Fatima or Ahmed?

Today we had our final visit with our friendly Dr. Samir to see one last $30 glimpse of our little bundle of joy... and... We our happy to announce that we are having a BOY!!!!! It's apparently very apparent! More importantly, everything looks completely normal and he is developing well; even putting me/him a week farther along than we thought.

And the weather... always making sure we experience the full scope of possibilities here in the land-o-sand! The temps soared this past week, hitting a high of 125.4F one day, followed by several days above 120F. Then in fine desert form, the sand storms, or Habuub, have hit in full force. It's been pretty much constant habuub-ing for the past 4 days. We've tried to keep up with the cleaning while packing up, to no use. Even now, visibility is down to 1/8 mile and we're wiping our eyes and coughing INSIDE the house. We just hope it lets up eventually so we can do a final cleaning before heading out of here on Thursday morning (2am).

Nile Valley Academy is also closing up shop after this next week. We will only be there 2 more days, finishing up grading, cleaning and preparing things for the summer. We've been busy this past week with awards ceremonies, higlighting those students with exceptional skills in athletics and who played on teams. Eddy and I both realized what a pleasure it has been to work with these students and how much we're going to miss them. Most of the students are begging Coach Eddy to stay on another year... as always, he's won their hearts!

I'm not sure if we'll have time to write before leaving here on Thursday... We'll be flying out of here via London and landing in Minneapolis on Friday. While the heat, sand storms and stress of school have us anticipating our break, we do wonder how we will handle and adapt to this next chapter of our lives. Living here has been amazing and tough, adjusting to language, cultural and religious diferences has been at times overwhelming, aside from the daily life struggles that everyone experiences no matter where one lives. We are relying on God to continue to lead us and speak to us, refreshing our vision and passions while continuing to use us wherever we hang our hats. We plan on maintaining our blog throughout our time in the states... We have so appreciated your prayers and encouragements... Thank You!!!

Photos: At Dr. Samir's, getting an ultrasound... Our little baby boy, measuring in at 17 weeks 4 days- and look closely- there's the proof that he's a boy! The Habuub... during and the aftemath- and which continues to rage outside- ugh! The awards ceremony held at the school... Evidence that it got above 125F- ridiculous.