The Copeland Ramblings/

The kids are starting school!

Much to our surprise, God led us to a bilingual private school here in Dakar. We were not planning on sending the kids to school this year. But he has been showing us that with our French studies and with living in an apartment on the 4th floor, the kids were needing more! They need more time to play outside, they need more time with other kids, they need more time to learn French. We were struggling to have enough time to study our French and find time to spend with local Senegalese people. Through all this we really felt God laying it on our hearts to check out this French/English school about a 15 min drive from our place. We had noticed it one day when driving by. We found the phone number, called to see if they had space for the kids and they asked for us to come in and check it out. We thought it started in October, like the other schools here. But it had started about a month ago. We were able to see the preschool class for Canaan which has about 20 kids and the day care class for Emmaus with about 5 kids. Both kids were a little nervous but not as nearly nervous as we had anticipated! All classes have both a French speaking teach and an English speaking teacher. We are so excited about this and they are starting on FRIDAY! They have a little bus/van that picks kids up. So they kids will be picked up around 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning and will come home around 1! We will have so much time to focus on our French and Culture studies and we feel this will helps speed up this part of our lives quite a bit. Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord also for peace! This is a somewhat scary thing for us living overseas and sending our little ones off like this. But we are so thankful for the peace that passes understanding and that we can rest in HIM! It’s definitely the nicest school I have seen yet! Please be praying for us all. This is going to be quite a time of adjustment! Especially for Canaan. He is quite the homebody and is very sensitive and is not used to playing in large groups of kids. He will struggle the most… which in turn will be hard on us. But we are so confident in the Lord! Thanks so much!! Here are some pictures!

Playground

Canaan’s classroom

Canaan’s classroom

Emmaus’ daycare room

http://www.flickr.com/photos/norm_debra/5037330056/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Emmaus’ daycare room

Right outside Emmaus’ room

Part of the playground

If you want to see more pictures check out our flickr photos! Click HERE!