JOB. Thank you all for your prayers for the Stargel family as we make the transition from Haiti to NC. Last Friday I had a phone interview for a full-time day job as a visiting nurse with Advanced Home Care in Burlington, NC. Last night they offered me the job. I will start on June 20th. I will also be taking "German for Academic Research" at Duke University on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and "Greek 3" through Columbia International University.

This will help us get started, and then hopefully next year I will be taking classes full-time at Duke and maybe working contingent as a visiting nurse. The special blessing of getting this job offer now is that our mortgage rate will be lower because the bank can verify employment!

Thanks again for your prayers. God is good, and everything continues to fall into place for us as we try to keep ourselves in the middle of his will.

EARTHQUAKE! No really, we experienced an earthquake last night. It was a 4.3 magnitude, and it lasted about five seconds and was really, REALLY strange. It felt and sounded like a big truck hit the house. I went to check on the kids. Nicolas sleeps on the upper bunk and he says in a sleepy voice, "Hey daddy, what just happened?" I told him that I think we had an earthquake, and his eyes brightened up. "Really? COOL!!" Beccas was very disappointed this morning when she woke up and realized she had slept through it all.

GENERATOR UPDATE. Many of you knew that the Nazarene Mission in Haiti needed a new generator to power our operations here. Well, thanks to God and the generosity of a WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE, the generator was purchased and shipped. It arrived in Haiti and is ready to come out of customs this week. Now the question is how to get the monster generator into the little building and then hook all the wires up correctly.

BUGS I HATE MORE THAN MUSKEETOS. Becca came home from First Grade last week a bit puzzled and upset by something her teacher had said. It seems that Mrs. Chioti thinks that mosquitoes are the worst bugs in the world for a vacationer. So Becca asks her mom, "Is that an opinion or is that a fact?" Linda assures her that hating mosquitoes over all other insects while on vacation is indeed an opinion. "I KNEW IT!" You have to understand that Becca idolizes Mrs. Choiti, and this little disagreement has our little one tied in knots, emotionally. Our sad little Becca felt that this was going to be a test question and didn’t know if she should follow her conscious and miss the question, or simply put down what the teacher wanted to hear. After going back and forth for a while, Linda and Becca finally decided that a written rebuttal to Mrs. Chioti’s position would be the best. With pencil and wide-rule paper in hand, Becca started. After several minutes she argued HER position, that mosquitoes were not even close to being the worst bugs! Here's what she came up with:

Bugs I hate more than muskeetos. I hate,
cocroaches,
bees,
Stinging moths,
cicadas, and biting lady bugs
more than muskeetos!

She then goes on to draw a nice picture, ranking the bugs from "top is hated most bottom is hated least":



Becca's position paper on the important question, "What is the worst bug?" I particularly agree with her on the the "biting moths."