Adventures With Mark

We were blessed with another amazing year at Music For Life Primary School. The entire staff worked extremely hard and very well together as a team in 2007. It was exciting to see the work of the staff being reflected in the students with so many good results and changes in so many different fields. It is also exciting to see these children who were extremely needy when they joined the African Children’s Choir doing so well and excelling at Music For Life Primary School. As we continue to try and make history little by little at the school, we are eager to blast into 2008 and make it even better!
The Lord was very good to us as the grade seven class worked very hard to prepare for their year end exams in November 2007. Their final marks are based on year end national exams that make up 100 percent of their grades. Percentages are turned into aggregates with the best possible combined aggregate from the four exams being a 4. Aggregates 4 – 12 make up division one and division two is from 13 – 24. Divisions 3 and four make up aggregates 25 – 34. MFLPS has been blessed with only division 1 and 2 results with the bulk being first divisions in our short history. We were blessed once again this year with 23 out of 26 students receiving division one grades and the remaining three reaching division two. These results place us as one of the top schools academically in the country. To top it off one of the division one grades was an aggregate of four! A perfect score! Almost as equally exciting was to have some of the students who struggle with their grades, work hard and come up with those good division two marks and even some division ones. If we our school was registered and we did not write our exams under another school (we are working on that) we would be the 18th best school in Uganda. Yes, this is a big deal as students and schools appear in the front page of the papers here for a few days once results are announced. These results are outstanding when you consider there are over 30,000 primary schools. Praise be to God!!!
Most importantly though we have seen students make changes and living a life that will help make a positive change in Uganda now and in the future. The nearly 30 staff at the school are working together very well with the burden to do all they can for these kids. Sarah and I are excited to be involved and to just be a part of the team that is working here.
Lastly we had my parents here for the Christmas season which was fun for us. We had a chance to see some of the country side, but more importantly time to just hang. They had a great time and especially with Seth. He misses them already and is getting over it, but a little grumpy at times. Thanks for coming mom and dad, being so supportive and getting to know and understand our very different world here.