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Hillcrest International School is serving the needs of expatriates. It is nestled on a lower slope of a 7,000 foot mountain and overlooks a large lake. Approximately 150 students from all over the globe attend HIS. They are the children of translators, jungle pilots, seminary teachers and Biblical experts. Also included are children of diplomats and business people. The mission statement is HIS is to "provide a biblically based education for the children of Christian workers and other international children enabling them to successfully function in all aspects of life.
Mike teaches all the Middle School students beginning in grade six.
This year there are 12 in the beginner band. The students move into the Middle
school band during the seventh and eighth grade years. Then, as they reach the
high school years, band becomes an elective. Often students find they want to
take band, but cannot due to scheduling limitations. In order to meet this need,
Mike teaches some of his high school band members after school. About a week
before the concerts, he puts the two high school groups together.
In addition to teaching instrumental music, Mike is often asked to teach classes
for which a specialist has not been recruited. In the past, he has taught middle
school language arts, history, and high school speech. This year he is teaching
Bible on the high school level. The courses are titled Old Testament, New
Testament and Apologetics.
The middle school band performs at its mid-semester concert. There are about
twenty students in this band. Because the population of the community is always
fluid, the instrumentation is rarely the same from year to year. Mike does most
of the arranging and composing for this band.
Mary is holding two jobs. When parents take their students out of school and to
a village while the parents work on language acquisition; either learning a
village language, actively translating the New Testament, holding literacy
workshops or other related work; Mary works as a nexus between the classroom
schoolwork and village schoolwork.
The second job entails coordinating the facility use of the group's training
center. She works with various groups who want to use the meeting rooms for
conferences, workshops and special events. Such events have included an aviation
safety seminar, a training conference on evangelism and an discovery group of
people from Korea seeking to determine if they should work in this area.