Mary Esther has spent hours getting ready for her “extension of stay” permit as her visa expires on Monday.  It’s amazing what paper work is required and what can “go wrong” in the process.  The “good” part—she has gotten a lot of reading done while sitting in lines at the City Office waiting for the paper work to be processed.

Mark’s been catching up on work for his upcoming two weeks absence.  He goes to Nairobi tomorrow.  It’s a 22 hour trip.  We’re thankful he has real plane tickets for this trip.  Please pray for him as he learns about Sign Language translation consulting and meets the members for the Kenya, Ethiopia, Burundi, and Zambia Sign Language translation teams that work with DOOR (Deaf Opportunity OutReach). 

Yesterday the news from “Y” is that a Deaf gang boss in her city approached her saying a Deaf man had come to him needing income, but the man didn’t want to be involved in thievery.  The gang boss knew where in the city to go—he asked “Y” if she wouldn’t please employ the man.  We are thankful for the Light that is shining brightly there.  Please continue to pray for “Y”, that she will succeed in building a company that can employ people like this. She is looking to get into internet sales, but is struggling with the computer end of things. Also, she has moved to a more provincial area recently, and overcome incredible challenges living in primitive conditions.  

Thank you for your prayers for our return trip.  We got the last two seats on the red-eye going from San Francisco to Atlanta.  We were both in middle seats with very little wiggle room for sleeping, but you know what they say:  “Any seat on the plane is better than any seat in the terminal.”  Our biggest question was the Atlanta-Japan flight. It was overbooked--we checked on line and coach seats were selling in the $3,000 range, and had figured out who would go on ahead to Japan if only one seat was available.  Imagine our surprise when we got the call and were handed business class seat assignments!  Not only that, the plane arrived an hour and a half early, so we walked out the door of the airport just 30 minutes after touching down. The young single Deaf man who stayed in our place over the summer left it in terrific shape, and we are glad to be back home.  

ME:  And we definitely ARE back home. Today I went to get my hair cut.  I had waited all summer to get back before cutting my hair and looked forward to the shoulder massage and catching up on the latest news.  We talked about the weather and summer travels and of course food.  I told how we had been in a part of America that grew lots of potatoes, that we had potatoes to eat every day, and that in Grand Forks there is even a shop specializing in chocolate covered potato chips.  The response: “Did you try one?  Did it taste good?  I don’t care for all those different flavors of potato chips! My favorite potato chips are sea-weed flavored."  Yup, I am most definitely back in Japan again! North Dakota and the last 9 weeks are a very long way away. We enjoyed our nine weeks of "chocolate", but are glad to be back to "seaweed" life again.

We are trying to catch up on work the next few days before heading north to be at the Yamagata Deaf church on Sunday, and then relax for a few days up North before Mark leaves for Kenya, where he will be doing Sign Language Bible translation consulting. 

Greetings from Burley --we are on the road.  We left UND yesterday right after class ended at 9AM and by 2AM this morning we had been driving for 17 hours.  We kept awake by listening to lectures on Genesis and rolling down the window to admire the stars and Milky Way.  Going through the narrow Yellowstone Park road Anna's prayer was answered when she didn't hit a deer that suddenly crossed right in front of us. 

After the long hours in the car we were looking forward to getting to our motel in Jerome about 30 minutes away when the car stopped.  Two hours later, the tow truck came for us and we are now waiting to see if we will be on the road again soon. There are two possibilities.  1) It's just the timing belt, and we can be on our way in four today.  2) The valves were bent (or worse) when the engine suddenly stopped, and we need to replace the head. Scenario 2 is the more likely, they say, since we were traveling 80mph when it happened.

Pray!  We should know which it is in a couple of hours.

We thought we needed to be in CA for church tomorrow. God knows.