Hopes for this semester

I'm asking for a really hard semester.  

Yeah, that sort of seems like a bad idea.

But I want this semester to be hard enough for all of us that our students and co-teachers know that we aren't getting through this on our own strength, so that we have more opportunities to talk about why we're here even (and especially) when it's hard.  I want it to be hard so that we really are forced to rely on Him.  We can do the living-in-China thing most of the time.  We can fall back on our team.  And if we can get through everything on our own... maybe that's not hard enough.

I want it to be a hard semester for my students.  Hard enough to expose the hollow things they believe in as hollow.  Family and self and grades and success are not going to cut it for them throughout the course of their whole life -- and I'd rather have that reality driven home to them sooner rather than later.

So hard is one thing I'm asking for this semester.

The other thing is that it would be full of joy.  That we would be so crazy full of joy in the middle of hard circumstances that the people around us would want that.  

Hard and full of joy.

And in an unrelated update, it is 39 degrees here.  THIRTY NINE.  We have two feet of snow or so... it's gonna be a muddy semester.