Graduation

Wahoo, we graduated!  I now have a year of linguistics skills under my belt for ministry in Vanuatu.  I pray it is to the Lord's glory and the good of a people group in Vanuatu!  Please pray for the students from this year that God would enable us to use what we have learned to honor Him and that people would come to know Him as a result.

Last class of the year

Thank you to all of you who prayed for stamina for us to finish out the year well.  We finished all of our Semester 2 classes up the 2nd week of November and then had just one class for the last week of school before graduation.  It was a great change of pace in that we were in a different area than the regular classroom, were able to spend most of our class time working on the assignment, and we had group presentations outside at a beautiful venue a bit of a drive away from the school.  The class was program planning/program design management so it was useful for our team to work together to plan out how we see things fitting into where we see God leading us in the next few years.

Semester 2 language work

Rather than learn another language our last semester of school (like we did with the Tanna, Vanuatu language in Summer school), we learned how to document a language.  This is useful for especially endangered languages or just for getting a lot of language data that can be used by people from all disciplines.  I did language documentation with Farsi and my partner Elyse and I had a lovely Iranian language helper.  We went to her house one day to enjoy some Iranian food and had some very interesting food and got to meet her son and a friend.  The main dish was delicious and the sides yummy.  In desserts they use a lot of rosewater so I think that may be an acquired taste.  Here's some pics of our tasty treats!  Our langauge helper is off to Iran now for a visit but hopefully she'll keep working with Equip students in future years if we didn't scare her off too badly.  :)

One Story

An opportunity presented itself on campus to attend a workshop called One Story (http://www.onestory.org/). The workshop was for a full weekend and was hands-on, super practical, and interesting. We learned how to tell a Bible story in an engaging, interesting way that can be remembered for the listeners to then be able to retell the story to their friends and family. We also learned how to lead a Bible study with Bible storytelling techniques. During the weekend we worked with partners to learn two stories. At the end of the weekend, we told our stories to an audience on campus. It was so fun to see how everyone in the course (including my teammate Tania and her daughter, Grace), grew over the course of just a weekend in confidence, in ability to learn in an oral way, and in storytelling skill. I hope to continue to practice what we learned and especially make use of it in the oral culture in Vanuatu.

Class, mice, and other random things

Five weeks of 1st semester flew by and we are now on our Easter/Fall break for two weeks. I was ready for a break but timing won't feel so nice when we start back and have 10 straight weeks until the end of the semester. Ah well. So far I've only gotten pictures in Grammar class but here are some fun examples of the kinds of crazy things we do in grammar: treeing out the order and structure and grammatical relations of various languages. Somehow I made it through elementary, junior high, high school, and college and never once learned any sort of grammar so this is all new to me. Those of you who diagrammed sentences growing up will recognize this but note that we are learning how to do this for languages whose word order is completely different from English. It's kinda fun really. :)

Just before break we celebrated Jesiah and Addy's birthdays. Jesiah was 4 just before Christmas, but we were so busy packing to come to Australia that we didn't really celebrate. One day a few weeks ago Gretchen said she was tired of something. Jesiah sighed and said "well I'm tired of not having a birthday." Whoops, that was a good reminder to have it! You don't always expect a 4 year old to remember those sorts of things! Addy had her 1st birthday the end of March so the baby is turning into a toddler, wow!

For the final bit of randomness here, I have to tell about our mouse friends. We've caught two and seen evidence of others. They are super cute little buggers but definitely make it hard to keep pasta, cereal, and crackers on hand... I'm realizing new things about how I'll have to keep my dry goods in Vanuatu. Multiple ziplock bags just don't do the trick.

The most significant thing about our break is that my parents are here to visit though, yay! Check out my other post for pictures from them being here. They've helped out a ton in babysitting and we've loved being able to hang out. If anyone else wants to come check out Australia, we'd love to have you come!! :)

Thank you!!!

Fire

Keep praying for rain for Victoria state here in Australia (where I live). There has been a drought here for many years but this year they've only gotten 2 mm of water TOTAL so far. If you've seen any of my pictures of this area, you've seen how brown and dry everything is. Fires continue to blaze all around us and more than 5,000 have lost homes in this area, some towns have burnt, and several hundred have died. We've had numerous fire ban days here and tomorrow is another. All public schools have been closed for tomorrow so that should evacuations need to occur, parents won't have to be in mad panics to get kids out of school. We have evacuation plans and are to have bags packed to leave at any time. Right now the closest fire to us is 30km away but new fires are starting every day. Please pray for the protection of Australia and it's bushland, for protection of the Equip campus, and for rain to wash this land! Here's a website showing all the fires here and updates. We are just NE of Melbourne, near where N Warrendyte if you zoom in one time in the Melbourne area. http://www.google.com.au/landing/victorianbushfires/ You can get other bushfire news at:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/indepth/0,,5018723,00.html

Beatbox and didgeridoo

Check out Joel putting his phonetics to practice in vitally important, everyday applications! Or really, it's just fun. :) First one is beatboxing and 2nd is human didgeridoo. To compare, the last video is an actual didgeridoo, an Australian Aboriginal instrument, played by John and accompanied by Paul.

So, what about life in Australia?

Yeah, I'm slowly unburying myself after 6 weeks of insanity. Some super fun things have happened during the craziness that I made a video of. Don't get the wrong idea that I've been just playing though! :) Many of my pictures are sadly altered here because quite a few of my new missionary friends work in sensitive countries. They can't have their pictures floating online in connection with Christianity or missions so I had to block their faces out. Just know they are lovely, lovely people and I wish I could share them with you but when you notice their missing faces, pray for them and the ministry the Lord has called them to! The music you'll hear is songs from Australia Bush dances, which I thought fitting considering our location and also the fact that I have ton of pics from a Bush dance we had! Enjoy!

Masta Ki

Language Learning class had lecture components as well as practical classes 3 days a week with an LRP (Language Resource Person). All the Summer School students were split up into groups of 4 students each to learn and immediately apply language learning techniques and skills. All of our team was able to learn from Pastor Peter. Peter is a pastor on Tanna island in Vanuatu in the WhiteSands language area. He is also the head of the VBT (Vanuatu Bible Translators) and we met with him in some SIL meetings before we came to Australia. It was great to be able to get to know him better over these 6 weeks as well as learn some very very basics from his language group. Hopefully learning some things like pronoun systems (where there are pronouns for dual like us 2 and you 2 and they 2 as well as trial like us 3 and you 3 and they 3 before you even get to plural like we, you, and they) will help us when we start learning a tribal language in Vanuatu wherever the Lord leads us. Peter wrote a song called Masta Ki about Jesus being the master key, the only true Christ so we sang it for a song night at Equip.

Videos of class

For summer school we had 4 classes,which were Language Learning, Phonetics, Language Awareness/Intro to Linguistics (Grammar), and Anthropology. Phonetics class had lots of crazy fun things that went with it to make it interesting, aside from the fact that we were learning weird things like how to make funny sounds with our mouths. Here are some videos from class and practice sessions.

Intonation and reading this story out loud makes it fairly understandable. Isn't English a beautiful thing! :) See if you can figure out the story. Cathy read it in class our last day:

This was the story of "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut." If you thought that was horrible, better not visit this site for more: http://members.tripod.com/~RBHcognitions/anguish/anguish.htm

And a silly video about "Everyday IPA" or the International Phonetic Alphabet that we learned for transcribing sounds in languages we learn is last:

Surprisingly for me, Grammar was my 2nd favorite class. It was nice to have it be something measurable and achievable. The teachers were great about presenting the material in a way that was down-to-earth, practical, and even hands-on with lots of practice. Here are a few things we did in the class. The first is specifically formulas for phrases and the 2nd is a morphology exercise. All of this will be hugely useful for learning a language in Vanuatu and determining the language structure and functions.

January Newsletter

January newsletter - click to enlarge.

Yes, we did make it!

Team Vanuatu is now in Australia! Thanks for your prayers for our safe travel and adjustment. Wow, is this an obnoxious photo book or what?! :) Sorry about the crazy swirls. No music this time so don't be alarmed if it plays quietly. I'm working on my newsletter now so watch for that in the next day or two.

Make a Smilebox photobook

December newsletter

Click on the image to enlarge.

September Newsletter

July 08 newsletter

Click on the image to enlarge it.

So...when am I leaving and what about Australia??

I've talked to many of you and hinted around since Gretch and I went to a conference with Wycliffe in Portland in January about Bible translation training in Australia. Here is the down-low on all of that now that our team has gotten an answer back about our applications. As of February, our entire Vanuatu Bush Team has been accepted to be trained by Wycliffe/SIL at their school in Australia, called Equip (http://www.equip.edu.au/). We have been awaiting this acceptance to determine our timeline more adequately for heading out for Vanuatu. Our tentative timeline at this point now is the following:

Aug. - Dec. 08 Port Vila, Vanuatu

What we'll be doing: learning language and culture, building relationships and contacts with Ni-Vanuatu people and others living in the capital city. The Richards and I will fly out from LA on August 3, Lord-willing and have tentative housing with SIL for a few weeks. The rest of our team will join us a week or 2 into September. They don't have living visas like us so can only be in-country up to 4 months.

Jan. - Nov. 09 Kangaroo Ground, Australia - near Melbourne on the southeast coast, 4 hour flight from Port Vila

What we'll be doing: being trained as Bible translators, linguists, and literacy specialists

From this point, we may return to Vila for a few months then return to the US or come straight back to the States for a short time. When we return to the States, we'll pack up our containers with all our long-term supplies (transportation, solar panels, generator, office and ministry supplies, as well as all remaining living needs such a furnishings, clothes, etc.). We will also reconnect with supporting churches briefly to update supporters. Then we will ship our container out and move to Vanuatu long-term. We will most likely still go back to the capital city, Port Vila, for another year or so to continue language and culture acquisition and acclimatize ourselves, as well as t0 finish survey work to determine which people group in the bush we will be working with. When we have an invitation in to a bush village, we will seek the Lord's guidance and ask for prayer and input from Homefront Team Vanuatu to make the final decision about which tribal group to begin the ministry of church planting and Bible translation with. Following that decision, we will make the slow and gradual move into the tribe.

Why is the translation training so long? Well, Bible translation isn't something one can just "wing." It is a huge work to translate in a culturally accurate way that is true to the original Greek and Hebrew meanings. Following is the listing of our classes at Equip. We will split off and focus in different areas (as a team, taking different tracks) so I'm not sure if I'll focus on translation or literacy, but I will be taking the graduate diploma program. This list includes electives:

Phonetics (Summer School) ,Language Learning (Summer Sch.), Language Awareness (Summer Sch.), Anthropology (Summer School)
Ethnography, Introduction to Phonology, Introduction to Grammar, Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Field Methods for Linguistic Data Collection, Field Methods for Literacy, Phonological Analysis, Grammatical Analysis, Training Across Cultures, Language Programme Design & Management, Word Processing for Linguistic Papers, Introduction to Literacy, Semantics, Translation of Sacred Texts, Literacy Education, Literacy Materials, Community Based Orthography Design, Field Methods for Research, Research Project, Seminar Topics, Special Topic 1, Special Topic 2

Please pray for the Lord's continued provision, not only for my monthly support, but also for monthly prayer partners. This program costs about $6,400 in tuition, books and fees so as people give one-time gifts, I am asking that anyone led to do so give toward my "lifelong learning" project, which is a tax-free and administrative fee-free account I can use directly to pay my tuition toward this training. Please also pray for wisdom for the moms on the team about how much of this training to take as we are told it is very intensive and will leave us very little free time. If you have any questions, please contact me! I'm very excited about this opportunity and have great interest in literacy and translation work so it will be awesome to be able to not only see a reproducible, sustainable tribal church planted to the praise of His glory, but to also be able to give the tribal people (who don't currently have written language) a Bible in their own heart language along with the new ability to read it. Praise God for the opportunity!