Rising excitment

Our Translation workshop is around the corner. It seems surreal. For years we have prepared to get here. It took many more years for us to find a team and move to Kovol. We took some more years to learn the Kovol language — often wondering if we will get there. This summer we pushed extremely hard to study the language. I asked God many times to give us this language, but that His will might be done as He has the big picture. And God in His mercy let us pass the test in August. PTL!! We still have so much to learn about culture and language which will help us teach the gospel more clearly. But the focus has shifted. Philip is now pushing hard to finish his Discourse Analysis papers before the Translation workshop.

People normally come every day. Recently we have seen people for medical reasons almost every day, even though we have a designated medical day. People like to buy soap or worm medicine. Or like today, people hiked 2 hours to just come and visit with us. And sometimes they just come to share some of their produce. They are sooo generous. We have been getting many cucumbers recently, as well as papayas and even some lychees. It is really humbling to see how much they share. Once I got 19 cucumbers at once! And another day my friend Ningeram carried 5!! papayas over to all of us. That stuff is HEAVY! Our papayas are huge!

I love to hang out outside, but I am also limited with my time as I have to help with school and watch the twins. There is also the cooking and house work to do. But my focus is also to free Philip up so he can get focused time on his papers. Our language group isn’t that big, but people love to come and hang out, which I think is awesome! Such a gift. They are waiting to hear. They know the time is coming very close for the first ones to learn to read and to write. It is coming close for us to start translating God’s word. But if you have papers to write and need focused time, it isn’t easy with many Kovol visitors around.  On the other hand, with coworkers on the ground, we can take turns to visit but right now we are on our own.  So we push hard again, even in the evenings. But it is a marathon. We can do that for a while, but then we need a breather.

We have marked 2 guys who will join us in our translation workshop. They will be trained in the translation work. Some respected men from our area are planning to sit down with them and tell them how to do things right, or give them some type of a pep talk. Not that they know what all is going to happen. Our dear friend K. really wants to come to the workshop as well. Well, everyone likes to be chosen I would think. But K. is a big leader. We think he just wants to make sure everything goes well. Just as when we had a kidsclub game time on a Saturday, you saw him running around, trying to help and make the kids “obey” and behave. He will have to stay back with all the others.

The excitement is rising in our people group. People are waiting as they know we have reached the mark of the required language stage and we will move on to teaching them. They have invested hard sweat and time in teaching us.  Payback time they think.

We will switch roles. We will teach and they will be the students. And they can’t wait for that to happen.

As I write this, I am thinking, how about us? Is our excitement rising? No, I am not talking about Christmas, but is our excitement rising about meeting Jesus in the air soon?  He rose from the dead as the first one. We are guaranteed that we, his children, are next…