School starts tomorrow!

School starts tomorrow, and I would love your prayers for this first day and first week of classes! I am starting out teaching 6th-12th grades and will hopefully be adding in the primary grades within a few weeks (it's a full load!). I would love your prayers for preparation, organization, my relationships with my students, my teaching skills, and the first week "first impressions" that are so crucial to the entire year. I feel prepared in some ways for the week yet also not really capable of feeling totally prepared until I actually meet my students and get a feel for how the year will be. I'm really looking forward to all of the opportunities, relationships, and experiences that await me and am very grateful for your prayers that can truly make this year a "success". Most importantly, I desire for my students to see Christ in me and that my life would serve as a witness to them in very real and lasting ways (and that they would see that God is and desires to be a part of EVERY aspect of our lives- including art!).

I was thinking recently about all of the "new" things in my life right now.... New culture, new language, new lifestyle (totally new way of life!), new city, new friends, new food.... and a new JOB on top of that makes for a LOT of transitions and of lot of things to be processing at all times. I pray that these transitions would not keep me from being the best teacher that I can be (through Christ's strength!) and would love your prayers for that as well!

"And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong." -2 Cor. 12:9-10