MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 03-02-2011

Greetings! This is actually the second time I've tried to write this. A couple weeks back I tried to write an email, and at the end, before I could save it, some bizarre javascript error happened and erased the whole thing. Needless to say, I was angry enough to beat a manatee to death with a snow shovel. I figured I'd better wait awhile and cool off so I could write an email and actually be Christlike at the same time. Then, in the interim, I got busy updating the website and just now got it all to the point where I can start blogging again. So, here we are.

No baby yet, although I hope to be able to communicate that news soon. Anna is QUITE ready to give birth. She made her goal of having Brennah's birthday land in March and not in February, which is top heavy with birthdays already, but now she'd like to be done please. Pray the labor will endure and result in a healthy birth, infant, and mother very soon.

We are doing well with our language study. Runyankore is a complex Bantu dialect with phonemic lengthening (almost tonal), 3 past tenses, 2 future tenses, and multiple cases that change the prefixes on everything. It's progressing, but slowly. Unless you're willing to fake tongues with the Pentecostals and spend several hours barking like dogs at 11 PM on a Saturday night, there's just no quick or easy way to reprogram your brain to speak another language. I try to be patient with the process, but it just feels so slow sometimes. The really awkward thing is how the Swahili we're learning out at the refugee camp keeps intruding into the mix. I'll find myself totally unable to remember the Runyankore for something, but the Swahili will be all I can think of. Aggravating.

I tell you, I'm very glad I went to BBTI to get the training in Phonetics and Linguistics I did. It has made the whole process a LOT easier than I suspect it otherwise would be. It helps in the English class I'm teaching at Ngarama an awful lot as well. Because I know what parts of the mouth are needed to make specific sounds, I can show the mostly Congolese people I'm instructing exactly how to make, for example, the 'r' sound. This involves circumflexing in American English, and tangles their tongue as badly as multiple flapped 'r's in a row does for us. We know what to listen for when learning speech, and how to replicate those sounds very well, so we can attempt to speak the language properly without a foreign accent. Our goal in all this of course is effective communication for ourselves, to preach the Gospel effectively without translators, and to bequeath literacy to them, to grant them true priesthood of the believer by learning to read the Bible for themselves. Those 10 months of hard work in rural Texas are continuing to pay eternal dividends. I honestly think the speed with which we have adapted to living here was largely facilitated by the cultural and language training we received at BBTI. It was well worth the financial and time investment. I am personally very grateful to the Cobbs and Alfords and others who labor in isolation in Bowie, TX to equip missionaries like me to be a success on the field.

I'm enjoying preaching, and being involved in the ministry long term in one place. Deputation bounces you around too much, so you never get to really scratch the surface on the Biblical text as thoroughly as you would like. It's good to be involved in people's lives long term as well, helping them reach the goals God has for them, equipping the saints as servants of Christ. We are prospering here in the sun and pleasant climate of Mbarara. We eat well, we live well, and we're all as healthy and happy as can be. It is deeply satisfying to be busy about the thing God intended you to do. Getting regular sleep doesn't hurt either. 🙂 I am very grateful for all your prayers, and for your financial support, which is continuing to make all this possible. I anticipate great things in the future, because I serve a great God.

God bless you all!