This post began as a FaceBook status, but quickly became much too long for a status.

Those of you who know me very well may already know these things about me, but for the rest of you, knowing these things may help you understand me just a little bit better:

•    The state of my house frequently reflects the state of my mind. House in chaos=brain in chaos.
•    I LOVE old hymns. The depth of the lyrics, the harmony and intricate melody, the rich history of the song, and the memories of my grandmother singing them all get me in a deep-down, soul-grabbing way.
•    I care what people think. I know I shouldn’t, and this feeds my people-pleasing nature. I constantly seek to examine my motives and whom I am attempting to please, but this is an ongoing struggle for me.
•    I like to have a plan. When I have a plan, I (feel like I) can conquer anything. No logistical feat is too big; no plan is too complex. Everything can be accomplished if one can plan it out.
•    I am an introvert. I have become more introverted since becoming a parent (it probably has something to do with being surrounded by my favorite little people all of the time).
•    It is frequently my tendency to push myself harder than I should. I thrive in high-stress scenarios (at least for a while).

All of these facts are important for you to keep in mind as I tell you about my day and what God has impressed on my heart tonight.

We are coming off of a long couple of weeks.  Dale was in Angola for 2 weeks during which key technological devices malfunctioned, I had important doctor’s appointments to find out the results of a massive amount of testing and receive official diagnoses for Wolverine, began experimenting with medications for his needs, got pretty sick, and spent time with family visiting from out of town.  Throw preparation work for ICC Training in a couple of weeks and attempting to keep up with Partnership Development, and you have a recipe for one Overwhelmed Mama.

After Dale’s arrival yesterday morning on the red-eye from Luanda, Angola, we took the kids to my amazing parents’ house while we had lunch with our representative from a partnering church.  We got home before rush hour in time for dinner and bedtime. We helped a friend prepare to move, visited the Apple store in an attempt to fix the aforementioned technological failure, and visited our alma mater, Houston Baptist University for an Alumni Association tailgate party to celebrate the opening of our new football stadium.  In all of this chaos, our children had enough.  Let’s just say they were not their usual selves and were pretty out of control by the time we got to HBU.  Adding to their craziness were heat, overstimulation, and cookies.  After we finally arrived home and everyone was finally asleep (including my jet-lagged husband), I made a feeble attempt to keep up with the housework before sitting down.

Our schedule is not firm, my house is out of control, I feel like I am disappointing people left and right, I have made and discarded so many plans it is comical, and I can’t remember the last time I had quality alone time during the waking hours.

This is where my reflection begins. A series of beautiful hymns cued onto my playlist including “Blessed Assurance”, “What A Friend We Have in Jesus”, and “Just As I Am”. God spoke to my overwhelmed, anxious heart with His words of peace and assurance. The familiar lyrics continue to echo in my heart and mind and waves of peace wash over my soul.

As I sit here with the dishwasher swishing and the dryer tumbling in the background, I am reminded once again that this calling is not about me. It is not about us. It is about a holy God who has planned these moments in our lives for his glory. The same God who controls the galaxy controls my days. The familiar words of Psalm 46:10 come to my mind. “Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

Therefore, I am sitting here tonight in peace and patient anticipation of what God will do in and through us during the next days, weeks, and months as we transition into full-time service with Wycliffe. I don’t have any more information about the date we will finish our partnership development, who God will call to complete our financial partnership team, or what date we will get on a plane to fly to Germany. However, all of that matters so much less which I remember that it’s not about me, my plans, or my agenda. It is about God’s Word, His Plan, and His agenda.  My job is wait.  My prayer is that He will show me what He is teaching me in the waiting.

This is Soyo. It’s as far north and west as you can go in Angola without crossing the Congo into the DRC. I’ve spent about four or five months here and in Luanda over the last 4 years.

The photos in this post are nothing special—in fact, the only distinguishing characteristic many might be able to discern is how incredibly unremarkable they are. But for me, they represent the parting shots of two cities which have played a significant role in my life in the last four years.

As you read this post, I’ll be arriving in Houston from Luanda, Angola. Right now, as I write, I’m sitting in the Taag Airlines lounge listening to a deafeningly loud chime announce the departure of yet another flight. I’m tired and I miss my family, as I’ve not seen them for nearly two weeks. But I’m also a bit sad to be leaving.

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It has been a little while since we posted, so I just wanted to check in very quickly with some updates on what we have been doing.

Dale is finishing what is probably his last business trip to Angola.  This is a destination he has visited frequently over the last few years and has become very familiar to him.

We have been busy reading and preparing for our upcoming Intercultural Communications Course (ICC) that is scheduled to begin October 2 in North Carolina.  We are very excited about the course materials and are particularly enjoying Cross-Cultural Servanthood; Serving the World in Christlike Humility by Duane Elmer.

In addition, we have been busy with school, visiting with cousins from all around the country, field trips, doctor’s appointments (to get everything settled before we leave), getting the house ready, and selling things in preparation for our departure.  We even had family photos taken with all 19 (!!!) of us.

Sunset at the South Rim – View to the East Northeast from Maricopa Point, on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arizona.

A couple years ago, the whole family went with some friends to the Grand Canyon. We took our time getting there from Phoenix, and we arrived late in the day. We had an hour or two to walk around and explore as the day was drawing to a close and the sun began to set. With Miranda’s permission, I wandered off and found my own little outcropping from which to make a few photographs. As I stood there on that precipice, I felt incredibly small against the amazing, God-made, beautiful vastness of that canyon, carved out of rocks over the course of centuries past.

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We had a great time this past weekend reconnecting and hanging out with many old friends from our time in Phoenix.

On Friday night, we hosted a dessert night at the Campus Christian Center in Tempe, across the street from ASU’s campus, and were able to meet with a few families from our former church.

On Saturday, we spent some time with our friends Ben and Sarah, and then went to another friend’s home, where we were able to meet with some more friends and share a bit about what God’s doing in our lives.

And, finally, on Sunday, we were able to worship and fellowship with lots of friends from Church on Mill, our spiritual home while we were in Phoenix for the two years we lived there. After church, we had a fun lunch with a number of couples from our “Young Married” Sunday School class (and all their new babies), and then visited our former pastor and his wife at their home.

We thought we’d share some photos of our weekend, mostly from Church on Mill.

Tuesday, we got to spend the afternoon at the Houston Museum of Natural Science with the fabulous Aunt Amelia!  I hope you enjoy a few pictures!

Everybody loved the butterfly exhibit!

Two butterflies landed on Wolverine!

Phoenix explores in the hands-on exhibit

Cyclops checks out the terrarium

Nightcrawler is making a cloud!

Wolverine loved the cloud machine too!

Beast and Nightcrawler making waves.

We are so thankful for the opportunity to spend time exploring Houston before we leave!  Training starts in just over 2 months and then on to begin our full-time positions.  If you want to know more about our assignment and our move, please click here

*We will be working for the Wycliffe Global Alliance after we complete our partnership development and move into our full-time roles.  In order to help explain how the Wycliffe family of organizations works together, we thought a little explanation might help.  We hope you enjoy this post, borrowed from our team leader’s blog.

I love this photo of one of the table groups from our meetings here in Asia.  Actually, we know most of these people.  We’ve even been to some of their countries.  Seven people – seven different countries.  These are leaders of Wycliffe organizations in six countries as well as the director of the Africa Area for the Wycliffe Global Alliance. Each person represents a part of the global Bible translation movement. Each one is connected to an organization that is part of the Wycliffe Global Alliance.

You might be wondering, so what exactly is the Wycliffe Global Alliance?  I thought you worked for Wycliffe Bible Translators.  Actually, both are true.

We are a part of an organization in the USA called Wycliffe Bible Translators, USA, and we are a part of an international organization called the Wycliffe Global Alliance for which Wycliffe USA is a part.

For those of you who give to us, whether you give directly to Wycliffe USA or give through another Wycliffe organization, eventually all gifts to our ministry are sent to Wycliffe USA for processing.  We also receive lots of support services in addition to finances from Wycliffe USA like insurance, retirement planning and some of our training.  Wycliffe USA also serves us and Bible translation in general by advocating for Bible translation in our home country.  Some of you may remember that we also both used to work at the Wycliffe USA office.

However, Bible translation is not just a movement of Americans who serve in the US and abroad.  It’s a global movement.  Just like Wycliffe USA participates in Bible translation, so, too, do another more than 100 organizations around the world.  Each organization serves in Bible translation in different ways.  Some provide resources (like funds, people, and prayer), others serve primarily in promotion or church engagement, and others lead Bible translation programs.

The Wycliffe Global Alliance  is the place where these organizations come together to participate in the Bible translation movement.  It is an organization of organizations, providing opportunities for more and more people to take part in this critical aspect of God’s mission by helping to create an environment for greater and broader participation.  Collectively, the Alliance serves in advocacy with minority language communities to see God’s Word translated, accessible and in use in every language community that still needs it.

For the last several years, we have been seconded by Wycliffe USA to serve on the staff of the Wycliffe Global Alliance.  While we still see and interact with many of our colleagues from Wycliffe USA, it’s been exciting to expand our network and experience with our international community.  We’ve personally seen how God is raising up people from every corner of the globe to participate in this one facet of His mission.

I love how one of our colleagues from Denmark put it.  She says, “Wycliffe needs people from all countries, cultures and language groups. It signals that this is really what the Church wants to do. We are all in this together.” Read what else she had to share.

(The Wycliffe Global Alliance was previously called Wycliffe International.  Read the background about the name change here.)

Translator Lee Bramlett was confident that God had left His mark on the Hdi culture somewhere, but though he searched, he could not find it. Where was the footprint of God in the history or daily life of these Cameroonian people?  What clue had He planted to let the Hdi know Who He was and how He wanted to relate to them?

Then one night in a dream, God prompted Lee to look again at the Hdi word for love. Lee and his wife, Tammi, had learned that verbs in Hdi consistently end in one of three vowels. For almost every verb, they could find forms ending in i, a, and u. But when it came to the word for love, they could only find i and a. Why no u?

Lee asked the Hdi translation committee, which included the most influential leaders in the community, “Could you ‘dvi’ your wife?”  “Yes,” they said. That would mean that the wife had been loved but the love was gone.

“Could you ‘dva’ your wife?” “Yes,” they said. That kind of love depended on the wife’s actions. She would be loved as long as she remained faithful and cared for her husband well.

“Could you ‘dvu’ your wife?”  Everyone laughed. “Of course not!  If you said that, you would have to keep loving your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got you water, never made you meals. Even if she committed adultery, you would be compelled to just keep on loving her. No, we would never say ‘dvu.’ It just doesn’t exist.”

Lee sat quietly for a while, thinking about John 3:16, and then he asked, “Could God ‘dvu’ people?”

There was complete silence for three or four minutes; then tears started to trickle down the weathered faces of these elderly men. Finally they responded. “Do you know what this would mean?  This would mean that God kept loving us over and over, millennia after millennia, while all that time we rejected His great love. He is compelled to love us, even though we have sinned more than any people.”

One simple vowel and the meaning was changed from “I love you based on what you do and who you are,” to “I love you, based on Who I am. I love you because of Me and NOT because of you.”

God had encoded the story of His unconditional love right into their language. For centuries, the little word was there—unused but available, grammatically correct and quite understandable. When the word was finally spoken, it called into question their entire belief system. If God was like that, did they need the spirits of the ancestors to intercede for them? Did they need sorcery to relate to the spirits? Many decided the answer was no, and the number of Christ-followers quickly grew from a few hundred to several thousand.

The New Testament in Hdi is ready to be printed now, and 29,000 speakers will soon be able to feel the impact of passages like Ephesians 5:25:  “Husbands, ‘dvu’ your wives, just as Christ ‘dvu’-d the church…”  I invite you to pray for them as they absorb and seek to model the amazing, unconditional love they have received.

Around the world, community by community, as God’s Word is translated, people are gaining access to this great love story about how God ‘dvu’-d us enough to sacrifice his unique Son for us, so that our relationship with Him can be ordered and oriented correctly. The cross changes everything!  Someday, the last word of the last bit of Scripture for the last community will be done, and everyone will be able to understand the story of God’s unconditional love.

* Article adapted from a letter by Bob Creson titled One Little Vowel, published to staff of Wycliffe USA on 30 July 2012. Click here to see original article

* Photo by Zeke du Plessis – Two women photographed in a city not far from where the Hdi live.

We hope you enjoy this short video about why we believe Bible translation is important.

Why Bible Translation from Wycliffe USA on Vimeo.