"Fee e fii."

In case you don't speak To'abaita, the title says, "Fees hurt." I remember that sentence from the Solomon Islands language we learned so many years ago, because it was the one and only time I made a joke in a foreign language and somebody actually got it. The To'abaita word fii means 'pain'. (That morpheme is actually part of another word, fiito'ona, which means "faith," a word we anglicized to use as a middle name for our daughter who was born there.) Anyway, back to my story--the people in the Solomon Islands have problems similar to mine--finding enough money to pay the fees for their kids to go to school. So it was a pun to say "Fees are painful" since the word for pain sounded like "fee."

So why on earth am I talking about this today? Well, we are just about to finish eight years of paying college bills. The last kid (Fitona) will soon graduate, and we only have two more payments to make to her college. I've been worrying/praying about how we could make these last two payments, and the Lord has recently answered that prayer by a couple unexpected generous donations to us. We thank him for that.

Then today I got a handwritten letter from someone in the Solomon Islands asking me for money for someone else's kid to continue their college education. This is a family we have known for over 20 years, and in the past have helped to pay the fees so their children could attend secondary school.

So did God give me extra money to pay my kid's college bill, or their kid's college bill? Probably both.