Tyler and Hannah in Thailand: September 2015

Wow! What a start to the year! Yes, dear friends I know it has been a long time since my last update...things have been much, much busier this year (Far busier than I even anticipated), and as a result I have not taken the time to write a blog post. To be honest I haven't even taken much time to stay in contact with my family back in Canada, so for all that I am sorry.

This year at Victory Asia Bible College is off to a great year. If you are one of my facebook friends you may have seen a few photos and short posts about the events going on, but here is a quick rundown for those who may have missed it:

We currently have 29 students registered for VABC, thought a few of them are still sorting out Visa's. Of these students 20 of them are first years. That is a larger number of students than our entire student body last year. We have 4 students from Thailand, 5 from Myanmar, 2 from The Philippines, 1 from Nepal, 2 from Pakistan, 2 from India, 1 from Sri Lanka, 1 from the UK, and 11 from Canada.

Almost every student we have with us this year has been affected by 7 weeks in Asia in some way. Almost all the Canadian students partook in the mission trip before become a student (in fact all but 2 members of this year's 7-weeks trip stayed on as students this year; and the other two promise to come back for school next year.) And nearly everyone else was part of a hosting team for 7-weeks (it is truly amazing to see how connected things become and how effective our ministries are in connecting people with our larger vision.) Another neat things for me this year is the personal connection I have with some of the new students this year: two of them come from my home church, and another is the nephew of an old classmate.

This year is likely the largest student body we have ever had and it is helping us to work out some kinks as we have a vision for 70 students...we are just shy of 50% of that. So this is going to be a great stretching experience as we all learn how to handle a larger student body. (I can tell you for certain that I need a larger vehicle for moving the students from place to place.)

We started this year off in the usual fashion, with a national leaders meeting, "Summit." Summit is always a great time of refreshing the vision and getting updates of all the ministries in all the nations we are partnered with. This year we have over 150 people in attendance (One night we may if had 200 people), representing our 9 main countries.e largest group came from our churches in the Philippines. Summit seems to set the stage for our overall school/ministry year, so often the focus of Summit becomes the focus of the college year. This years theme was "Full-steam Ahead" and the school year has definitely felt that way.

I am still working with the children, just not as much as I would like; the demands of the bible college this year have hindered my ability to join in the children's classes, but they have lots of help from the college students this year.

I have started teaching our ESL college students English. We teach all our bible college courses in English, so we provide extra tutoring in English as needed. Last year we only had a few students who needed help, but this year I have 19 ESL students that need help, and 3 that think they do. I spend 30 minutes a day with them going over basic English sounds, grammar, and vocabulary, and it is safe to say I have very little idea about what I am doing.

Finally, I will be heading to Nepal in October to teach at our sister college there. I am both excited and nervous. I am going to teach the same course I taught in India, but as the school there teaches in Nepalese I will have to do it all through a translator. Which is going to be a challenge.

Well, that is pretty much all that is going on in life right now. Thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings. I love and appreciate everyone of you, and hope to hear from each of you soon.