May

SHEPHERD LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE
Dave Thomas helped to organize the second annual Shepherd Leadership Conference for the first week in June. He also spoke for one of the sessions. One exciting development occurred on Thursday of the conference -- the first ever Rwandan missionary sending agency was formed.

COFFEE WASHING STATION
On the 18th we were able to take our last field trip of the school year to a coffee washing station. Students learned how coffee beans are washed sorted and sun dried before being sent to the coffee roaster.

NEW STUDENTS
After our field trip we looked at the list of students who were asking to join our school next year. We had the potential for 21 students, but decided that that would be too many. We ended up with 15 students for next year: seven 7th graders, two 5th graders, one 4th grader, one 3rd grader, and four 1st and 2nd graders. In order to provide enough room for so many students we also approved remodeling the garage of the school into another classroom.

GARAGE SALE
The Bennetts, one of the school families, leave for furlough in June. In order to prepare, they were cleaning out their garage and the accumulated stuff of the past 10 or so years. Barb Bennett decided to hold a garage sale and invited other missionaries to come and sell any of their excess stuff. I cleaned out old books from the school library and some of my students made treats to sell to customers. Unfortunately, I ended up buying more things than I sold, but most of it was books and supplies for school.

CHOIR CONCERT
The last Saturday and Sunday of the month were taken up by choir. On Saturday we met in the morning and Karamera, the local Friends Church pastor, spoke to us. In the afternoon we had a concert along with the other two church choir. On Sunday afternoon there was another concert with two other visiting choirs. I enjoyed the time with the choir, but two concerts in two days with lots of preaching in Kinyarwanda made for a long weekend.