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 have been here for a full year now. And while many of you have enjoyed the first big snow, we are full in the rainy season. Well you have rain as well throughout the year, and so do we. So what does it mean to be in the rainy season?
Yesterday I was able to join some ladies on a trip to their garden while Lisi my friend and visitor was watching our kids (Philip helped too). I ran down with some young girls and kids the huge mountain. That was fun. On the way down, I learnt lots of ways to say ‘run’ =) This was sooo much faster than the other times when we were dragging/ carrying down our kids with us.
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.
December update for the Stanley family
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.