Oh, I'm so bad. A whole week- no blogs!

Let's see. Let me sum up the week in a few words.

Class. Phonetics. One sick girl. Waiting... waiting... waiting... boom- three sick girls...

That's the quick version.

This week in class we learned a little more about syllables, syllabics and stress in words. It is hard for our English tongues to learn to put stress on the second half of a word. Try saying, "sasa". You probably stressed the first syllable. Now stress the second half. There are many other combinations that could change the meaning of a word- stress on the first half, monotone. Stress on the second half, monotone. Stress on the second half, two tones- high, then low, etc... Many Asian countries have many tones in their languages. Thailand uses 5, Chinese Mandarin has six tones!

Yesterday we learned nasals. That was fun! M, n, "eng", "enye", and voiceless m, n, and "eng". At first I didn't think I had ever said a voiceless m. But then our teacher had us say, "M-hmm." That second m is voiceless, through your nose. Voiceless N is made the same way, except with your tongue on the back of the gum above your upper teeth (on your alveolar ridge). Basically you are breathing through your nose and doing your tongue like an m or n. "Eng" is made like the ng in sing.

Well, a busy day is ahead- it is the 40th anniversary of New Tribes Mission Canada Open House. There are all kinds of things going on today- exhibits, demonstrations, booths explaining how tribal missions work, etc. Dennis and I and the two older girls are heading up to live in Jungle Camp again for the day! Since our house was torn down we are going to be in our friends' place that was left up. Yesterday we went up there and got the clay stove going again. It was so fun to see smoke twirling up out of the stovepipe again! It looks to be a fun day! If any of you are in the area or have nothing to do today, come on by between 10am and 4pm. I think you would have a great time!

Here We Go Again

Today is the first day that we (now 2nd year) students are to be back, officially. Dennis will be working all day for Practical Training Course (PTC), which usually consists of construction work and maintenance on this beautiful campus. Usually this class is only in the afternoons, but for this entire week they will get full days out of these guys. Dennis generally likes PTC and the variety of what they do keeps it interesting.

I will be hanging around here with the girls. I'll have some extra laundry to do since Squeaky had another surprise episiode of throwing up last night when we were visiting with some friends. Things may be interesting for me today. It is eerily similar to the last time she was sick like that- right down to the same day of the week, similar occasion- visiting friends, same food eaten (bbq hamburgers, salad and watermelon) and the same high level of activity after eating. For those of you who are going to puzzle over this one, she has had each of those foods with no problem between the two episodes...

I was going to answer a couple of questions that I've been asked.

What are you doing in your training now? Our second year of classes here at New Tribes begins next Monday. Our first couple of weeks will be focusing on sounds and symbols of language. I think this will include sounds and symbols of language that are familiar to us as well as those that other language groups use that are unique to them or their region of the world. Yes, maybe in a few weeks I'll be able to make a 'click' in the back of my throat... :)

This second year of training focuses mainly on language and culture acquistion. Simply put, we will be taught the basics of how to learn any language and how to interpret and catalog information we glean about another culture. I'm excited about this year, but I know that it will include more homework and brain crunching than the first year.

Are you living in the same place as last year or do you have to move? We have the same lovely apartment that we had last year! :)

Where are you going to go when you're done training? We don't know yet. No one makes this decision for us, so we're still praying and asking the Lord for direction. There are a few countries that have topped our list of interest, but we are very open to considering anything. You can pray for us as we'd like to make this decision within the next 6 months or so. We are confident that God will give us wisdom as we ask for it!

And to finish off, here is a little "motion picture" for you to enjoy. Watch Winnie as you scroll down through the pictures. I was trying to get her to look at the camera.

Getting Back

It has been interesting getting back into the swing of things here. I feel like I missed a lot of class and lost some of our momentum that we had going into our Jungle Camp preparation time. Have I told you anything about Jungle Camp yet?

For four weeks in June and July, our class will be living out in the "jungle" (aka woods) in temporary houses that we will build out of plastic, wooden poles, duct tape and binder twine. The purpose of this particular part of our missionary training is to help us get a glimpse of what it is like to plan ahead for building, meals and life in a tribal setting.

We're really looking forward to this. For the past few months I've had different ideas for meals, building and life out in our bush flying around in my head. But with all the events of this past month it seems that most of those thoughts have gone bye-bye. It seems like all day I'm mentally jumping around trying to get my head together.

On my to-do list:

-have a birthday party for two little girls whose birthdays I missed

-make a final meal plan for Jungle Camp

-pressure can beef and chicken

-collect my scatterbrained thoughts! :)

This is a picture of us in front of the poles we will be using to build our home in Jungle Camp.

Mark Saturday and Sunday, July 5 and 6 on your calender if you'd like to come out and visit us in our Jungle Camp home!

A Big Change

I've been wanting to blog about this for awhile, but when I sit down to write about it my brain freezes up. Somehow it is easier to write about mundane, everyday activities than it is about the big things that are going on.

Things are beginning to fall into place for our big change. For me, our garage sale last weekend was the first tangible evidence of a process that has been going on in our hearts for quite some time. Last year Dennis was finishing up his master's degree at Heritage. For his final credits he chose a missions "Perspectives" course. His main desire was to get his degree finished up so we could stop doing all this travelling back and forth to classes and get on with our life here.

During Dennis' course it didn't take long for God to awaken a desire in him for foreign missions. In fact, during the second class they showed a DVD clip of an unreached people group responding to the hearing the Gospel for the first time. Dennis came home that night and said to me, "I don't know what we are still doing here. We need to go." It was very cool that God had prepared my heart for that moment. Many different times over the past year or so I had been thinking similar thoughts, so when Dennis came home that night I was ready. I told him that I had been waiting for him to say that.

That's how it all got started. Much prayer and discussion ensued. After that we both knew that we would be disobeying God if we did nothing about this conviction. We have made our decision to leave KLBC this August (yes, in about 2 months) and move to a little town called Durham to train with New Tribes Mission Canada for two years. After the training is over our desire is to go with NTMC to a remote people group and learn their language and culture. NTMC places a huge emphasis on relationships- friendship, helping with village projects, assisting with medical needs and generally demonstrating God's love for tribal people day to day. The ultimate goal is to know the language and culture well enough to share the Gospel with them, disciple and train new believers, plant a culturally relevant and thriving church, and equip the church to reach their neighboring villages and tribes.

Obviously a decision like this has not been made without a lot of prayer and consultation with others. I've really been noticing that every Scripture I read, every sermon I hear, many of the books that I read and even comments that are made seem to be all pointing in the same direction- GO.

We are really excited and also a little scared about this change and all the possibilities in the future. I'm sure I'll be posting much more about this as time goes on. Please pray for us!

P.S. A challenging read is "Don't Waste Your Life" by John Piper. Watch out!