Celebrating Exchange Students

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on weekends where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.

This week I celebrate having exchange students. We hosted a student from Germany for ten months. We hosted a girl from Japan for one month. We hosted a boy from South Korea for 11 months. Now, we have a girl from Brazil staying with us for about 6 months.

Hosting students has been both a challenge and a blessing. It's a bit daunting to bring a stranger into our home knowing that we have committed to keeping them and parenting them too. At the same time it's also very exciting to meet someone new, find out about another culture and form relationships with them and their family.

Without sharing too much about our new student, I will just say that we are truly blessed to have her with us and I hope that we are able to make her stay here a positive learning experience.

We've spent the past few weeks getting to know each other and touring around our community. It's a great way to remind ourselves about why we've chosen to live here and what treasures are around us.

I feel almost like an advertisement for hosting exchange students, but it is certainly a life changing experience not only for the students, but for the families they stay with too. I'm glad we've had the opportunity to do this so many times.