd tell me. Then they'd ask "How much is it?" and I'd tell them. The kids went crazy over my strawberries, so I had one of my students take a bag of them down to the bathroom and wash them. Then I gave a strawberry to people after they came to my "store." It was pretty fun.

During my break, I ran home to soak my lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, and strawberries. Did you know that people's stomachs are really amazing and build up resistance to certain things in the ground? So when we go to other parts of the world, we can get sick from things that don't make anybody there sick, because their stomachs have built up defenses against those things all their lives, and ours haven't yet. So I always have to soak my fruits and vegetables in water with a little bit of bleach for 30 minutes! It's kinda a bummer to not be able to eat really good strawberries and grapes as soon as you see them, but I try not to because I don't want to get sick.

Anyway, after soaking and cutting up my veggies, I ran back to school to teach my 6th and 7th graders. Then Paul and Becky came and picked me up in their truck! That was really nice, because it meant I didn't have to walk home, again! It was also great because Paul and Becky have been in the US for a year, and this was the first time I'd seen them since they came back! That's one sad thing about being a missionary, I think. Missionaries usually don't stay in one place their whole lives, because they have families and friends back in their home countries (like the United States, for me). So every 2-4 years, they go back to visit their families for about a year. It's always sad when your best friends go away for a whole year! But it's fun when you get to be together with them, again.

So Paul and Becky and I ate really good chicken salads, and then coffee and strawberry shortcake for dessert. We talked about what God is doing in our lives, and also about the future. My job is going to be over, soon (in November), so I have to decide what God wants me to do next (between Nov '08-June '09). It feels like a really big decision, but Paul and Becky and I talked about some different things that God might want me to do, and it was fun to think about! Please pray that God gives me wisdom to make a good decision!

After Paul and Becky left, I went on a run. When I got back to my apartment, my friend, Lety, was sitting on my front steps! She's 17, and comes over after school, three times a week, to help me clean and study the Bible, together. So she cleaned up my lunch dishes (I'd left EVERYTHING a mess so that I could run before she came), we ate strawberry shortcake for dinner, and then we read Matthew 5, together. She just left, 45 minutes ago. Now, I think I'm going to think and pray about everything that I talked about with Paul and Becky, plan my classes for tomorrow, and then go to sleep. Good night!