We hope you are all having a good summer!  We are sure enjoying a more relaxed schedule and the beautiful, dry and warmer Quito weather.

We praise the Lord that our new director, Dr. David Wells, and his wife, Lois, are now both here and are getting settled.  We also praise the Lord that the Acuerdo Ministerial  recognizing the existence of the AAI has finally been signed by the Minister of Education!  This has been a long and often frustrating process.

We are thankful that the new dorm parents, the Doells, will arrive on Saturday from Canada.  They were delayed in coming due to some problems that they had obtaining their visas.  Pray that they will be able to  get settled and get the dorm ready in time for the arrival of the students.  They will have much to learn in a very short time!  Also, please pray for the dorm kids as several of them are also experiencing trouble in obtaining their visas.  Most of them are living in countries in which they are not residents, so the Ecuadorian consulates there do not want to issue them visas from those countries to get into Ecuador.  They want them to travel back to the US/Canada to get them.

Most of our staffing needs for the AAI have been filled, so we are thankful for that!  Please pray that God will soon provide the last few teachers that we need before school starts at the end of the month.  All of the construction projects are almost finished, too, and we are very excited about the much needed improvements and the new looks of these areas of our campus!

Thank you for praying for Michelle and her foot.  After many weeks of doctor's appointments, x-rays, MRI's and a sonogram, it looks like we finally have an answer to the mystery of why it is hurting and swollen!  The traumatologist told us yesterday that he felt that she has "Aseptic Necrosis" AKA "osteochrondrosis"  AKA "Freiberg's disease".  It is (from what we understand) when the ball of the joint of the second toe does not get enough oxygen due to restricted blood vessels and the joint begins to die.  It is most common in girls ages 10-15, particularly those involved in ballet:-)  (No, she does not do ballet, but she has walked on her toes ever since she was a baby.)  Right now, the treatment is to get inserts for her shoes to readjust the pressure to hopefully allow more blood flow.  We pray that this works well as the next step would be surgery in three or four months!  Please pray that the inserts will be all that she needs and that we can find good (and cute) shoes here that will help as well.  She did get the braces on her teeth this summer, too, so the poor thing has pain from head to toe:-(

Thank you for your prayers!

In Christ,
Billy, Ellen, Michelle, Megan and Jimmy Evans

The Alliance Academy International
Quito, Ecuador
South America