First Semester Ending and Travel North Coming

I’ll be finishing up the first semester of studies in the coming couple of weeks. I had 2 final exams today. I will have 1 tomorrow and 1 on the following day, then 2 more the next week.

I believe that I’ll be free to go soon after that and have made plans to go visit my refugee friends up north. I will be doing a small language project there. There is a small people group in the region that consists of about a thousand people. I will be doing the initial survey of at least one person that is a teacher at the Bible school who is of that group! Apparently there are a couple more nearby who may be accessible as well. With so few people in their group, I wonder how thorough of a survey can be done without actually getting inside to where their villages are. At any rate, from my understanding, this is the very initial stage in determining whether or not a group’s language meets the criteria set forward to actually start language/translation work with them or not. It’s all new to me, so I have no idea what those criteria may be. I also am being deliberately vague about some details due to sensitivity regarding the work, the people, and the region. I would be able to talk more about it in private, but I can’t do that here.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to go on this semester break or not, but God put it on the heart of some people to generously help financially toward this ministry I’ve put my hand to and suddenly I found myself able to head up there!

I greatly appreciate any prayers that I’d have a safe and productive trip and would be able to accomplish more than what we are thinking. Also pray for my pencil to scribble the right answers on my final exams! hahaha The teachers have proven to throw some very unexpected curve balls at us and we sometimes find ourselves facing things that we’ve never seen before! I also have to recite from memory a Buddhist prayer, which isn’t even in Thai language! It’s in Pali, which would be the equivalent to the priests in olden days being the only ones who understood the prayers being said in Catholic churches as they were done in Latin. Here the monks apparently do much of their prayers in Pali and/or Sanskrit languages. It is definitely not my cup of tea reciting how wonderful the “Lord” Buddha is and about his “godhood” so to speak. But I don’t have a choice and hopefully it will bring opportunity with it to perhaps talk about some aspects of the prayer from a different angle with my professor. Her PhD. is in Sanskrit language, and she seems to really love this kind of thing and wants us to know the wonders of Buddhism. I admire her thoughtfulness and zeal.

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