> WE'RE SHARING IN THE EVENING SERVICE SUNDAY THE 22ND. CAN YOU SUM UP
> YOUR WORK THERE AND HOW THE LORD IS LEADING YOU TO STAY IN A FEW SHORT
> PARAGRAPHS AND EMAIL IT BACK TO ME? I KNOW IT WILL BE HARD TO CONDENSE
> SO MUCH BUT I'D LIKE TO SHARE WHAT'S GOING ON WITH YOU THERE.

Actually, its too bad that you couldn't wait until next week. Despite the best efforts of Silvana and others, no one has been able to convince the airlines to change the ticket, so I will be coming home on 26 October (and arriving in Portland on 27 October) as originally planned. Apparently this particular ticket is a 3 month ticket, and not a 6 month ticket. Silvana attempted to show them that they had already changed the ticket to a date quite a bit beyond 3 months as it is. She was promptly put into "vicious circle" mode by the local American Airlines representative. Apparently American Airlines counts its months differently than the rest of the world does, so that 26 October is exactly 3 months after 9 July, and that therefore the ticket can't be extended past that date.

The suggested solution to this type of problem by someone where I work would be "You just need to start piling hundred dollar bills on their desk until 17 December magically becomes 3 months after 9 July." As tempting as this solution is, a convenient stack of $100 bills was not conveniently available.

All of that aside, here is the requested summary:

Some years ago, the ISBL Seminary found it desirable to teach some English language courses to its students. These courses would be for those students that were going to persue advanced degrees in English speaking countries, or otherwise would require the English language in their work. At that time, they determined that the best solution to the problem was to contract an outside firm to offer the classes at the seminary. This situation was not satisfactory. The fact of the matter was that students in that program were simply not learning the material at all.

Therefore, somewhere around 2 years ago, the decision was made to start their own language program at the seminary. Several months later, Jan and Rod Dormer arrived as missionaries. Jan has many years of experience teaching English as a second language. The result has been the creation of the Webb Institute at the seminary. At first the program was quite small, and primarily designed to teach English to a few seminary students or Portuguese to the OMS missionaries here that still need more training in that area.

Starting in the fall semester ( January of this year ) English classes were offered for general registration. There were 13 students. They are now in the second semester, and there are somewhere between 55 and 60 students.

My tasks there have included tutoring students, and at times teaching a few of the classes. I have also done some typing of documents, helped some of the teachers with making sure what they write and say is correct ( there are two Brazilians that are teaching classes here now, and there are some things they need a native speaker for ), and otherwise acted as a general teachers assistant.

At times, I have also helped other missionaries with other things that needed to be done. This has included helping David Roof with work at the new church in Veneza, helping with some of the smaller maintenance work around the Seminary, and for a brief time helping out at Acampamento Shalom.

If I had been able to continue to stay here, they would also have had me do a number of other things, including:

prepare the English services, with our assistance in music and sermons! assist Silvana in all the promotional material that needs to come out for next semester assist us in designing next year's class schedules develop some kind of program/incentive/training to use the CD roms that we have help pull together a Christmas program for Webb help plan the next English camp in Jan.

-Glenn Laubaugh