Traveling down a rocky road

One Saturday while we were in Nigeria last August, Ray wanted to go to Miango to visit Kent Academy, where he had taught for I think thirteen years. George and I went with him. We packed lunches and climbed in the van that our driver Joshua used. Let me tell you, riding from one town to another in Nigeria is a recipe for motion sickness. The roads are unsorted stretches of pavement, mud and potholes, often with more of the latter two than the former. There were lots of points where, I would have thought nothing without 4-wheel drive could have possibly made it. We drove right through a creek once. Another time, the road literally ran into a rise of solid rock, and resumed about 8 feet higher in elevation. If I were driving, I would have turned back there. But Joshua knew what the van could handle. We did come on one point where he did turn back and find another route:

A collapsed bridge

My cautious little American mind would have stopped unnecessarily at a lot of rough spots where I thought no way can this vehicle make it. But Joshua knew the terrain; he had the experience to push the vehicle and get us there and back safely.

That's how I feel about what we're trying to do in curriculum now. George, Ray and I are praying about when to return to Africa. It's a surprisingly difficult thing to pray through, since it's so open-ended. As far as when, we can pick pretty much any dates we want; it would just be up to us and the writers. Anthony and Joe are going to train teachers in Nigeria April 26-May 8, and some of what they do our writers need as well, so it seems a good idea to have at least one of us go then.

The last two times I went to Africa, it was the whole TEN3 team (all the missionaries at least) together. It's wonderful to get to fellowship face-to-face with my colleagues who live so far away, and there are a lot of benefits for the team when we do this. But for our writers, it may be more effective to split up our travel, and have George there for a while, me there later, and then Ray there later or something like that. The men wouldn't want to go more than 3-4 weeks without their wives, but I'm still hoping to stay about six months whenever I go. (This has gotten me to really love being single!)

But we're not really sure what's needed to get the Biblical Health and Life Management curriculum written. We're seeking input from our writers, who are dealing with realities we're not used to, concerning what would be most helpful to them.

I would also love to train writers in other countries besides Nigeria, but we'd need enough interested writers recruited in one place to make a trip worthwhile. So I'm praying for that as well.

Please pray for wisdom and guidance as we push forward. We believe we are called to help the African church develop her own educational system (curriculum, teachers, standards, etc.), but the path is still very rocky and uncharted.

Reset button!

There are several good things about temp work. The obvious one of course is the money, which is coming none too soon, as my car is in need of tires and a horn relay. I also enjoy the change of pace, the chance to get out and interact with more people for a while, and the hopes that I can represent Christ in the process. So I like getting to work at the community college bookstore a few weeks out of the year.

That said, it's a big relief to be done with this rush, too. I haven't touched the CTO-puppy conversion these four weeks, except to package what I've done so far for our teachers to get started on. I've had to put off a lot of my fundraising too for lack of time. Just trying to keep up minimal duties as curriculum department head while working long hours at the bookstore has meant significant sleep deprivation. Now that I'll be free in the daytime hours, I hope to reestablish connections with volunteers and get things in Biblical Health & Life Management curriculum, and updates of older material, going again.

The timing has worked out interestingly, as this month the other members of TEN3 curriculum have been focused on other things as well (Ray on a relationship development ministry trip to Maine, and George on getting computers ready for the Training department). So I think now is really a time for us collectively to hit the Reset button. I hope the Lord uses this change of pace to work in the background arrangements we may not realize we need, and to refresh our hearts and minds for service. I pray that we start anew in the Lord's guidance, that we may have His wisdom and priorities in our work.

Nunca quiero estar aburrida! (Como lo dice en frances?)

My last entry was about my decision to learn French. It's interesting that this resolution comes after I decided to strengthen my Spanish for local ministries, especially the nursing home ministry.

So, we'll see how this goes, finding time to work on French and Spanish, and of course sharpening my mind in many other areas. Good thing God gave me a love of learning--so much so that I want to be fluent in every language in the world! So, here's to this item of my fantastic bucket list (http://baptistdancer.xanga.com/635065864/my-dreams-and-in-my-dreams/)!

I have made a little partial list of things I learned in 2011, which I shared with those of you on my newsletter list. See the Newsletter Archives page.

New Years

I normally don't make new year's resolutions. If I know I need to do something, might as well start it now. The date on the calendar isn't going to make it any easier. But I made a decision a few weeks ago that timed out nicely to be a new year's resolution.

Initially as an editor for TEN3, English was the only language I could work in. Then those crazy colleagues of mine invited me to be curriculum department head :) Fifteen months ago I accepted this responsibility to lead TEN3 in our goal to provide the best curriculum there is all over sub-Saharan Africa -- both Anglophone and Francophone countries. This will mean training French-speaking writers, and facilitating the production and distribution of French curriculum, seeing that it meets the legislative and social requirements of each respective country, and much more.

Now, you'd be surprised how much of this I could do with English. Many educated people in Africa are fluent in both English and French. So I envision a lot of my work in Francophone countries such as Burkina Faso, Niger, Senagal, and Central African Republic will be through multilingual volunteers. Still, looking ahead of me, I realize that the more French I learn. That leaves a lot of ground, since the present extent of my French is "Merci, mon ami"!

Like I said, I don't normally put much hype into a new year, but I do thank God for this occasion to look with thankfulness and sobriety over the past, in evaluating how it needs to affect me today. I'd like to post a year-in-review of the things I've learned; but now I'm more inclined to list the things I hope for this coming year:
*Train more writers
*Provide our writers the networked support they need, in person if that is what's best, to see the Biblical Health and Life Management curriculum formed
*See the CTO running in many more schools
*Be 100% funded so I can do my part in all of the above
*Love my family
*Learn a lot
*By far most of all, (would that I do nothing else!) bring glory to my Lord!

Ken Klay, our chief technology officer, e-mailed us an article from BBC News about the digitizing of textbooks. South Korea is planning to completely replace paper textbooks with digital ones. Exciting, right? Taking advantage of technology available, being able to run electronic searches through the books, put in links to cross-references, even have animated illustrations! Should make education so much better, right?

"The sad truth is that students can learn just as badly with a class full of computers, interactive whiteboards and mobile technology as they can with wooden desks and a chalkboard," said science and ICT teacher David Weston, founder of the consultancy Informed Education. - "Digital Textbooks Open a New Chapter"

This statement is the most important one in the article – digital technology is useful, but it is all just tools. A chisel in the hand of a craftsman will produce something far more excellent than a precision saw or laser in the hand of a typical person. The real value is in the wisdom that goes into the work.

So yes, we hope to be the "cool techies" who bring digital textbooks and computerized experiments to education in Africa. But if that is all we contribute, we will have done them very poor service indeed. Our focus is to give them education that has a godly worldview, that teaches students to understand the world around them, to know God, and to know how to apply that education to every area of their lives. That's why we're going after education as a system—curriculum, teachers, administrators, school boards, all of it together needs to have this purpose if education will truly be transformational.

This was Anthony's response:

Many will be coming into this market. We cannot win with the weapons of the world, but if the Lord intends to have us help Africa have a transforming curriculum, He will help us to miraculously do it. 

I can imagine how Gideon felt when he had so few men to fight and then God whittled  him down to 300. We read the story and know the outcome, but he didn't know what was going to happen. It is not like Israel hadn't lost a fight before. I think his heart was in his throat as he approached the battle. 

I have written of storming the gates of hell, quite frankly I believe we are hitting that gate now. Yet, we are feeling our weakness and frailty greatly. Shall we rejoice like Paul? For when I am weak He is strong. 

I have no doubt we need more people, more money, more of the Holy Spirit ... wow, how can those compare? They really do not. I thank God for each of you an all you are doing. I encourage each of you to take the time to bask in the light of the Lord, for as the Holy Spirit has more way in our lives, then God can work in us to will and do as He desires.

I pray for each of you and in particular Claude and Joe who are so overworked. I pray for times of peace and rest. I pray we will all know what we are to do today, to do it with all our heart and to trust God for tomorrow as He gives us light and guidance.

Thank you Ken for this reminder that the battle is fierce and that the battle is the Lord's.

Please fight with us on your knees.

Quite a surprise!

When a package arrived via Amazon from the TEN3 team, saying to open on December 6, I figured maybe it was a book or something. Here was my reaction to the THRiVE:

In case you don't know, a THRiVE is like an iPad, but by Toshiba.

Now let me say that I've never really wanted a mobile device. We've talked about getting an Android to start working on mobile implementation of our curriculum, but I was figuring a few years in the future. I've viewed tablets like Americans in 1900 viewed the horseless carriage--a toy for the rich. Nice if you just want something to carry around and browse, but I need a workhorse. I know they are the computers of the future, but I figured that until they had F1-12 keys, full-service office programs and archive managers, it would be laptops for me.

It's kind of funny how the topic in church tonight was James 4:2-3, "You lust, and don’t have. You kill, covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask. You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures." In this case, I received what I didn't even think to ask for (and am still astonished at the generosity of my dear colleagues). So what will I spend it for? I pray it will be to teach people to use it as a tool to focus on God, rather than be distracted from Him.

Saturday I was working on the Creating Styles chapter of our Computer Essentials book, changing it to be based on OpenOffice Light on Puppy Linux, rather than the standard OpenOffice on Ubuntu. I was frustrated a lot of the day by the exercise documents. I had already rebuilt them twice. The first time it was for AbiWord, the default word processor for Puppy. Then, when I learned we could use OpenOffice Light, I jumped at the chance because that's a more powerful program that does what we teach much cleaner. So I made the documents over again to work on OpenOffice, this time with a more simplified template than we had in the original. And when I was working on chapter 4, I had realized that I didn't have certain styles we needed in the template, so I had to add them to the template and reload it onto each of the files. Then in the Creating Styles chapter (chapter 5), I tested the exercise modifying the Internet Link style, and found that it messed up things everywhere, and it was something that could look fixed but still carry a hidden problem. So I spent a lot of the day cleaning out those files and restructuring the exercises to avoid this issue. Great, I was thinking. A huge part of the day put into re-re-redoing these same files.
Then, when I just had a couple of hours left in the evening, I was finally ready to go through the chapter. It transitioned almost perfectly! I've never gone through a chapter so fast!

I've been reading Proverbs lately, praying certain verses over myself and TEN3. We are having to make so many critical decisions towards our huge vision:

to receive instruction in wise dealing,
in righteousness, justice, and equity;
to give prudence to the simple,
knowledge and discretion to the youth—
...
For the upright will inhabit the land,
and those with integrity will remain in it,
...
discretion will watch over you,
understanding will guard you,
delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech

The education we are building will never prosper and remain without wisdom from the Lord. So often during our arduous Skype meetings, talking about how to expand the types of education we are doing and how to serve the schools in all the countries that are asking us, how to become the top education provider in Africa, I wish I could see down the years to know what we need to anticipate. But we are given just to see today, and we must pray for wisdom to act on what we know now, trusting that God will see to the steps that come after.