Thanksgiving:
-Thankful for clean water to drink (and hot showers); neither should be taken for granted here.
-Thankful for creativity.
-Thankful for electricity when it is on, and for romantic candles and lanterns when it is not.
-Thankful for Internet to be able to communicate across the world.
-Thankful for laughter (even if it is at ourselves).
-Thankful for music.
-Thankful for Nicoline who helps take care our of us and our household.
-Thankful for our family who supports us from afar.
-Thankful for our financial partners.
-Thankful for our health as there are many illnesses and health concerns going around.
-Thankful for our prayer partners.
-Thankful for partnership between denominations to translate the Bible.
-Thankful for Sabbaths, both Sunday and the few hours Matthew takes on Thursdays.
-Thankful for safety for us, Cameroonian and expatriate colleagues across the country.
-Thankful for Teresa’s students and their excitement to learn.
-Thankful for the availability of a healthy variety of foods.
-Thankful for the kind souls that donated supplies for Teresa’s classroom.
-Thankful for the temporary use of a vehicle.
-Thankful that our church makes us feel welcome.
-Thankful that our home here is cozy and familiar.
-Thankful that Teresa has been able to return to running with a group of women.
-Thankful that Teresa is just as excited about her new life and work here as Matthew is about his.
-Thankful that we are able to take time from our busy routines to nurture our marital relationship.
-Thankful that we can help some of those in need.
-Thankful that we have found our stride here.
-Thankful that we have the Bible in our language (in hundreds of versions).
-Thankful that Yahweh is revealing himself in new ways through our Bible study and reading.
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It is great to work together as one Body of Christ! I was asked to travel the week of December 14th to help Lutheran Bible Translators with one of their Bible translation projects. The language group involved in the training already has a New Testament, and a new generation of translators is now assembled to translate verses for the church lectionary, the book of Bible verses chosen for each week's services. Though most of the work laid before them consists of translating and revising, the team had been discouraged by the daunting task of pulling all these readings together into the three books of a formatted lectionary. Working with the consultant and a new version of ParaTExt, We were able to build a dynamic template that not only allows the team to see and be encouraged by their current progress but will take the guesswork, headache and repetition out of creating well-formatted books.
You can't catch me! The first semester of the school year has flown by and come to an end. During the last two weeks the families from the village returned, and the size of my class doubled with enthusiastic little ones. They enjoyed reading and learning about gingerbread men and Christmas. The students practiced their reading and number skills as well as learned about maps, coins, and plants. Alongside teaching in the classroom, I was asked to use my life-guarding skills and teach swim lessons to some of the older kids. Though there were challenges finding a suitable pool (even the pool they chose faded daily between clear blue, grape-juice purple, and a murky green), the students were able to practice front crawl and back crawl strokes and learn whip-kick, dolphin-kick, and diving.
