Well, it has been a busy week or so, since our last blog. We find the longer in New Zealand, the fast time goes, which has its good and bad sides. We continue to enjoy each day though, and try to make the most of this wonderful opportunity.

This week, we both experienced being the primary host for a group for the first time. A little daunting, but a great challenge. While we've been working as hosts since we arrived 3 weeks ago, it was our first chance to be in charge of a group - from greeting them, to giving their safety talk, to supervising their clean up. March is a busy month here, so we'll have lots of chances to hone our skills in the next few weeks.

Both of us fell sick this past week which stunk. A cold/flu bug has been going around camp, and when you live and work in close quarters, it is difficult to avoid it. The camp staff are so gracious though, and we both took some extra time to recuperate and get ourselves ready for another week of instructing. I am pretty much feeling 100% again, though Dave is still a bit under-the-weather. Actually, the weather may be partly to blame. After weeks of beautiful sunshine and daily dips in the lake, autumn arrived with a venegance! A few crazy windstorms swept through last week. They cancelled the swim portion of New Zealand's Ironman, which was held at Lake Taupo, because of the swells. Things settled down a bit, but still upsetting to be putting long pants on now. I know though, we really have nothing to complain about, enjoying summer in January and February! And we're looking forward to a beautiful Canadian summer when we arrive back in June.

Plans for Honduras are still going full-steam ahead. Right now, we're in the final stage of our application process to LAM. We finished the introductory application over a month ago, sent in our reference forms, and now writing a doctrinal statement outlining what we believe about God. We hope to be approved by LAM in the middle of April, so we can begin raising our prayer and financial support, in time to leave in August. Many of the other details for Honduras are falling into place, though there are so many large and small decisions to make. I will hopefully be finding out in the next few weeks what grades I will be teaching, so that's pretty exciting. I am really looking forward to having my own classroom, and the challenge of teaching at a bilingual school. I hope to be assigned the Grade 7-11 English program, but it depends on the other teachers, enrollment, etc. One of the many prayer requests. Here are some more, for those of you who pray for us -

• perserverance in completing the final step of our applications
• wisdom in decisions for Honduras
• health and safety as we work at camp
• our car would continue to run
• growth in our marriage

Also, check out the latest pics in Our Photo Album. It includes some shots from some of our recent adventures on our days off, including trips to both the Thermal Capital (Rotorua) and the Art Deco Capital (Napier). Very cool places - we loved them both.