Hello again! Things are progressing well here at school. We're learning how to make a variety of sounds that are quite, QUITE, foreign to the English speaking mouth. Take double stops for example. This is where you make two "stops" (where the flow of air is halted, like t, p, and k, or d, b, and g) at the same time, so they're one sound. Sound complicated? It is. Yet, there are languages where they make these sounds, and if you don't know how to identify and replicate them, you'll sound funny to the native listener.

We visited one of our supporting churches last week, Trinity Baptist Church in Arlington, TX with Pastor Bob Smith. They had our prayer letter up on the wall with all their other missionaries. The people recognized us immediately from our pictures, which is always an encouragement. This means that the church actually reads the prayer letters they receive, and prays for the missionary.

Our home church in St. Louis, MO, Grace Baptist Church, just finished up their missions conference. It sounds like they had a tremendous conference. Our faith promise giving saw a dramatic increase again this year, which is a huge blessing. Even more important, one of our young men, Harrison Beckman, surrendered to the LORD for full-time Christian service. This is one of the "boys" I used to teach in Sunday School way back when. He's turned into such a fine young man, and it fills me with such incredible pride to see how God is working in his life. Pray for Harrison as he continues to follow the LORD. Pray for our church as they form next year's budget and decide how to allocate the money that was promised.

We have a meeting Sunday morning at Fellowship Baptist Church in Pineville, LA with Pastor Kenneth Wilkinson. I will be presenting our burden for Uganda in Sunday School, and preaching in the morning service. Pray for us as we minister in this church, and for our travelling.

Just in the past few days, another church from one of the churches we visited in Montana has added us as one of their missionaries! Pray that God will continue to enable churches where we've been to support us, and that all the churches we visit in the months ahead will do likewise so we can be ready to go to the field after next year. Pray that I will continue to get meetings lined out for 2008 so we will be able to have a full schedule and finish our deputation quickly.

Thanks so much for all your prayers!

Greetings! Things are going well here in Texas. Pictures are faster than words, however, so let me show you:

The trampoline, which is right by our house, is a huge hit.

 

One of the members of Eastside Bapitst Church, where we’re attending when we’re not away at meetings, brings horses by regularly for us to ride. All my little cowboys (and cowgirl) are loving it!

Anna was good enough to ‘find’ this for me, and I posed for the picture. So did the tarantula. I know they look deadly, but they’re very docile creatures, unless you’re a cricket or a beetle.

It’s been good so far. The classes are progressing very well. We’re studying phonetics at the moment, which is the acutal formation of sounds in speech. You use a variety of articulators in speech (tongue, lips, teeth) which touch various points of articulation in the upper mouth. You use different manners of producing the sounds (nasal, stops, fricatives), and all of this with various rising and falling tones, which in some languages can radically alter the meaning of the word. The basic gist of it is this: we are gaining the immensely valuable and practical training to be able to not only learn the Ugandan dialects quickly, but with a native accent when we do. Just because we look foreign doesn’t mean we have to sound foreign. I am firmly convinced that this, or similar phonetic training ought to be a required course of study for all prospective missionaries. Our time here is being well invested in making us more effective communicators on the field where God has called us.

I have been able to schedule several meetings in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and even Utah while here, so, even though we are doing language study, we are still on deputation, an advantage we would lose were we attending school somewhere out of the country. Thank you for praying about meetings. Please continue to pray. I am trying to get next Fall filled up. I have made good progress, but there are still some slots, particularly in October, that need to be filled. Currently, we’re planning on remaining in the States through the holidays, and then heading over to Africa in January or February of 2009, provided the support we need comes in by then. Thanks for praying for us!