Thanks all of you who are praying specially for this week. It has made a difference. Good relationship is happening. Today, I had the privelege of taking a Thai couple, James & Jin who I picked up from the airport late Friday night to lunch & then shopping. They were feeling very homesick and so I took them to a Thai restaurant and then we went to the Asian market. It was a lot of fun. They are a very sweet young couple. He is here on a fellowship to get a PhD in linguistics. It was a lot of fun – I really felt like we bonded in a special way and it truly is an honor to serve them and I hope we can continue to build our friendship, perhaps helping with English and adjusting to live in America.

Our friend G. from Italy came over with a cooking team of 4 other international students from places as varied as Iran, Japan, China & Korea to make a large amount of Northern Italian heaven to be served at the Big Howdy party on Saturday. Gnocci is a special Italian dumpling dish in this case made with Potatoes. Our home smelled of Tomato sauce, different spices and the sound of G. kneading the dough to make from scratch the dumplings for 40 people. It was an incredible exercise and the students learned a lot from each other and about each other. It was a blast. (Wait till those of your at the party try it.) Check out more Big Howdy pics…

One final thought… (as Bob Costas is wont to say) As I was reading about the Olympics today, one of the quotes was from an athlete from the Carribean who happened to study at TCU for college. Two other Olympians in track and field from Jamaca both studied at George Mason.  It struck me… there are many athletes at the Olympics who were international students in the United States at one time or another or at the least they trained here. There are also a lot of kids of internationals too. One of the campuses I serve on, TCU has a world renowned track program with many internationals (7 current or former Horned Frogs (TCU) representing 5 different countries are at the Olympics) and the whole Tennis program is international. In addition, several US Olympians with their international friends practice at UTA. SMU, where one of our DFW minstry teams works has 15 athletes representing 11 different countries (including Nastia… from the USA.. oh well… but her dad is Russian and Shawn Johnson’s coach was an international student before staying here to start a gym) AND a torchbearer. Wow! That is really cool and reminded me of the types of students we serve.