Sunday, June 01, 2008
Email update: 1 June 2008
Dear Friends and Family,
In a nutshell, we are entering "Crunch Month." All of the last few months has been preparation, getting things ready for the village house, getting prepared for working on translation (by trnaslation training here at Ukarumpa), and the other bits and pieces we have to do.
A) On the house front, we have preparations ready to get the house to Madang by truck, then across the bay by barge, and then up the little road by truck. We hope we won't have to use the helicopter, because it isn't going to be available until July, which means we would have to leave the kit house pieces down on the coast, at the house of a respected church leader, until the helicopter could help us.
Please pray:1) that the kit house company will transport the kit house to Madang THIS WEEK (before we need to load up the barge),2) that Dave will have a safe trip down to Madang and to the village later this week to check out the road situation, and2) that the village people will get excited and successfully fix the road up to the village so a truck can drive up to the village with the kit house.
B) On the translation training front, we have completed the five weeks of training, and the men have learned a lot and are more eager to work together and get going on translating more of the Scriptures! We have translated Genesis 22:1-19 as our training exercise, which is about Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. We enjoyed finding Sam words for key terms like angel, altar, and sacrifice! The men have arrived back at their villages now.
Please pray:1) that the men will work out a good working schedule so they can translate without taking time away from their gardening or community work, and2) that community will start to recognize the good work the Sam translators are doing and will start to support them in practical ways, like helping them with gardening work.
C) In terms of all the bits and pieces of our lives, we feel like we have been able to get some of those extra things done during the translation training course, but we still have some to finish. We would like to be able to complete a lot of those other things before our whole family goes to the village on June 18th.
Thank you for your prayers!
Love,
Dave and Sarah
# posted by Dave Troolin @ 10:53 PM 
