Postscript

We’ve seen all kinds of signs in the places we’ve traveled including some that were confusing or just made us laugh. We’ve haven’t had our camera available to get pictures of them. Finally, we do!

This sign is on two streets not far away from where we’ve had our temporary home. We were expecting to see, maybe, mobs of kids all over, or at least houses very close together…something! The street was pretty deserted.

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We’re both back in New England…at the same time…at our temporary home in Massachusetts. After a couple of intense months, we’re trying to recover. Last night we put away clothes. We’re both normally very light travelers, but our travels in March, April and May required us to pack for winter, spring, and summer, casual and dressy. So, there were sweaters and wool socks in the same suitcases as shorts and bathing suits.

Today is laundry and bathroom cleaning day for me and a lawn mowing day for Jeff. Tuesday we’ll probably go through all of our papers. We have a mail forwarding service, so we’ve been collecting mail all over the place. Some of it came to us while we were traveling and then was put into our suitcases. Some came to us here. Everything now has to be sorted, filed, shredded or trashed.

What makes me the most happy about being back in the northeast right now is–the winter is over!

One more bit of news, we’re now at 75% of our support quota. We’re so thankful that God has brought us this far. Only 25% left!

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Thousands of miles of driving, two states–thirteen banquets completed! There are only two banquets left on our spring tour of Wycliffe Associates banquets:

• May 3: Holiday Inn, 711 Dwight Street, Springfield, MA 01104
• May 10: Holiday Inn, 38630 Fifth Street W, Palmdale, CA 93551

Jeff will be at the Springfield one alone, but we will be together for our last one in California. I arrive at 10:30 am that morning from Asia. Pray that I will be able to stay awake .

Thanks for all of our prayers for our banquets!

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The last few days have been busy. Jeff has been preparing to go on a short missions trip with the church we’ve been attending when we’re not speaking and another church nearby. They are going to Honduras. Half of the team will be doing ministry in the city, and the other half of the team will be spending most of their time in a village working with a missionary with Youth for Christ. Jeff’s going out to the village. We spent time getting clothes at good will, buying ready-to-eat meals and then packing everything into his back pack. I’d never seen those meals before. You just add water and you can have spaghetti, mashed potatoes and meat loaf…crazy. Jeff is excited about this opportunity.

I brought him out to a park-n-ride this morning where he got on a bus with the group and headed to the airport in New York City. He gets back on Easter morning at about 4am.

I’ve been preparing to spend a week in Orlando. I’ll be attending the Wycliffe School for Global Engagement for 3 days. The last couple of days I hope to connect with some of our friends in Orlando. I leave tomorrow morning, so I was packing, too!

After I dropped Jeff off, I got ready to go to my cousin Ryan’s wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony, and it was fun to be with the extended family.
I’m already so tired, but I’ve got an early morning. My flight leaves at 6 tomorrow morning…

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Today, we spoke at Abundant Life in Swansea, Massachusetts. We love to share about how God uses ordinary people with all kinds of skills in missions. He doesn’t just use pastors and evangelists. Teachers, IT professionals, media professionals, construction workers, managers…all have a part to play in missions as real missionaries!

It’s also neat to share about how many people still don’t have a Bible in their language. The Bible is the most translated book in the world, but still hundreds of millions of people do not have a single verse in a language they can understand. Our list (unfolded in the picture below) is of the languages left without a translation of the Bible.

We had someone take some pictures of us doing our presentation so that you could see us in action .

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God has been so good to us this year! It’s been amazing to see how He has been working in our lives, and looking back, even beyond this last year, we can see how He’s been working out His plan in our lives. Today, we encountered another of God’s blessings.

Since August, we’ve been on the road and haven’t really stayed in any one place for too long. We stayed with each of our parents for a month and many other places in between. We began to pray in October that when we returned to New England from our travels on the west coast that God would provide us with a place to live.

We met with a couple this afternoon who volunteer with our organization in Orlando, Florida. They spend the summers in the northeast, and the rest of the year in Orlando. They’ve offered to let us stay in their house for the next few months while they are living in Florida.

We’ll be going there in a week! Praise God for His provision!

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We were at St. Paul’s Evangelical Church in Lexington, Massachusetts, yesterday. The town is the location where the first shots of the American revolution were fired, an event that long term had a global impact.

As I thought about this, I thought of another global event–the translation of the Bible into English by John Wycliffe. Perhaps this event could be characterized as the words heard round the world. His translation put the Bible back into words that common people (that is English speakers) could understand. It was John Wycliffe’s work that sparked a new movement that led to many new Bible translations, opening God’s truth to many people.

We took communion, and I thought about how we celebrate communion to remember Christ’s sacrifice for us. Then I thought about how so many can’t participate in remembering because they’ve never even heard about it.

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This weekend we were at a missions convention at Calvary Temple in Fall River, Massachusetts. What a great weekend. It was fun for both of us. Several missionary couples were there from various countries. On Saturday there was an informal breakfast, and each missionary couple got to share a story or a little about themselves. We shared about how we were called into ministry. Then they had us share about how we met and got married. We laughed at all the funny and strange things that got us together.

On Sunday evening, a Bible translator from our organization shared about surviving a terrible accident in Papua New Guinea. He and another person were driving on a road in the middle of nowhere. The car flipped, and he was scalped and broke several vertebrae in his neck. Before help arrived, he was robbed. Finally, someone drove by and was able to drive him and the other person with him to a place where he could get some treatment. He was flown to Australia for further treatment and nearly died on the way there. But, he was able to recover, miraculously. He could have been paralyzed, but stood before us telling us about what happened.

It was an inspiring story of how God took care of him and his family.

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We were scheduled to go to a church up in Massachusetts today, but because of some unexpected circumstances, the service got cancelled. It was a little disappointing because it was the first church we were scheduled to speak at while we are in New England.

We decided last night that we would worship at one of the churches we spoke at in May. When we arrived at Christ Community Church in Blackstone, Massachusetts, in addition to the familiar faces that we expected to see, I saw someone I went to college with–Nate Sidmore. He was actually preaching that day. That was unexpected!

Jeff and I went to lunch with him after church, and I got caught up on all that’s happened since we were in school together.

So, even though today didn’t turn out how we expected, God already had something else worked out.

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