Juggling Details

Well, the upstairs of the house is sort of in a livable state now. It feels great to have our own office space to work on our computers, organize details, and even have access to files that have been long hidden away in storage (and some of which are now being long hidden away in recycling!). We're continuing to work on making the basement a place where friends and family can come and stay and have a guest room. Our coworker, Holly, will be joining us July 1 so we'd very much like to have the basement in a less bombed condition by then. Pray that we find people who can help us with electrical and heating work for a reasonable rate.

Before then, however, we have quite a few things we're juggling...

We're planning for the upcoming survey, the field work of which will probably happen in early June. We'll probably try to cover a couple of smaller islands in this trip since it will just be the two of us and we'll have a short time before Holly joins us and we head to the Dominican Republic and possibly Haiti in the same trip in August.

Wrapping up the Spanish translation of the Guatemala report to get back to our friends in Guatemala, and hoping that the English version of the report will be posted on SIL's Electronic Survey Report site soon - we'll let you know and then you can read it in your spare time :).

Pulling together the Peru report still, adding in various testing experiences and what worked and didn't, editing the prose sections on the questionnaires and participant observation, and hoping to get the program for analyzing the wordlists that we need to move forward with that part of our survey data by the end of July.

Wrapping up our time with the consultant we've been working with in Fort Collins who has found a permanent full time position in Wyoming - we're really glad to see how God provided for him and his family, although that means a bit more of a shuffle for us as we work out the details of how best to communicate with our supervisor on a weekly basis through reports and video conference calls (he's in Bogota and yet we can have live face to face communication! Ah, technology!).

Planning various trips for speaking at churches about our work with Wycliffe, wedding celebrations, visiting UND in July to "recruit" people for sign language survey in the Americas, and hopefully seeing family and friends along the way.

Between house remodeling, SIL work, and daily life stuff like cooking meals, cleaning bathrooms, and emails, and emails, it's sometimes very tempting to succumb to the feeling of being overwhelmed. But we're still fighting it and choosing to trust that God's in the details as well as the big things as we juggle them all.

A few things we're really thankful for today are:
1. Finding a small group just a little over a mile away from our house to connect with, share our hearts with, discuss the Word with, and play games with every Friday evening we're in town.
2. Finding a Deaf small group within a half hour drive that has been very welcoming and allows us to not only connect with the local deaf community but also to continue using ASL on a weekly basis.
3. A fantastic church that teaches the Word (we're going through the Song of Solomon right now!) in real words and in real ways and has a worship style that we can really connect with. We eagerly look forward to going every week!
4. Friendly neighbors - we live in a heavily Hispanic populated area of town, which we love as we hear Spanish being spoken to the left and to the right. Many neighbors in the area have stopped by as we've been working outside and welcomed us and they really watch out for each other. Pray for us to be a good light to them and for continued relationship building.

Pray for us as we:
1. Look for financially wise ways to continue to remodel this house, especially in regard to heating, electric, and plumbing.
2. Try to keep information about each country straight in our heads as we work at finalizing Guatemala reports, editing Peru reports, and starting the next survey. Pray that the information will bring liberation and freedom to the hearts and minds of the thousands of deaf people they could affect and that we'll find the places to publish or send the reports so that this can and will happen.
3. Look for more people to join our team. In God all things are possible, but humanly speaking this project is too large for 3 people to complete in the administration's goal of 2.5 more years.