Our family loves hosting exchange students. We had a great experience 2 years ago hosting Grace, a Korean student from Indonesia. She was a member of our family and we all still miss her. We've been contemplating hosting another student next year. Here is how it is all starting to unfold--we have yet to see how it will all play out. I'll start from the beginning...
I got a call from an IEC (local coordinator) from the organization that we used before--EF. If you are ever wanting to host, they are the best to work with! Another family from our church is hosting a girl from Spain and they put us down as a reference. I answered the standard questions that they ask--will this be a good family, etc. It was easy to do because this family will be an awesome host family. I told the IEC that we had hosted in the past and loved it! She mentioned a girl from Finland that she was trying to place and asked us to think about it. We received her profile and thought she would be great, but when I looked at the EF website it states that they can only share a room with a child over the age of 12. Our daughter will be 9. This wasn't an issue in our previous home, as we had an extra bedroom. We were disappointed, but we thought of another family at our church that would also be a great host family. We suggested it to them and they are considering it right now, but haven't made a decision. When I talked to our IEC again I told her that we weren't eligible to host because of our daughter's age. Apparently it would be okay if the student's parents agree to it, so she started looking for a Swedish student for us. We were excited when she found a young lady from Sweden who seemed very sweet. She put the word out about sharing a bedroom and we've been waiting to hear back on her parents' response. Today she heard back from the parents, and they said that Swedish people do NOT share bedrooms. Hmmmm. I hadn't heard that before. The father was also insistent about calling everyday and visiting several times during her stay. She would also not be allowed to attend church with us. That is a huge problem since my husband is a pastor! So the Swedish student is out of the picture. Our plan right now is to wait and see what the other family does. If they don't take the girl from Finland, we would be interested. Otherwise we were sent today a profile for a girl from Germany. She would stay only 1/2 a year. She seems very nice, too, and maybe a really good fit for us. Or maybe we won't host this year. I'm just waiting to see....
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I remember meeting Grace, what a sweetie. If it is meant to be, God will bring you the student this year who will be the best fit with your family. My good friend's sister spent a year in Sweden as an Exchange Student in 1987. I'll have to ask her about the bedroom sharing thing.
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