Last night we ushered twenty-eleven out the door by watching a TV special of a guy jumping his motorcycle four hundred feet across a San Diego bay. Well, I watched. Rachel gracefully reclined in the cradle of my arm and torso with a glazed look in her eyes. I admit it was not the most exciting way to end a year. But the sleepy circumstance of our New Year’s Eve bears little resemblance to the twelve months that preceded it.
In short, we:
- Watched Hudson learn to walk, run, and mumble a handful of words,
- Completed our second and final year of Bible training at the New Tribes Bible Institute in Jackson, Michigan,
- Moved into our new apartment near Camdenton, MO to start the second phase of training at New Tribe’s Missionary Training Center,
- Learned to hear, produce, and interact with the phonetic sounds found in languages worldwide. We now know the difference between an unaspirated voiceless alveolar stop and a voiced velar fricative,
- Received an introduction to contextualizing foundational Bible teachings for cross-cultural situations,
- And began the process of contacting potential fields for future ministry.
In this new year, we are honored and blessed to have the opportunity to continue moving toward this goal: to preach God’s message of redemption to one of the 2000+ people groups that are still waiting to hear it. This is not a sprint; it is a marathon. So much preparation must still be done. But we keep moving ahead with the joyful assurance that the Lord goes before us.
Thanks for your support, and happy new year!
Jim & Rachel 