"..It's like finding a whole new Jesus"

We've been talking a lot about the Big Picture this month---About how one translator, traveling for one lifetime, to live among a people group and to help bring them the Word of God in their language is really just a tiny part of the story. This story that God is writing, is an intricate one, where WE get to be a part of mobilizing many parts of the Body to use many varied giftings and talents to bring Jesus and God's Kingdom to manypeople. 

Before we close this 30-day blog series tomorrow, I wanted to share one more poignant story about the vastness of God's translation-tapestry story! Jenny's story below, and the story of the Yazai people, gives a good glimpse at the prayer, human resources, food resources, community commitment, and fierce "irrational" faith that are needed for Bible translations to be completed in the almost 1,900 languages that are still left without it. I pray that we will catch these qualities from those that have gone before us, and that God would be glorified by our hungry, exuberant responses, as He invites us into this work.

In the 1930s, Jenny and her husband were planting a church among the Yazai* people of Southeast Asia. Understanding the need for Scripture in the mother tongue, they devised an alphabet and translated a catechism and the Gospel of Mark. But just three years into their ministry, her husband died of typhus, and Jenny was driven away by political unrest, never to return. Her prayers, however, did not cease. 

Jenny was 37 years old when she left the Yazai village. She was 93 years old and still praying for the Yazai and other language groups every morning from breakfast to lunch, when an SIL translator named Mark visited her. By then the church she faithfully watered with her prayers had grown to 10,000 believers...but they still did not have the Word in their mother tongue. Mark had the joy of telling her that he was working towards starting a translation project. He was studying the language with three Yazai speakers he’d met far from their homeland, and praying for an opportunity to meet church members interested in launching a translation project. 

The next year, 1997, Mark met two brothers who were Yazai church leaders. They told him they’d been praying for four years for someone to come help the Yazai do a Bible translation. “Four years?” said Mark. “I’ve been studying the language for four years and praying for a translation team related to the church!” The Yazai joyfully formed a translation committee and Mark became the translation advisor who checked the material! 

Individuals and whole communities threw themselves enthusiastically into the project. The lead translator was so committed that when he married, he and his bride spent their honeymoon at a training event! The future chairman of the translation committee, a paralyzed man, read in the Gospels that Jesus healed paralytics, so in faith he stood up and walked...and then went to work leading the committee! Villages formed their own support committees. Though poor, villagers agreed to drop a handful of rice into a bag every day. As the bags filled up, they sewed them shut and sent them to the translation team. 

The translation committee prepared books, songbooks, audio materials, and the "JESUS Film", so that everyone, readers or not, could have access to the Word. The church held literacy workshops, eventually training 100 people to serve as volunteer teachers. Each time a Scripture portion was completed, the church published it, and people carried copies around in their shoulder bags, snatching moments to read them in the fields. 

Even non-Christians became interested. Fifteen animists attended one literacy workshop; during the week every one of them found Christ and was baptized. Entire villages of non-Christians asked for someone to come read the Scripture portions to them so they could understand who this God was. With breathtaking speed the church grew from 10,000 to between 30,000 and 40,000 believers—a quarter of the entire population. 

In 2009 the New Testament was printed and, in spite of opposition, imported and dedicated. One well educated woman, having read the national language Bible for many years, said, “Reading the Scriptures in Yazai is like finding a whole new Jesus. The national language went to my head; the Yazai goes into my heart.” 

Now the Yazai have their eyes set on the Old Testament. “The New Testament is like a shirt, but we need pants!” said one man. “The Old Testament is those pants. Please help us get a complete outfit so we can be fully dressed!” The main translator is now studying theology so he can translate the Yazai Old Testament and serve as consultant for other translations. 

Jenny passed away in 2003 just a few days short of her 100th birthday, her part in the Yazai story complete. I know that by faith she celebrated the completion of the New Testament and the rapid expansion of the Yazai church, but I wish she could have heard what one old man said: “Now the light of God has come to the Yazai people. Now the Yazai people will grow and be blessed.” 

Language by language, the light of God is coming to people He loves all over the world. Sooner rather than later, the last one will be blessed. Thank you for the role you play! 

*Name changed to protect work in a sensitive area 

From ConnectUS, August 2010, Bob Creson

One Little Vowel

This week we've been specifically looking at translation stories from the field, and today I wanted to share my favorite so far! This story was first told in 2012 by a missionary couple who worked in Cameroon, and there is an exciting update about this language below, so be sure to read all the way to the bottom!

Friends, this story encapsulates why I am on this journey in the first place, and why I long to take you with me! I love the concept that God has placed his footprint/fingerprint/blueprint into the history of all of His people, and that sometimes we can find the clues He left us that lead to Him right inside of language. 

We've spoken before about how closely tied to our identity language is, and I am astounded by the way that the process of translation makes us ask questions that lead to deep and lasting transformation.  

Dangwa Pierre, President of the Hdi Translation Committee,
with Lee Bramlett, translation advisor to the committee.

Translator Lee Bramlett was confident that God had left His mark on the Hdi culture somewhere, but though he searched, he could not find it. Where was the footprint of God in the history or daily life of these Cameroonian people?  What clue had He planted to let the Hdi know who He is and how He wants to relate to them?

Then one night in a dream, God prompted Lee to look again at the Hdi word for love. Lee and his wife, Tammi, had learned that verbs in Hdi consistently end in one of three vowels. For almost every verb, they could find forms ending in i, a, and u. But when it came to the word for love, they could only find i and a. Why no u?

Lee asked the Hdi translation committee, which included the most influential leaders in the community, “Could you ‘dvi’ your wife?”

“Yes,” they said. That would mean that the wife had been loved but the love was gone.

“Could you ‘dva’ your wife?” Lee asked.

“Yes,” they said. That kind of love depended on the wife’s actions. She would be loved as long as she remained faithful and cared for her husband well.

“Could you ‘dvu’ your wife?”  Lee asked. Everyone laughed.

 “Of course not!” they said. “If you said that, you would have to keep loving your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got you water, never made you meals. Even if she committed adultery, you would be compelled to just keep on loving her. No, we would never say ‘dvu.’ It just doesn’t exist.”

Lee sat quietly for a while, thinking about John 3:16, and then he asked, “Could God ‘dvu’ people?”

There was complete silence for three or four minutes; then tears started to trickle down the weathered faces of these elderly men. Finally they responded.

“Do you know what this would mean?” they asked. “This would mean that God kept loving us over and over, millennia after millennia, while all that time we rejected His great love. He is compelled to love us, even though we have sinned more than any people.”

One simple vowel, and the meaning was changed from “I love you based on what you do and who you are,” to “I love you based on who I am. I love you because of Me and not because of you.”

God had encoded the story of His unconditional love right into their language. For centuries, the little word was there—unused but available, grammatically correct and quite understandable. When the word was finally spoken, it called into question their entire belief system. If God was like that, and not a mean and scary spirit, did they need the spirits of the ancestors to intercede for them? Did they need sorcery to relate to the spirits? Many decided the answer was no, and the number of Christ-followers quickly grew from a few hundred to several thousand.

The New Testament in Hdi is ready to be printed now, and twenty-nine thousand speakers will soon be able to feel the impact of passages like Ephesians 5:25,  “Husbands, ‘dvu’ your wives, just as Christ ‘dvu’-d the church.…”  I invite you to pray for them as they absorb and seek to model the amazing, unconditional love they have received.

As God’s Word is translated around the world, people are gaining access to this great love story about how God ‘dvu’-d us enough to sacrifice his unique Son for us, so that our relationship with Him can be ordered and oriented correctly. The cross changes everything!  Someday, the last word of the last bit of Scripture for the last community will be done, and everyone will be able to understand the story of God’s unconditional love.

Bible Translation Acceleration Update! : 

The YouVersion community has now reached a truly global milestone: The Bible App just added its 1,000th Bible version! With Bibles available in more than 700 languages, that means that millions of people are now reading God’s Word in the language of their hearts, together.

Version number 1,000 is Deftera Lfida Dzratawi (XEDNT), the first digital translation of the New Testament into Hdi (pronounced huh-DEE), a language spoken mostly in Cameroon and neighboring Nigeria. Generously provided to the YouVersion community by Wycliffe, this Bible’s translation is an incredible story of perseverance and love decades in the making!

Freedom is the visage of a laundry-chomping donkey

This is the last week of my #30daydietofpassion, and this week I would really love to focus on some stories from the field that highlight some interesting translation issues!  The more I learn about linguistics, Biblical exegesis, and  how the two must work together to "crack the code" of Bible translation in each individual culture, the more I understand what a sheer miracle it is each time a translation team completes the Scripture in a new language!

It used to take a missionary's lifetime to learn a people group's language, and to then begin and finish the long, hard work of discovering each best word and/or phrase to convey the meaning of each Bible passage. This time has been diminished a little in many places, due to the move of working with national translators and missionaries that I've mentioned before. However, this just means that teams of nationals and ex-pats are now working together to discover those words of life that impart the right theological meaning encapsulated in each verse.

Ivy's story below shows one such example of a phrase that eluded a translator for a long while, until an incident with a donkey brought the right words to light! Enjoy:

Excerpt from Ivy Cheeseman's article, published in InFocus 2010, Issue 4

Sunday's PassionBite Video!

The Road to Transformation from Wycliffe USA on Vimeo.

Africa, the land of 2,146 living languages

The last region, rounding out this week's focus, is the continent of Africa. I love today's visual aids!--for me, it's so helpful to see the size-comparisons, putting things into perspective, and the facts about cell phone use are still surprising to me!

I also didn't know that Nigeria is the country with the third largest need for Bible translations still! Check out the facts and pictures, and check back beginning tomorrow for our last week of #30daydietofpassion!

Do you Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwymdrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?

Today, I take a look at the needs in Europe, along with some fun facts about the longest city name in the world!)

This area is perhaps the one that people think of least when they think of Bible translation needs. But there are 127 separate languages still waiting for a completed Bible in this region. Many of these people groups fall into the category of believers without the Word in their heart language---they may attend church and hear God's Word preached, but it is in a standard, "Language of Wider Communication, often the national language, but it does not meet their comprehension needs.

For many of us, this might feel similar to if we only had access to discipleship, teaching, and reading the Word on our own in a language that we once took a brief class on in high school or middle school! We would never consider this an adequate way to know Jesus for ourselves, but this part of the world lives with this as their daily reality.

Take a look at all the fun facts, and please join me in praying for Europe and the remaining language groups there--that God would move hearts and send people there, raising up teams of people for each of these regions, "until every last tongue has heard". Amen.

Portrait of translation

This tapestry, it fills my heart now in a way more than ever before. I mentioned last week that many years ago, I didn't understand all the roles that were required for this task.. I didn't understand its vastness, I had no concept of two thousand languages spoken by 180 million people without the Bible in their language, so at that time, my mind had only two categories for this work: Bible translator, and sender.

With my interest came research though, and then the hunger for more research brought me on a trip to Ghana with Wycliffe Discovery in 2004! And adventure and knowledge were added to research, and with knowledge came fire. Through that experience and through getting to begin linguistic training, I learned of Language Survey, alphabet-writing, night literacy courses being taught in the jungle by the light of thunder-lamps. I learned about data programs being written by the tech-minded missionary that can accelerate the "code cracking" of language development and translation. And there are teachers that are needed for the families called to this life-long work. And none of it works without the rest of it.

And now, on the other side of some life-changing events for me, through health issues that, at least for now, change my ability to be a Language Surveyor in uncharted territory, I look through the prism at God's call on my life to be a part of Bible translation, and I understand this call now more than I did before. Just as He expanded my two categories of Bible translation into the more real tapestry-paradigm, replete with the many categories of roles that are needed, I now know with more certainty and trust that this is what I'm made for, and that this call will continue to surprise me, in all the many forms and roles that Abba places before me. I see a fuller picture now, and that each role is one of the exquisite colors needed to complete what He is creating, and that there is a call and a role for every believer in this commission to make disciples and bring the gospel.

"The Craziest Gringo"

Today's bite of passion centers around crazy faith! I NEED this in my life. Although my husband and I have a life centered around this crazy Bible translation task, I wake some days being worried about small, mundane things. Even when our worries come about the larger struggles (crippling illness, staggering medicine costs, immigration processes), there are days it takes effort to STOP and refuse the swirling questions in our hearts. It's especially on those days when my Abba reminds me that big or small, no obstacle has ever been larger than He is, and no question will ever exist that isn't already a past-tense to His solution and redemption. His seal already stitches up the gaping hole in question; we are just experiencing time and those needs as little ones, not tall enough to see over the holy ridge yet. And so as purchased little ones, we choose faith, we choose rest, knowing that His call forward means there is a provision for those steps. The story below is about one of the BIG times this faith was displayed in the starting days of Wycliffe Bible Translators, when William Cameron Townsend was just starting out with the vision God gave him:

 

At the 25-year celebration of SIL’s work in Peru, Mr. José Jiménez Borja, an assistant to the Peruvian Minister of Education years before, told this story.

“I remember the day Mr. Townsend came into my office in 1945. He presented the most ridiculous plan I had ever heard.
 

“He wanted to go into the jungle with a group of linguists. They were going to learn the languages of the people, form alphabets, teach the people how to read and translate the Bible into those languages. He wanted my blessing on this impossible project. Our conversation went like this:

Mr. Townsend, who is going to do all this work?

It will be done by trained linguists-young men and women with college degrees who are willing to spend their lives among the indigenous peoples.

This is a difficult task. How many are willing to go?

None, yet. But when I go back to the U.S. and challenge them, many will volunteer.

The jungle is impossible. How will you get those people out to the villages?

I plan to use airplanes to land on the rivers and airstrips that can be cleared in the jungle.

How many planes do you have?

None. But when I share the need, God will give us enough planes.

Who will fly these planes?

Hundreds of young people, seasoned pilots and mechanics will volunteer.

How many pilots and mechanics do you now have?

None, but God will send them along.

There is much disease in the jungle. How will you stay healthy?

We’ll have clinics staffed by doctors and nurses.

How many doctors and nurses do you have?

None, but God will supply them.

Who will finance all this? The U.S. government? A wealthy foundation?

No. I’ll go home and tell the people of the United States about this plan. God will supply. All the workers will raise their own support.

At this I stared at the strange man and told him, “When all that comes to pass, come back to me and I will bless you.”

He got up, gave me a big hug, and said, I’ll be back soon.

“When Mr. Townsend walked out of the door, I turned to my secretary and said, ‘Alla va el gringo mas loco que jamas he visto.’ (There goes the craziest gringo I’ve ever seen in my life.)

“A few months later, Mr. Townsend was back and ready to start! Now, 25 years later, all he dreamed has happened, plus much more. Only God could do such a mighty thing.”

—Adapted from an article by Bernie May in Beyond, Vol. 30, No. 1

Repairing the ruin in the year of favor

I finally know “what this year is to be called”…
A beautiful friend of mine has been whispering for months, “ask God what this year is about for you… He will give you a word to focus it in, a name to call it. He wants to narrow in and teach you, show you something specific.”

Already, just the 2^nd month in, and this has been an incredible year of blessing, of vision being sharpened and light spilling all over it. I feel God undergirding it—undergirding me—with Isaiah 61, which my ESV titles “The Year of the Lord’s Favor”… and so it is.

I want to come in the next few days and fill you in on a whole bunch of monumental boulder-movings that have occurred in the last few weeks for me, but in case you read this blog and you aren’t at my church where this was already circulated, I wanted to post this initial update and then go from there:


Notes from a Glad Ledge

I can almost feel my toes curling tight over the edge of the precipice; a jumpy anticipation poised in my spirit’s heels, it’s tummy full of butterflies, and elation burst-fisting its way out of the fortress of waiting I’ve lived in for years… 

I wish I could show you the million little moments that have led to this cliff, but this is the story of some of them, so that you will understand the beauty behind it when you see me hurtle off its height—

Ten years ago I “accidentally” took a Linguistics class.
God had begun nipping and tugging at small fibers of my heart, telling me I wasn’t for this place and that he was fashioning my compassion and preparing it to pour out into other cultures all the days of the rest of my life. As I went through college I felt the conflict of “wisdom” to choose studies that would lead to a job, and a job that would be a livelihood, but as I kept trying to choose ways to do this, God would wreck my heart with images of orphans, cultures I’d learn of that were flanked by oppression, and blatant demonstrations of the fact that He’d wired me to find no joy in things but to hunger to reach into people’s stories and do life with them.

At the same time that He slowly revealed this burning call to missions, I stumbled into this most-odd class that had its students playing scrabble with the International Phonetic Alphabet and learning concepts about how languages all over the world work. Almost every student with me found it to be the most boring, absurd class they’d ever taken, but I was lit up and intrigued! Over the course of the next year, I began looking into ways to combine these passions, which eventually led me to Bible Translation… As I started to research how God could use something like linguistics on the mission field, I found out that there are still about 340 million people that have no portion of the Bible accessible to them in their mother tongue—that’s more than 2,000 possible languages left.

I found this utterly overwhelming.

I have since witnessed deep caverns of darkness in people’s lives, footholds, sorrows, staggering lack where God’s heart longs to fill in and heal—but to imagine these millions of people with no Living Word, with no access to the Words, Spirit, and Breath that swoop in to redeem all brokenness—this felt like too much. I knew that whatever manner of loneliness I have ever felt in this life, I have always had a book of shelter—Words that save me, have loved me, have torn me out of sorrow and into a Kingdom that seeks to rescue. But so many don’t have it. This knowledge licked at all the tugged fibers like whipping flames, and I felt God’s purpose in me solidify: you are to fight for Me this way.

So I set to it—I took a trip to Ghana in ’04 with Wycliffe Bible Translators, and spent a summer exploring how one approaches the idea of translating God’s Word and how many different roles there are in that process. I met the most incredible missionaries, witnessed moonlight literacy meetings in the mountain village of Gekrong, and watched God expand my heart and shatter my worldview. In the weeks that I spent observing the work and seeking God’s voice on these new hopes, Christ spoke such confirmation and assurance into my being that I came home fiercely excited. I thought that I would just quickly work off my undergrad school loans and then launch into the 1-2 years of Linguistic training I would need to be ready to head to the mission field—

Eight fascinating years have plodded past instead, though.
I look back on that time and the care God put into planting certainty into my heart and can’t help but laugh at how much He knew I’d need that! I tumbled into working several jobs, took certification classes and became a teacher, walked with my family through some heartbreaking crises, and wrestled through a long, sharp season of sickness. Journal after journal from the last few years were slowly filled with passionate out-cries, scribbled reminders of what God told me ‘on the mountain top’, and jotted down prophecies and prayers that I received from the Body and the people in my homegroups.

Each year I would ask and pray “is this the one?”, and always He would whisper that the Kingdom is here, and the Kingdom is coming—now/not yet, my love—You are already on the mission field, and every bit of now is the training. I, Myself, am cultivating in you what you will need for this task.

 As the years wore on, and especially inside the one of sickness, people began to suggest other goals, saying that I would need to stay where doctor’s were easily accessible, and that surely I would be happier accepting that circumstances were different now and that maybe I’d misunderstood God’s will. Medical bills were added onto the stack, and although the determined fire for what God had written on me wouldn’t wane, I shoved up my sleeves, understanding that it would be years more than the eight that have already passed before I would work the last of the debt down now.
Carefully, painstakingly, God ushered dependence into me, humility that has bent wide His vision for the impossible to be completed. Slowly I submitted my expectations and timeline and begged that God teach me to be where He has me well, and to trust that He would make it bullhorn-clear when it was time to move forward.

This past year, in August, the “Deeper into Community” series broke my heart again, and I found God stirring my waiting up with the “Your Calling Takes Us Deeper” sermon. In September, I sat in the sanctuary afterwards and shivered as I felt God whisper “it’s coming”, and then grabbed at my journal so I would keep that moment, writing it down as the physical goose-bumps dissolved back into normal skin.  In October God asked me to give up the sickened sorrow that I was carrying from my hope deferred, and November poked at my held-breath when we tumbled into speaking of Rescue each week and mingled our post-it notes together on the curved sanctuary wall—all our dreams stated beside one another, interconnected.

By the end of the year, I sent a long email to the Wycliffe recruiter that I’ve spoken with for years. I updated her on the debt again and explained that I was in another one of those weeks where my soul tingled and God was keeping me up at night with dreams—She sent a note back with a prayer and signed off with “LORD MOVE THE BLOCKADE”. Three days later I got a phone call.

One of my dearest friends was on the other end of the line saying, “Monica, are you sitting? We have something to tell you.”

And this brings me back to that cliff that I mentioned—

Through the obedience and sheer generosity of other believers, God is moving the blockade. With a single swipe—out of my hands, more than I could ask for, more than I can swallow without fits of joyful laughter—God has suddenly led a couple to completely wipe out the last of my school debt!
In quick gusts of the last month, so many miracle-nudges have been set in motion, and now it looks like I may be moving this summer to one of the three training-program locations to get equipped for this mission.

So I dance on this brink with you, beside you, sweetly terrified, our whole souls thrumming to the shift God’s calling our Body of believers to—church planting, adoption, foster care, feeding the poor—His fingers, His ears, His arms brought to His waiting people, and also His mouth in their language to feed their hearts. And as we all hurtle off these peaks, I hear Him comforting me… every one of these cliffs is in the vast Land called Married (Isaiah 62); none of you are hurtling alone, and whatever distance is coming, for a long or short time, you belong to one another—I am making you into each others’ netting.

July 29, 2009 - Deep Breaths

QUITE a bit after midnight, and Wednesday morning creeps across the pages of my textbooks and ink-drenched scrawlings and dares me to still see the words… I tried to crash out, but I miss you, and needed to unwind briefly.. and also needed to try to connect with you for a moment, faraway people that comfort my heart.

BIG, difficult tests start tomorrow (today?)... There's so much I want to tell you (and almost all of it is the emotional and spiritual side of what currently only looks like an academic statement)...Little universes, small vortexes have shifted in these days and I am w e a r y but have had such a joyful heart today... The last few hours contained infinite amounts of information-scrunching into my brain tonight though, as we studied and studied for Part 1 of our two-day Syntax and Morphology final exam.. I leave in a week and a few hours from now! And before that comes three quizzes, five tests and two projects. Please pray!

I will work out the "so much to tell you" next time, but know that I LOVE you, sister and brother, cousins and parents and friends of my heart. Wish that typing that didn't feel so inadequate, and praying that each you know that I mean it.

With love and hopes for rest,
moni


Posted on 29 July 2009 at 1:50 AM Comments (0)

June 10, 2009 - North Dakota Arrival and first days!

So it’s Wednesday afternoon, and I am coercing the part of me that longs for a nap just now, to make my finger-tips speak a little instead…it seemed a good compromise between not sleeping now and not doing homework yet :).

I sit on a twin-size bed in a white-washed dorm-room thinking of all of you—
Good days!—long, thick days of push-pulled consciousness and cognition. I am happy, but oh-so-tired, and miss you, but oh-so-fulfilled…

I wanted to come here and recount some of these first days, both for you and for myself… Saturday after I wrote you, I slept maybe an hour!—body would not sift down, like wiggle-nerves before Christmas. We all woke up at 4am and I was driven to the airport early… The flights were uneventful, other than a few air-pocket-hiccups and a quick plane switch in Denver. When I boarded the second plane, I peered down the aisles, reading the seat numbers and letters, and as I made eye-contact with the area and then the people sitting there, I realized that it was an 8 year old boy sitting across from his brothers, who—no joke—checked me out, exchanged glances with his brothers, and then asked one of them for a piece of gum in a loud, braggy voice :)—Really funny and exaggerated from an 8 year old! The whole rest of that ride was spent with him asking me how much time had passed—about every 10 minutes—while he filled me in on what Grand Forks was like, and how there are “really great bike trails at my real dad’s house”~

We touched down in North Dakota early, and I instantly grabbed some food and a coffee, as my cute conversations and incessant “are-we-there-yet?-trills” didn’t allow me to catch up yet on sleep. I waited then for Bethany, another SIL-UND student that would be flying into Fargo, as we were going to rent a car and drive the last hour from Fargo to Grand Forks. She’s wonderful!—and she was so even-keel for just having met me…which came SO in handy when half an hour into our drive, I saw red lights and a cop pull out behind me! Apparently ND is MUCH more stringent on speed limits :) and the 5-mpg’s over-the-limit that GA police have told me is more than acceptable was highly suspect in this new environment!

The cop was kind, if a little suspicious, since our rental happened to have Wyoming tags, a South Dakota registration, and a Minnesota insurance card(!), but once we explained where we were going and where were from, we all loosened up—
Besides this, the drive was lovely!—wide open sky—almost making the land look convex in its extreme flatness, bending wide its surface to bear the weight of the clouds~ It made our hearts feel yellow!

Campus brought us to a small city—there seem to be a hundred buildings to UND’s campus, but they’ve managed serenity in the midst of this. There is a small winding creek—which I’ve been informed is a cooley instead…a slightly swampy, reed-surrounded stream that is almost still (“it will stink later, just wait,” I was told)… But it is beautiful when it reflects the Dakota sky. There have been SO many people to meet, and every conversation exists inside this pressure cooker of depth!—in my 1 hour drive with Bethany, I believe we know more about what matters to one another than it usually takes people a month to know—and it has been the same with most of the people I’ve met, probably because there is the pre-existing conditions that everyone has traveled here for the same reasons, and time has warped to fit the urgent, quick-pace of the program.

We live, eat, and learn in the same living space as our professors, and the environment is like none other that I have experienced. These beginning days keep waffling between elation and exhaustion, and I’m definitely re-acclimating to being a student! It’s been so long since I’ve pushed my mind so hard, and I find at times that it’s pushing its hands up against the walls of my skull in protest :). Monday, we had orientation and we bought our textbooks, and received our pre-first-class homework… For Phonetics alone, I worked my way through the first two chapters, fumble-finding the vocabulary and preparing for the first class the next day. By this first class, these chapters were reviewed and the third one assigned! Second Language Acquisition placed each student into a group, and for the summer I will be learning Sindhi (a language from Sindh, Pakistan) to assess my aptitude and to teach us the foundations of language-learning using a method where we cannot speak a word of it for several weeks!—SUCH a challenge for my tongue that longs to contort :). For now, we use T.P.R. (total physical response) to teach our minds the language using different lobes of the brain, and skipping the usual route of translating a new language to ourselves using the one we already know. Syntax & Morphology is fantastic, and this professor makes me laugh-out-loud daily~ The fourth class I’ve only had once so far, but it’s Sociolinguistics, and I’m thoroughly enthralled.
Though I’ve scrupulously been struggling with moments of frustration at my own intake pace, heart has been whispering its own contentment.

I think for now, this is enough :). I love you, miss you, and am thankful for anyone keeping up with this or finding any interest in it! Thank you, THANK YOU, to those who have written me.. PLEASE know that it has meant more to me than I can express, and that I will truly try to respond soon! With fervor, moni

Posted on 10 June 2009 at 6:12 PM Comments (0)