[cue the tinny Disney music]
One of my parent’s friends from Seminary works for Wycliffe as a chaplain at JAARS in Waxhaw, NC. He found an article about Cameroon, though of me, and sent it.
http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2013/s13080114.htm
It’s an encouraging story about Bible translation…but I actually know Jean-Claude. He’s a very humble man who’s come to my office many times when he was in town. I forwarded the article to one of the coordinators of the project.
Is it normal for most couples to have spur-of-the-moment roofing projects?
Background: I’ve been doing roofing (among other things) with Habitat for Humanity and on mission trips since I was maybe 12. On the summer mission trip to West Virginia this summer, Teresa and I were on the team that took 3 roofs off of one house and put 2 back. Of the 5 people who worked up there, 4 of us put a leg through the roof. Here’s a picture of that roof:
Also, we’d just been down to Louisa County a couple of weeks ago to build a pen for her parent’s goats, and we had a plague of poison ivy that we passed back and forth for a week afterwards.
Yesterday, we were walking around downtown Harrisonburg, and got a call from Teresa’s dad. We are storing some of our stuff in an old shed out back of their house built by her brother, Stephen, and the roof was, well, less than dry. Stephen was coming to repair the roof, and we came down to help as we had offered to do.
2 hours later, we were in Louisa County loading up tools for the afternoon. The main task was to re-tape the joints and paint over with a rubberized sealant. Teresa’s task was to hack away at the vines and undergrowth that were attacking the bottom and walls of the shed. After the taping, we started the painting. Stephen went to the other side to look for nails that needed to be hammered down, and I soon heard both crashing and yelling. Stephen’s feet had disappeared through a plastic skylight, and he was hanging from the rafters by his elbows. I called to the people on the ground to open the door, but the key was at the house. Teresa’s dad slipped and rolled in the brush on the way to the tractor, and she passed him to sprint to the house.
When I got over to Stephen, he had just realized that his feet could reach a nearby cabinet and after resting from the shock, began to let himself down to the floor. I was able to reassure the others as he scrambled to the door, which could be unlocked from the inside. Stephen was lying in the grass by the time Teresa ran back with the key. He was scraped and sore, but the Lord had seen fit to have the cabinet just below his feet and save him from another six feet of gravity’s pull. He returned with his mother and 3-yr-old son to be patched up, and they picked flowers to ease the shock when they told Stephen’s wife. Teresa mounted the ladder to watch over me as I continued to patch the roof. Within an hour, I’d nearly completed painting the seams, and went back to patch the nail holes. Now there was a third task of covering the gaping hole once T’s dad got back from Lowe’s with the new materials.
A half-tube of tar, a dozen nails, and 2 sheets of metal later, the hole was patched and I could return to finish the painting. I watched the sun set over the ridge as I turned to descend the ladder for a delicious meal served by Teresa’s mom.
We all had stories to share at the table, and we all gave thanks for the day and the Lord’s protection from grave injury.
In all the excitement, I forgot to take pictures of the roof, but here’s a picture of an 8-inch praying mantis we found among the vines. Maybe he was praying for Stephen?
We’re well settled in our new apartment, and expect to be based in Harrisonburg until our lease runs out in December.
We’re here in the area to update you all on Bible Translation. We hope to speak to as many of you as possible, in person or other ways. Now that I have a moment to breathe, I’m catching up this blog.
After Christmas spending time with our families, we hope to head to Dallas, TX. In Dallas, Matthew has been asked to help teach the course he ended up leading last year (see this post).
Teresa may work at the day-care in Dallas or substitute between her trainings. At the end of our time in Dallas, we will near the end of our Deuteronomical year (Deut 24.5) and will be ready to travel overseas, first to French School, then on to Cameroon!
Matthew continues to work remotely, working on getting electronic resources into the hands of Bible Translators, and continuing to test and troubleshoot an application for creating dictionaries in the same languages.
Pardon me while I get nerdy:
Today, I was testing Fieldworks Language Explorer for Linux. This is the aforementioned dictionary program, and has long been running and used in Windows. The team has been hard at work to bring the same quality of work to Linux, a free alternative to Windows and Mac. The new feature about to jump the gap is collaboration, which is the feature my class helped to test in Windows allowing multiple members of a project to work on the same dictionary. The developers have been testing this feature and wanted a field test with someone experienced in using it. The install process, intended for programmers, wasn’t set up for users and took some troubleshooting to get it working. Still some work to be done (by the God-gifted geniuses that do the programming)…but it is another little bit of progress to get it installed.
Throughout the past few months (between finishing teaching and planning a wedding) Teresa had been filling out her application to become a member with Wycliffe. She completed paper work, spoke with advisors, and had an interview. With God’s provision and blessings things became complete and final after the wedding and Teresa became a member on August 5! We are excited to serve with Wycliffe as a couple.
The only problem is that Teresa Davis became a Wycliffe member, and we now have paperwork to change her name with Wycliffe as well as a dozen other entities.
After the fun week on our honeymoon, we returned to South Boston to pack up Matthew’s room. We are deep cleaning and sorting (Matthew has a LOT of stuff!) as we will need some things for Harrisonburg, Texas, or Cameroon and other stuff is being packed for storage. Once this is complete we return to Harrisonburg to settle in, visit with friends and family, and continue with partnership development and trainings.
Matthew and Teresa's Blog 