Troozshoes

Dear Friends and Family,

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Isn't it amazing to be into 2007? Time passes, everything changes and we get older, and yet God is always faithful. Praise the Lord!

 

It is time for another village stay. Our Christmas time here at Ukarumpa, with our friends and cooler climate, was wonderfully encouraging and refreshing, but we are looking forward to getting back to the village as well.This time we will be in the village for 5 weeks. We will be driving to Madang on Sunday, seeing expatriate friends there and buying supplies, and then flying by helicopter to Buan village on Tuesday. We will be out of email contact during this time, and we will communicate with the SIL center by two-way radio. We plan to get back to Ukarumpa on Feb. 11.

 

Via two-way radio Dave has been talking with our neighbor in Buan, and we found out last week that the heavy plastic we had put up over the roof (and the numerous holes in the palm thatch) has broken up and fallen off. We don't know for sure the extent of the damage. Sometimes things get exaggerated, as a way of highlighting changes the speaker thinks we should make. But in any case, this is unfortunate. We hope the village people will weave new palm thatch to repair the roof so the roof will be good for another 3 years. Please pray that the people will voluntarily get together and repair the roof!

 

During this coming village stay we are planning on doing another translation workshop on the first few chapters of Luke. The goal of the workshop will be to train the translation team in translation principles, see who really wants to be on the translation team, and translate and check the first chapter of Luke. We are excited! We will also work more on literacy development and language learning (trying to only speak the Sam language, which is very hard to stick with!).

 

Please pray for safe travels, good health (the kids and Sarah have been under the weather recently), a leak-proof village house roof, good camaraderie among the translation team, and good progress with literacy development and language learning. Please pray that we would be good examples of followers of Christ.

 

Thank you and God bless each of you,

Dave and Sarah, and Joanna, Samuel, and Matthew