Palm Trees and Melting Brains

I just returned from a two-week training in Orlando, Florida for Wycliffe Bible Translators. The training was at the Wycliffe headquarters here in the U.S. It was wonderful to hear the other missionaries' stories of how God led them to this organization and their passion for Bible translation, even though they were not all going to be translators. One of my roommates is going to work in Orlando as an accountant, and my other one is going to be based in Germany and travel around Europe and Asia as a journalist.

We learned much, and I often felt like my brains were melting with all of the information. But it was all helpful. Some of the things we learned included:

• How to make snappy presentations
• The importance of barriers in relationships while living overseas
• The difficulties missionary kids experience 
• How difficult it is to translate Scripture into people's main (heart) language (One language has 26 different ways to say 'to carry'!)
• The awesome transformation God's word can have in someone's life when they can understand it

Look out for my next newsletter, which should be arriving in the next few weeks with at least one story from my training in Florida. And of course, here are some pictures of highlights from the trip:

Tiffany, me, and Larinda (fellow coworkers/members of Wycliffe)

The Last Translator

A Baby!

One of our teachers preparing to shoot Nerf bullets at the late students

Eating dinner at Bob Creson's house, the President of Wycliffe

Sunset on the Lake at Wycliffe Headquarters

"The most vital Christian ministry we can have is to get God's Word into other people's languages. Whenever we plant God's Word in a society, it will bear fruit."
-Robin Rempey; long-time financial supporter of translation projects