Definition of Marriage

Today I ran into a friend while I was at the fruit-and-vegetable store. Somehow we started talking about out kids (how often does that happen?). She told me she had two adult children living at home, and then said something funny: "We've been putting away $100 a month to pay for our daughter's wedding, and she's not even dating anyone. If she doesn't get married soon, I'm going to buy a new car."

That made me laugh, but it also dovetailed with other not-so-funny thoughts going through my head in recent hours about how society views marriage. It seems to me our society continues in various ways to bear fruit of the sexual revolution brought on by the pill, not the least of which is the dumbing down of marriage. If marriage no longer automatically means children (as it has since civilization began), then society can be free to redefine marriage in any number of new ways.

The discussions I've been part of are making me realize how truly postChristian society has become. It makes me appreciate the wisdom God had in producing a written document to last though time, not rewritten each time an event in history or science or technology produces social change.

Texas Star

Texas star 

Every spring I enjoy hunting wildflowers. Texas is ugly, I've said it many times. But there are so many beautiful wildflowers every spring, that it almost makes up for it. There are some hiking trails behind our workplace, so I took an hour's walk there the other day. I found several new flowers.

In other news, I took Gary shoe shopping today. He got two identical pairs of shoes, one brown and the other black, exactly like the two pairs he's throwing away. He's an easy man to live with.

I talked to Rachel this afternoon. She has made it through her first of two weeks of solo teaching and each day went well. She has had no time to do anything else, and has tons to do this weekend: preparing for teaching next week; homework for her one night class; work on her portfolio, etc. She was going to relax for a couple hours by attending a school musical which I expect she will enjoy. Thanks be to God for helping her to do so well this past week.

Down the Garden Path

flowery path 

In the winter of 1998, Gary ordered wildflower seeds over the internet and planted them in the strip of dirt between the sidewalk and the street in front of our house. The first spring they bloomed in an almost embarrassing flurry of showing off; cars would slow down as they passed by and people out for a Sunday stroll would stop and ask if they could take their family pictures in front of them. I think we counted 20 different species of wildflowers that came up that spring.

In the years intervening, we've gotten to observe the process of ecological succession as the dominant flowers (daisies and Mexican Hats) have crowded out others (poppies and toadflax). My husband was so taken with this process that he actually kept a spreadsheet for several years recording which species bloomed each year. (That makes him sound obsessive, doesn't it? Well, he is a scientist at heart :-) ) I have had to remind him (I also wanted to be a scientist when I grew up, but, alas...) that he is not an unbiased observer of this flower garden since he can often be found watering, and pulling out overly aggressive bunches, and even weeding it. Like you could actually weed a wildflower patch...they're all weeds!

On another topic, Rachel's solo student teaching continues to go well, though she is getting exhausted. She had two evaluations today, one by the supervising teacher and one by her professor. She didn't get a perfect evaluation, but her prof said she had improved a lot since the last evaluation. She brought home 6 stacks of papers to grade tonight, and she needs to do planning for next week, etc, etc. I hope she gets some sleep so she doesn't get sick. Keep praying for her.

Discretionary Spending

Sometimes we missionaries feel like we don't have enough money. But then other times, we are pleasantly surprised with more money than we "need," arriving unexpectedly from unexpected places. That happened to us three times recently. For example, today a check came labeled "discretionary." Isn't that a nice word? So I spent some of it discretionarily--including a ticket to go see my baby in Washington DC for a quick weekend trip in early May.

We also give thanks to God for providing for the last of Rachel's two college payments.

Speaking of Rachel, she did pretty well on her first day of solo teaching, but sounded near panic when she went on to describe all the other stuff she has to get done. I assured her I and others would keep praying for her.

Graduation Photos

Bluebonnets 

Rachel came home from college this past weekend. We expect this will be her last visit home until she graduates in just under four weeks. (Wow, I'm so excited that she is going to make it!) Anyway, we decided to try to take some photos to put with the graduation announcements. We tried the traditional photo in the bluebonnets. (This time of year you can see cars illegally parked along the freeway so people can take photos of their kids in the flowers. The police don't seem to mind.) But when we tried it, we didn't have much luck--wind blowing hair in her face, too much sun causing shadows, and squinting. Oh well, nice idea.

So next we went over to the park and found a shaded area in the scrub trees. That seemed to work a little better. Now I've got to somehow get one of the photos into her announcements.

Please pray for Rachel if you think of her these next two weeks when she will be doing solo student teaching.


trees 

Empty

frig 

My hungry and long-suffering husband suggested I go to the grocery store today.

"Fee e fii."

In case you don't speak To'abaita, the title says, "Fees hurt." I remember that sentence from the Solomon Islands language we learned so many years ago, because it was the one and only time I made a joke in a foreign language and somebody actually got it. The To'abaita word fii means 'pain'. (That morpheme is actually part of another word, fiito'ona, which means "faith," a word we anglicized to use as a middle name for our daughter who was born there.) Anyway, back to my story--the people in the Solomon Islands have problems similar to mine--finding enough money to pay the fees for their kids to go to school. So it was a pun to say "Fees are painful" since the word for pain sounded like "fee."

So why on earth am I talking about this today? Well, we are just about to finish eight years of paying college bills. The last kid (Fitona) will soon graduate, and we only have two more payments to make to her college. I've been worrying/praying about how we could make these last two payments, and the Lord has recently answered that prayer by a couple unexpected generous donations to us. We thank him for that.

Then today I got a handwritten letter from someone in the Solomon Islands asking me for money for someone else's kid to continue their college education. This is a family we have known for over 20 years, and in the past have helped to pay the fees so their children could attend secondary school.

So did God give me extra money to pay my kid's college bill, or their kid's college bill? Probably both.

"Mom, I'm So Twitterpated."

The phone rang. It was son number two. Giggling.

"David, are you OK? What's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing's wroooooong. (giggle)"
"Where are you?"
"I'm walking home from walking her home."
"Her? Who's her?"
"She just lives around the corner from me. You'd like her, mom, I know you would. We just had a DTR."
"Wait. When did you meet her? You can't be having a DTR already."
"Well, the first time was about 10 days ago."
"10 days?!! And this DTR--what did you say and what did she say?"
"Well, (giggle) there was a lot of ums, well, you knows, and sighing."
"David! You sound like you're in 9th grade again."
"I know. Isn't it great?"
"What's her name?"
"Laurie."
"You can't marry her. Andrew's girlfriend is Laura. We can't have too many of the same name."
"No, not Laurie--Lori."
"Oh, well, in that case..."
"Mom, guess what we did on our first date?"
"What?"
"We talked about how we liked our moms. (giggle)"
"Oh, well, in that case..."

Time for the Times

Today I left work early so I could come home a blitz-clean my house and bathroom and then make homemade pizza. Our lunch guest was a freelance journalist here to interview people, including the Executive Editor, for an article he is writing for the NYTimes about the Ethnologue. We're hoping he writes a complimentary article, which I'm sure he would have done even without the pizza.

Unknown Prayers

A few days ago my boss sent out a little memo where he talked about how hard it is to pray the "right" way. He pointed out, and I completely agree, that it is too easy to be shallow, distracted, and just plain selfish when we pray. But he reminded us that God has a solution to that problem: The Holy Spirit.

Romans 8:26-27 says:

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

True enough, we are often incapable or unwilling to pray the right way; but, thanks be to God, we've got Someone to do it for us--the Holy Spirit who really does know the right way to pray. He never has doubts like we do about what really is the will of God, so he always prays correctly, even if we are floundering.

I am taking strength in these verses. There is a situation in my life that I just plain don't know how to pray for. Sometimes I feel one way about the situation and other times I feel quite differently. So relying on my feelings doesn't seem to be a very good guide for prayer. I am encouraged that the Holy Spirit is praying with me, no--He's actually praying for me--both on my behalf and in my place. I don't always know what He is praying, but I know it is in God's will, so I can rest in that.

Frozen shoulder

Here it is getting nice and warm, and the doctor told Gary today he has a frozen shoulder. He finally went to the clinic today for an injury done 6 months ago. He decided it was time to do something about it since he is no longer able to lift his left arm above chest level. He knows he hurt the arm way back in September when he was trimming trees, but kept hoping it would just get better on its on. The doctor prescribed either applying heat and slowly moving it more and more each day, or go to a physical therapist for $75/hour. The visit to the dr. was also a time to tell the dr. about David's plans for med school. David shadowed this dr. last summer for a while to see if he could handle the blood and guts part of medicine.

Everything's Bigger in Texas

Fuzzy 

Even the friendly caterpillars are bigger here.

And speaking of Texas, the Rangers stated their season tonight. I should go to bed, but I want to know if they're going to win.

Today at Church

I was happy

• to hear a 10-year old ask for prayer for a Jehovah's Witness friend.
• to see all the fathers holding their children.
• to hear of a newly adopted child excited because she gets to have cake at her 9th birthday later this week.
• to hear an older man give thanks for his wife of 44 years as they celebrated their anniversary today.
• to sing, though some of it wasn't my favorite music.

I was sad to hear more details of the murders of a missionary couple in South America. They were close friends of some folks at church. The FBI is investigating.

We didn't get to stay for the sermon; off to the airport again.

Another Family Update

Gary isn't scheduled to fly back from San Francisco until tonight but he said he might try to get on an earlier flight. I should mow the lawn--but isn't that supposed to be his job?

I got a good email from Andrew this morning. He has been working with a person from USAID in their AIDS/HIV section to make some progress on his project. He said he has been looking for new office space and a house to live in (he's been in a hotel kind of arrangement for all these months). He said last night the Leipizig Youth Sypmhony was in Addis and played for the 100 year anniversary of Ethiopia and German diplomatic relations. There was an Ethiopian piano player who played with them, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2.

Reports from Rachel and her student teaching continue to be good. Of course, it will get harder when she has to actually be in charge for two weeks, so keep praying for her. She is starting to think about a job for next year. It is kind of complicated because she won't have any certification until June, and then she won't have a Texas certification until sometime after that, but the Texas teacher job fairs are in April and May and is really too busy and it is too hard for her to get here for them. Pray she will have clear guidance in thinking about a job.

David called a couple times this week and you won't believe what he is thinking about doing--buying a house! Apparently some of the realtors in Houston work with MD and MD/PhD students to sell them condos or small houses. Of course, he has no downpayment money and we have none to lend him (though the realtor told him often parents help with the down payment). So he is investigating what he might be able to do with no or tiny down payment. It may not be possible, but I told him to go for it if he can, since he would be paying a lot of rent over the next 7 years.

My mom now has tickets to Dallas in May. She is coming for two weeks over the time of Rachel's graduation. And cousin April plans to pass through Dallas then too--she's going to be a camp counselor at a camp near Austin for the summer. It will be nice to see her.

How Much is a Missionary Worth?

Today I filled out the annual paperwork that determines how much money we are "supposed" to get for our income. This a a complicated, 4-page form that includes information on how much we need to live on in the areas of housing, transporation, insurance, taxes (including 15% SS taxes), ministry expenses, and children as well as a few other things. We all know that children are expensive, and now that mine are (almost) all grown up, we no longer include them on this form. Once the math was done the form said that up through May 31 our family needs $72,000 per year to live on, but starting June 1st, we will need $35,000 to live on. Wow, those kids eat a lot!

Truth be told, this annual form serves as a way for us to estimate our expenses, but other than that, it has little bearing on reality.

Today I'm sad to hear this news of our colleagues. I didn't know them personally, but I expect they were worth a lot.

Update on the Kids

No new birds to report on today, so I'll give a chickadee report.

Andrew is doing well in Ethiopia. He was recently struggling with some roadblocks, and though they haven't been resolved entirely, he has found new freedom in finding ways to solve the problems, so that is encouraging him to carry on. He said they are looking at new office space, and he recently interviewed someone who will work for him. He is still selling baseball and U2 tickets on ebay like a crazy man, and I'm mailing them out for him, like an even crazier woman.

Rachel continues to like her 2nd grade class. It is so nice to see her really enjoying her student teaching. She is starting to prepare for the two weeks where she will be in charge of the entire class by herself. She also sent me email today saying she really liked the CD I bought for her for Easter, Casting Crowns . My favorite song on it is "The Voice of Truth."

I had a nice chat with David tonight. He took half a day off work and visited with some of the Taylor band who were in town on spring tour. He got to see a couple of the people he went to Ireland with. He also said he bought an espresso machine off of eBay, so now he doesn't have to pay $3 a cup at Starbucks.

Lord, they are all a joy and a blessing to me. I thank you for them.

Crow

Crow 

Crows are not beautiful and they don't come to my feeder very often, but one was there today.

Does anyone want to live next to me? Our neighbors have decided to move to Kansas and asked if we know anyone who wants to buy a house. It is an older house, but the neighbors are great :-)

Easter

Easter Dinner

Easter was a blessed day, starting with the Easter Song by the 2nd Chapter of Acts, followed by a good church service where the pastor baptized his own teenaged daughter, followed by a nice dinner with friends.

It was nice having Rachel home again. She flew both ways and was delayed both flights, but we chalk it up to her education in how life works.

Good Friday

We don't have to work today. That is nice, but I have a big thing due at noon on Monday, so I'll probably be sorry I didn't work today. Last year on Good Friday, I went to see The Passion of the Christ. When we got home, I learned that my grandmother had passed away. I still miss her.

I had a little conversation with myself about what would be good or appropriate to do on Good Friday. I decided I would read, and pray, and clean. And talk to my friends on my favorite forum. But I think I got one of them mad at me, so maybe I should have just stuck to reading, praying, and cleaning.

As part of cleaning, I washed my van. Mostly to get the bird doodoo off of it. But I didn't wash the roof. I couldn't reach it and the birds will just mess it up again soon anyway. I also washed our comforter so I can pack it away for the summer. It was still covered with cat hair when it came out of the washing machine, but at least it was clean cat hair.

Gary somehow got to thinking about his old baseball cards today, so I dug those out for him. He has a 1963 Mickey Mantle. And a bunch of others. I suppose one day Andrew will get these.

Rachel called me yesterday with a burst of grand talk about how she had just found direction for her life and she knew what job she wanted to immediately apply for. This came after a discussion with her supervising teacher about what being a school teacher is really like and what Rachel's strengths and weaknesses are. It was good to hear her taking initiative. Lord, guide her to the job you have for her.

Then several hours later she called sounding overwhelmed with too much to do and not enough time to do it. Lord, help her to know how to use her time wisely.

David called yesterday while working on his taxes. I think this is the first time he's had to do them himself and he was finding it harder than expected, due to the odd way he gets paid from NIH. Speaking of taxes, we just got our refund. Yay! Now there is enough money for Rachel's antepenultimate college payment.

Ethnologue: the book

Ethnologue

We've been waiting for this day for a while now; the 15th edition of the Ethnologue - Languages of the World was unveiled today. We had a little ceremony where everyone whose name was on the credits' page was given their own copy. Gary's title in this effort is Executive Editor. That means he didn't do the nit-picking work of gathering the data about the languages of the world, but he did have the Herculean task of getting all those people to work together to end up with a professional product. And his job isn't over yet; in a couple weeks I hope to have another blog entry called Ethnologue: the website.


Here are some of the facts in and about the Ethnologue:

• The book weighs nearly 5 pounds, has 1272 pages, and is hard-bound.
  
• It is printed on acid-free, thin yet opaque paper.
• It includes 208 color language maps.
• It is an encyclopedic reference volume cataloguing all of the world's 6,912 known languages.
• It includes population estimates for each of those language groups.
• It gives alternate names and dialect names.
  
• It gives information about multilingualism, availability of literature, geographic and other information about each language.
• It includes statistical summaries by world area, language size, and language family.
• It gives a genetic classification of each language (that is, how it is related to other language).

And here are some things that the Ethnologue isn't:

• perfect - although more than 50,000 updates and corrections have been made since the 14th edition, the editors have no illusion that it is complete nor entirely correct. In the informative introduction there are instructions on how to send in corrections.
• finished - The total number of languages is 103 more than in the 14th edition. This is not because 103 languages have just been found, but rather had been previously considered dialects of another language. Language is constantly changing, so the Ethnologue will continue to catalogue those changes.
  
• a one-man job - As you might imagine, this massive amount of detail has been collected from many, many sources and it has taken the work of many people to organize, verify, and present the data.

One more item of note: The Ethnologue is the first major publication to make use of ISO/DIS 639-3 -- the new, comprehensive draft international standard for three-letter identifiers. The previous standard had about 400; now it has 7000 so every language in the word can be identified uniquely.

This big, fat book costs about $80. Mostly it will be linguists and academic libraries buying the book because SIL International puts the whole thing for free on the web. The website for the 15th edition is coming soon.

Thank the Lord with us for this reference volume that will be used by missionaries of many stripes, as well as academics.



Gary with his copy