WOW What a long time has passed!?!?!
Lots of things have been happening here, mainly in our household, with trying to sort out visa renewels and find a school for the boys. We have had so many things to think about, and it seems like we have lots of hurdles to jump. We keep getting only part of the information, which is very confusing, so we are constantly checking the validly of what we hear. For example, we were told that to renew our visas our children HAD to attend a school, which felt like we no longer had any options, however, this is not the case. We do feel it would have long term benefits to send them to a school though. So we have been looking at schools that have been recommended to us. One is a very large Baptist school with one of the best reputations in Brazil. It seems like it will be a great school for Josiah to go to, but since talking more with the year co-ordinator it seems that it wouldn't be good for Gideon. So, we were recommended to look at another school nearby for him, that has only 6 children per class. However, this school says that Brazilian law doesn't recognise homeschooling, so in effect, Gideon would not have completed grade 3 (year4 in England). Which means he would have to be held back a year. Is this the case? Is it also the same for Josiah? One idea that this school suggested was to attend the last 2 months of this year, therefore it could be said he has done grade 3. We really want some clarity on this..... It seems that the transfer from an informal education to a school based one is a very complicated process, made worse by the language barrier (meaning that Josiah and Gideon would be unable to show their ability in a formal written Portuguese test).
Please pray with us over this, it's good to trust in God when it seems that things are all a bit cloudy.