I realized this morning that some of you might not know about Tanner's upcoming trip to Qatar.  I guess in the chaos of things that I term "life", I forgot about mentioning it here.

This trip to Qatar is actually one of the reason why our lives up until this semester have been so extremely stressful and hectic.  Tanner has been pushing to take Plant Design from the professor that orginally counselled us to not be afraid to pursue a ChemE degree from Texas A&M.  This professor, Dr. Baldwin, was become a friend and mentor to our family.  This is also the last year he will be teaching at A&M.  We've known this for some time, so we've packed Tanner's schedule with every pre-requisite to this class.

One of the options for this class is to volunteer for a foreign collaboration project with the A&M school in Doha, Qatar which after a great deal of prayer, Tanner decided to apply.  Lo and behold, he was accepted and has been steadily working toward designing a plant with a team of students based in Doha.  They visited College Station the week before term started, and the College Station team will be visiting their campus during Spring Break.

Yes, this means that I will once again be performing duties of single-mom, but never-fear, I have a faithful sidekick called Jonathan and a wonderful babysitter who filled in for the first part of last summer before Emily arrived.

For most people this would simply be a culturarl experience trip, but Tanner and I know that for him, this trip will mean quite a bit more.  After all, why visit a country without bringing good news?  Because of this, we are very much aware that we have been suffering just a wee bit of warfare.  This has given us ample opportunity to talk to the girls about suffering, and has also given us plenty of opportunity to ask for forgiveness when we fall flat on our faces.

We are blessed to have so much support from bretheren here in C.S. that criss-crosses denominational lines with chaotic abandon.  We have Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Evangelicals, Calvinists and a host of non-denominatiolists all lending their aide.  It is an amazing thing to witness, and proves that we are universally bound together with blood-ties so rich and deep that we when we finally get to see God's great creation, our differences will be silenced.

May your prayers be received with favor before God.