We do appreciate your prayers.  Mark is taking a full load and enjoying every bit of it.  The professors are wonderful and have gone quite out of their way allowing him to make adjustments which make the studies applicable to his work.  He also works with the Japan ViBi team at nights via IM chat and web cam to continue the Genesis translation there. Right now they are working on the 4th draft of Genesis 36-42. They will be starting the meaning check on Monday, make revisions based on their findings for the next week or so, and hope to have the recording done by early July.  

The large skies are blue and green grass is everywhere.  Ducklings following their mother in the coulee and bunny rabbits nibbling grass are a nice change from the mean Tokyo crows strewing garbage around our streets. Yes, we’re acclimating to the culture and surroundings---though the cafeteria serves “chicken fried beef” (?) and rarely do we see an Asian face in town.    

We do appreciate your prayers.  Mark is taking a full load and enjoying every bit of it.  The professors are wonderful and have gone quite out of their way allowing him to make adjustments which make the studies applicable to his work.  He also works with the Japan ViBi team at nights via IM chat and web cam to continue the Genesis translation there. Right now they are working on the 4th draft of Genesis 36-42. They will be starting the meaning check on Monday, make revisions based on their findings for the next week or so, and hope to have the recording done by early July.  

Last week Mark became sick and we’re thankful for the clinic here which saw him promptly.  He’s feeling better now.  Please pray as there are so many opportunities to be had here this summer with a larger than usual Deaf group participating in classes this session.  He had hoped to make this his last summer at SIL, but needs to carry a very full load to do so.

Anna’s health is much better this summer and she’s enjoying classes more.  She had hoped to do some research (an ethnography relating to siblings of disabled persons) with a group Daniel had been involved with while here in 2002.  However that doesn’t seem to be working out.   This is quite disappointing as her graduation date hinges on this being done.  Her neck is less painful, and she is faithful to do the stretches.

Mary Esther plays go-fer at the office 20 hours a week and is participating in a Second Language Acquisition (Mandarin) class.  She’ll probably down-size to auditing the course to allow her more time to work on the wheelchair project.  The TA for her class is a lady who has lived overseas in Asia and they’ve enjoyed comparing notes on culture and language learning.

Our email via the university network still has many kinks to be worked out.  Today Mary Esther received over 130 emails which have been hiding out somewhere.  Hopefully, those of you on the non-yahoogroups list will be getting this post too--we think we have everything up and running. At any rate, if you need to get a hold of us and we don’t seem to be answering, please feel free to call our room at (701) 777-5756 or our cell phone at (408) 821-9240.

Thanks for praying. It was a while ago now, but we're thankful for a great time at Pioneer. They are not a big church, but they certainly are a praying church.  During the morning service the pastor asked for updates on various in attendance and then he and others of the congregation prayed, leading us all as we gave thanks and also interceded for brothers and sisters there and around the world.

New Questions:

I remember the first time I was at a grocery store here in the US and the cashier asked “paper or plastic?”  Japan uses only plastic bags and I thought she wanted to know if I was paying with cash or credit card.  Wrong!

This last week while eating with friends at a Mexican restaurant in New Mexico and after placing my order the waiter asked me “red or green?”  I had no idea how to decipher this either. I learned it had to do with a reference for red or green chilies with my meal. 

And in case we didn’t realize from the “red or green” question that we were not in Tokyo, we quickly realized it when three large tumbleweeds came at us down the road as we watched the large Texas sunset across the spacious plains unhindered by telephone and power lines.  

Car Blues

Our blue Neon has hit 100,000 miles.

About 350 miles before it turned over, and three hours out of Albuquerque (on our way to Kansas City), the check engine light went on.  We didn’t know any mechanics in that area, but a good friend of Anna’s from college and her family happened to be in Albuquerque that day.  We also thought of some coworkers in Japan whose parents live there.  We contacted them both and they both recommended the same mechanic.  He told us that the torque converter solenoid on the transmission needed replacing, not a big problem, but it had to go to an authorized dealer for repair. He advised us to drive slowly and see a dealership when we got the chance.  So we crawled across the rest of New Mexico, getting passed by large trucks that we had been flying past earlier. 

As we crawled along, we called a good friend to see what he had to say about the advice we'd gotten. When he asked about any other symptoms we decided that the car was bumping a bit more than before and shimmying some.  He told us that we had two problems, the obvious engine trouble, as well as belts separating in that back tire.  We stopped to investigate, but found nothing.  We continued to drive slowly which allowed us to enjoy the scenery.  We hoped to get up into the Oklahoma panhandle, to a town called Guymon, but going slowly (and changing two time-zones) we called it a night in a small Texas town called Dalhart. 

The next morning, Mary Esther took the wrong turn (that sounds better than "got lost") in the tiny town of  Dalhart while trying to find a grocery store, and came across a tire shop.  The man did a quick check, then immediately took off the back two tires (without even asking), and sure enough, the bald bulges explained the reason for the bumping.  We then learned that the night before a tornado had touched down in Guymon, so it was fortuitous that we had been driving slowly and weren’t up against a tornado that night.

In Kansas City, besides seeing Mary Esther's parents and fixing the car, we had a Sunday at Blue Ridge Bible Church, a small group meeting from Heartland Church, and got to visit some friends before heading on to Grand Forks North Dakota.

We made it safely, finished orientation, have our class schedules, and are all three looking forward to our studies. Thanks for praying us through this far!

Mark and Mary Esther