SteveStanley

I think we’re pretty well all settled down now from our move across the globe. It always takes some time to build up a daily routine and a bit of momentum after a big move. The normal mix of emotions of missing friends from PNG, excitement at all the new and shiny and surprise at the changes at home are all there; but the surprise of course is the biggest one this time round!

Last time we introduced the concept of phonemics, that is going from an outsiders perspective of a language (‘etic’) to an insider’s perspective (’emic’). We need to turn our phonetic text (words written exactly as pronounced) into phonemic text (words written in a way intuitive to an native speaker).

We are very thankful to be back in the UK after a long, and uneventful journey. Despite our best intentions to sleep long deep sleeps we’re still up at 4 am and crashing in the afternoon, but that will come with time. Thanks to everyone who was praying for us, thinking of us and practically supporting us.

This will be the first of 4 blog posts (unless of course I enjoy myself so much I keep talking) detailing the process of choosing an alphabet for a language that doesn’t have one yet.

It feels like problem after problem. International travel while pregnant, with a toddler is challenging at the best of times, it feels like we’re attempting to travel at the worst of times.

Our daily battle is to bring glory to God by trusting him. Despite the fact that we’ve seen God provide time after time we find that new problems come and fill the foreground of our vision. Only a week and a half ago we were in Kovol praying for a gap in the clouds so the helicopter could get us out to the clinic.
Funny that experiencing God’s providence time and time again doesn’t seem to help for the next challenge!

We live with the knowledge that in living in such a remote location we don’t have quick access to health care in an emergency. It’s a weight we always carry while in Kovol which we don’t feel most of the time. Occasionally we’ll think of it after a near-miss with a knife, when we look at the thick bank of clouds around us and realise there’s no way a helicopter can get in if we needed one and we need to trust the Lord through those fears.
What an immense challenge it was to work through the fear of thinking we might be losing our twins, we only found out a week and a half ago we were having 2.

How quickly things can change. The news we’re having twins has caused quite a jarring shift in gears. This break was supposed to be us catching our breath before a final month’s language learning push before a language check followed by returning to the UK at the end of January.

What a total shock, but also delight! While out on break (which is refreshing and very much appreciated) we had a 20 week ultrasound. While the Doctor is taking measurements he blurts out “hang on, is there another one?” Sure enough there was and we’re now very much looking forward to being the parents of twin girls.