In Earthen Vessels

Well, we survived the visit to the consulate.  Overall, we feel pretty positive about how things went.

It turned out a little differently than we expected.  First, we didn’t sit down at an “interview” like we expected.  You know, us on one side of the desk, very important French person on the other side.  Actually, the setup was more like a doctor’s office waiting room.   All we did was hand the lady on the other side of the glass all of the paperwork that we brought with us and she spread it all out on her desk (into 4 piles), highlighted what I guess was the important sections,  and stamped everything.  She was very pleasant (and maybe a little surprised that we had everything necessary, minus an itinerary- which I can fax to her today,  + all  the copies).  She told us that we should know within a month or so as to what the answer will be.  That’s sooner than we expected. 

Thanks for all your prayers.  It was a great comfort to know that so many people are praying with us in this crazy process as we went into the office.

We’ll let you know when we hear from them.

Filed under: News on May 7th, 2008 | No Comments »

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to give a quick update on our support to let everyone know that we’ve reached 100% committment level in both monthly and outgoing/one-time expenses.  Praise the Lord!

It’s hard to believe after all these years of thinking about going to Africa that this has happened.  God certainly is good to us.  Now, the only thing “holding us back” (if you can even look at it that way) is our request for visas from the French government.  I’m thankful that it’s in God’s hands and that He will use the visa application process to lead us in the next step.

Our appointments are for Monday and Tuesday (May 5th & 6th) and we’re uncertain about the whole process…if we have exactly what they want as far as paperwork, etc.  We’re not even sure if we’re supposed to appear as a family or as individuals!  So, I made appointments for each of us individually, but we’re going to all go up there on Monday and hope that they’ll see us as a family. 

We’d appreciate your continued prayers.  I don’t want to be presumptious, but it seems like the Lord is moving things along in providing all we need to leave, so, what is a visa to the One who controls all of the governments of the world?

PS- For those of you new to this process of international travel, when we say “visa,” we do not mean a credit card.  A visa is an official stamp in a passport allowing the individual to travel into or through the country of the government that issued it.  Basically, it’s permission to be there.

Filed under: News on May 3rd, 2008 | No Comments »

What kind of power would someone have if they could control oil?  Let’s take you for example. And let’s say that one day you realized you had the power to make oil appear out of nowhere.  Or, maybe you realized you could take oil from one place and make it appear in another.  What might be coming to your mind is an old TV show called the Beverly Hillbillies.  As the story goes, the “Hillbillies” were living the poor life until one day Father Jed when out for a hunt.  Shooting at what I think was a rabbit, he missed and instead hit the ground.  The bullet struck the ground and up came a fountain of oil.  Life changed forever from that point on for Jed and his family. 

So back to the question, what kind of power would you have if you could control oil?  Well, one’s mind could go in a ton of different direction.  I think it is safe to say that if any one person gained that kind of ability they would instantly become one of the most, if not the most, powerful person in the world.Now take this idea and relate it to biblical times.  It does not matter…Old Testament or New.  The one thing that would have to change is the oil.  I would venture to say oil’s equivalent in Bible times would have been water.  One can only imagine how much more powerful kingdoms like the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians would have been had one of their kings had the power to control water. Now, with those thoughts, consider a passage like Psalm 104:5-12:

“ ⁵ He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. ⁶ You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. ⁷ At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. ⁸ The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. ⁹ You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth. ¹⁰ You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills; ¹¹ they give drink to every beast of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. ¹² Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell; they sing among the branches.”

What an amazing thought it must have been for David to think of God as the one who controls all the water of the world!  He saw that it is in God’s hand to be able to cause rain to fall in one place and not in another.  It might strike us more if we think about the oil illustration again.  When God made the world He put all the oil reserves right where He wanted them to be.  He opens up His hand and all the cars and machines of the world are satisfied with the oil He provides, and if God wanted to He could move all the oil in the world into one place.  He could even make all the oil in the world dry up or just disappear. 

I know at this point you are thinking, “okay that is nice, but who cares?”  Well, in a day and time when we spend so much time watching the price at the gas pump and when we hear over and over from politicians that we need to become less dependent on foreign oil, I think is important to remember who controls all the oil in this world.  The oil reserve of this world do not belong Islam, Terrorism, Hugo Chavaz, or the Middle East.  While the before mentioned list has and does greatly profit from oil, and while it is a worthwhile question for our political leaders to address, we must never think that God is up in heaven asking the same questions that we do.  He is not wondering how so many Muslim countries gained control of so much of the world’s oil and how He is going to turn things around.  No, the truth is that just like water in David’s time, God has a firm control over all the oil in this world, so do not fear man.  Don’t worry with the rest of the world about what will happen with gas prices and politics because of oil.  Instead, spend that time the world wastes in worrying with fearing, worshiping, and obeying our great God who speaks and water, oil, and all of creation obeys.

Filed under: Thoughts... on March 26th, 2008 | No Comments »

While we’ve been here, we’ve had a phonetics lesson everyday.  Now, when you think about phonetics, maybe you think, “Oh, phonetics…I’ve done that before!” You know, i before e except after c’, short/long vowel sounds, etc.  Well, check this out:

 Do you know what a voiced alveolar stop and a voiceless interdental fricative are?  Well, I do.  It’s the sound for our letter d and one of the sounds our th makes.

We’ve gone through an extensive list of these classifications of sounds and are discovering many along the way that we don’t use in the English language.  Why?  Well, it’s helping us become aware of the ways that our mouths make these individual sounds using the tongue, teeth, and placement in the particular areas of the mouth. 

 It’s crazy… and facinating…to think that God designed our mouth to make such a variety of sounds.  Something like 700 different sounds have been classified!  Can you imagine that?!  The problem with learning another language is that each language only uses something like 40 of those sounds, so we grow accustomed to the particular sounds in our language and dig a rut, so to speak.  Now, we must train our ears and mouths to hear and be able to produce those sounds that are new to us.  Also, when we think about “accents,” being able to produce these sounds is what will help us lose our American accent.

So, we’ve been practicing everyday to make some of these unusual sounds.   To the outside observer unaware of what we are doing, walking into the classroom during this part of the lecture would make you think we’re crazy, muttering nonsense speech.  What we actually do is learn about the sounds and then practice it over and over again (doing drills), working to make our mouths make these strange noises. 

Today we had the chance to pay special attention to some of the sounds particular to the languages we will be learning.  First, in French there’s the voiceless and voiced uvular trill and a few nasal sounds.  Not the easiest, but very doable.  Now, when we sat down with our phonetics instructor to talk about Wolof and he looked at the sound chart (list of sounds particular to that language), he said, “Oh, my.  I’ve never seen some of these sounds.”  He was pretty amazed and fascinated with Wolof.  Now, this is a guy who has been amazing us every day for the past week and a half with the sounds he can make with his mouth!  Not too encouraging.

That’s that on phonetics.  Hope it’s not too confusing and makes a little sense to you.

Filed under: Senegal on March 26th, 2008 | No Comments »

For those who are interested, the school we’re planning on attending is called CEF and it’s located in Albertville, France. If you’d like to check out the website, it’s www.cef-france.org .
There’s a place on the page to switch then language to English.

Some things we’re wrestling with right now:

As things look now, we’ll be putting Malachi in childcare for several hours a day for four days a week. I don’t like that prospect very much and am hoping that the school will work with us some on the design of the program. We know that there will be sacrifices to be made, but exactly what that looks like, we’re not sure. What we’re learning here at CIT (Center for Intercultural Training) in NC is very useful in this aspect. We will walk away with a language learning plan, individualized to each of us. This means that we’ll have tools, activities, and other ideas for ways to make language learning work for us and be able to do it on our own (in a sense). It involves the use of a language helper, which is basically a language tutor. We both like this idea- more individualized learning, in a “safe place” (with an individual who can help us learn according to our learning styles). So, please pray with us about these things.

Also, CEF has both on-campus and off-campus housing. We’d love to live off campus and have the opportunity to be in the community more and to be forced, in a sense, to learn French. I think that would especially be helpful for me, since I’m more of an introvert. I think Eric will try to talk to people wherever we are.

Albertville does seem like a really neat place to live (minus the cold weather). Who can complain about living in Europe for a year? It’s not for everyone, I know, but we’re pretty excited about it. I think there’s a link on CEF’s website to the tourism office if you’re interested in checking it out.

Filed under: News on March 22nd, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Children do.  I’m speaking in reference to learning a language, of course.  What does this mean for me?  It means Hannah & Malachi will kick my tale in both French and Wolof.  On the other side, though, I am thankful for these 2 precious blonde heads.  They are gifts to me in many ways, one being that those two cuties are going to be a big help to this introvert in meeting people.  Can’t you just imagine those two blonde heads bobbing up and down the streets of Dakar?

But back to children and learning.  How is it that we learn language?  Think about it.  What do you do first (as a child)?  Do you memorize vocabulary and copy it over and again?  Do you repeat drills orally?  Do you learn to read and write?  No, what you do is listen.  For 6, 9, 12 months or so you listen to what’s going on around you and it’s only after listening that you attempt mimicing those sounds.  Learning a language seems to be quite unlike any other subject you might study.  For us, that means learning to be better listeners and being willing to stretch ourselves in how we approach learning French.

So, part of what we’re doing here is reprogramming the way we look at language learning and looking for a more natural way to do things. 

Also, keeping with the child thing, what are some characteristics that make children good language learners?  Here are a few we’ve listed:

uninhibited

fearless

dependent

teachable

playful (shouldn’t learning be fun, if at all possible?)

willing to take risks

curious

There are many others I could list, but just to get you thinking.  This idea of childlikeness has implications in other areas of our lives too, doesn’t it?  I can think of other areas of my life where I should be more like a  child than an I-can-do-it-myself adult.  You too?

Filed under: Senegal on March 19th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Just to explain what we’re doing:

WE’RE NOT LEARNING FRENCH.  It would be nice to do that in a 10 day span, but no such luck.  We will however learn some specific things about the French language that will help us immensely when in language school.  For example, there are something like 700 individual sounds that can be made by a human being.  Every language use an estimated 40 or so sounds, so mastering those sounds is key to authentic pronunciation.  French is not too far off from the English language, but there are a few specific sounds that are used in French which we will be made aware of and also be taught ways to practice making those sounds.  It sounds simple, but it’s really quite difficult.

We’re also learning about how we learn individually.  For example, Eric is an energetic learner (surprise, huh?) and I’m a meaning-oriented learner.  Basically, this affects the type of activities that we should do to maximize our learning potential and also reveals the struggles we’ll have in language learning (and what to do to counter that).  To really make the most of this information we’ll basically have to be very pro-active and take control of our learning because the language school may or may not take this into consideration.  It will certainly mean an out of class committment to language learning.

We’ve also been talking about “language helpers.”  How to find them, what makes a good language helper, what you have them do with you- these are all issues we’ve been grappling with for the past couple of days.

More to come…

Filed under: Senegal on March 19th, 2008 | No Comments »

I’m sure you can say the same thing about your life.  I recently finished a biography of Amy Carmichael (missionary to India) and she is quoted as saying something like, “the life of a missionary is one of constant inconvenience.”  Well, that was good for me to hear, but it’s really true of anyone who chooses to have meaningful relationships with people.  Loving people involves risk (and inconvenience) because we are messy and sinful and trapped in these mortal bodies.  I guess you could live a life of solitude, marooned on a self-imposed island, but what fun would that be?  As many inconveniences and troubles there are, I find as many (or more) blessings and irreplaceable moments abound.

 So, I’m having one of those “it’s always something” kind-of weeks.  The trip here to CIT (Center for Intercultural Training) was really easy and uneventful…quite a feat for 2 toddlers stuck in a van for 4 hours (I know…that’s not much compared to driving to Texas, but bear with me).  Monday, Eric went to play basketball with some of the guys here and pulled that muscle in your very lower back, the one that stablizes almost everything.  Walking, sitting, standing…just about everything is excruciating.  He’s bearing with it, though, and trying to get as much out of class as possible.  Hopefully, everyday will get easier.

Then, today (Wednesday) Malachi threw up in his class.  I’m talking a lot.  I didn’t know his stomach could hold that much.  So, got him cleaned up & he sat with me in class for a while and I could tell he was pretty exhausted, so I put him down for a nap.  He slept well, for about two hours, but he woke up screaming and I opened the door to be welcomed by that not-so-pleasant smell of the contents of this stomach.  So, another outfit change, wash the bed stuff, etc.  Now he’s napping again…hopefully he won’t wake up the same way.

So, it’s always something.  But, isn’t that just the nature of life?

Filed under: News on March 19th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

We’ve been pulling apart the “cultural onion” for the past week or so.   This is a metaphor we’ve been using to describe the various parts (mostly invisible) of a culture that make it unique.  It includes many different things we’re familiar with, but we’re attempting to look at them and determine how they will effect the communication of the gospel message in that particular culture.   I’m not intending this to be an exhaustive explaination of the process, but just to give you a taste of what we’re learning.  We’d be glad to sit down and talk with you about it when we get back home (oh, how we miss sweet tea!).

 The layers of the cultural onion:

1.  Behavior- The most obvious and only observable part of a culture.  The behavioral layer of a culture we could observe using the 12 signal systems (which I briefly explained in another posting).

2.  Authority- Ideologies (formal ideological ideologies like the US Constitution, the Koran, Creeds, etc) and Social Structures, both compulsory (government) and voluntary (social networks, clubs, organizations) and the Interpersonal Network (kinship, family & peer relationships- those who really have the most influence on an individual). 

3.  Experience- History (from their perspective-   What has happened to them?  What have they done to others?  What do they think of their own history?); Environmental- (Where do they live and how does that shape the experience of everyday life?); Personal (events that have an impresson on someone- good or bad; these things help shape personality)

4.  Core- These are the values that are most dear to a culture.  It is at this level that change must take place, or it will not be lasting change.  I’ll write more about this another time, as we haven’t discussed core yet!  What I do know is that is most important.

Filed under: Senegal on January 17th, 2008 | No Comments »

Several of you have asked about our address here.  It’s:

Worldview Center 

6012 SE Yamhill

Portland, OR 97215

Our cells work fine out here, but we are in class quite a bit and there’s the 3 hour time difference, so if you decide to call, just keep that in mind (we may have to return your call).

Filed under: News on January 10th, 2008 | No Comments »