The kids are back to school now, and I thought it was a good chance to give you a glimpse of Sahel Academy!

On August 9th, Nathaniel started 10th grade (ten fingers), Jonathan 9th, and Ruth 7th – all of them at Sahel Academy (SA) here in Niamey.

SA is an International Christian School, grades K-12, with about 150 students. The students come from over 30 nations! Many are missionary kids, others live here because their families work at an embassy, for the US military, for an NGO (non-governmental organization), and some are local Nigeriens.

The truth is – our family would not be able to serve here without this school for our kids. The teachers are Christian missionaries themselves, so the education our kids are receiving is coming from passionate, committed individuals. We are so thankful!

Here is a link to a video Sahel Academy Video Link that was made recently – (it is 3.5 minutes long) – and you just might notice a silly red-haired girl who made it into the video! (Ruth) This is better than all of my random photos so I hope you have a chance to check it out!

Sidenote: Sahel Academy is always recruiting new teachers! Contact me if you are curious what that might look like! nikki.gray@sim.org

In the USA there are never-ending jokes about the long lines at the DMV (department of motor vehicles). Let it be known right now that NOTHING compares to the incredible (hassle) “experience” of getting a license here in Niger!

We have used our temporary International Driver’s licenses since arrival, but the police – who pull people over often to check paperwork – do not like those…they want us to have the real license of Niger. Unfortunately, the process is entirely complicated! And recently they added even more requirements to the process, making it nearly impossible to acquire a Niger driver’s license.

When we first lived here in 2012 – 2013 it took us nearly 8 months to obtain the Niger driver’s license, but when we left the country we had to turn it back in to the government (in order to receive back our USA licenses). When we returned in January 2017 we requested that they “find them” in the hopes that we wouldn’t have to go through the process again. Initially, they didn’t find them. Ugh! But last week – eight months later! – we received the good news that the old licenses had been found! Hooray!

So here we are celebrating – with our colleague whose name is Constant. (He truly was thrilled about this “find” but we couldn’t get him to smile for the picture.)

We are thankful for every victory we experience here, and we have learned to take nothing for granted.

We recently used stamps and paper to send our latest newsletter, but some of our friends are not on the mailing list. So, we decided to posted our newsletter here in pdf format. Simply click on this link to view it: Summer 2017 Newsletter