For my friends in Zambia . . . What is going on with the Ninas family?
I am sitting in Stephen's room typing this. Stephen is 19 years-old, and a sophmore in computer science at West Georgia Technical College. He is in Kansas somewhere right now pitching his tent and getting ready to start a fire for his dinner. You might remember that Maribeth worked at Latigo Ranch last summer as a wrangler. Stephen is working at Latigo this summer as a cowboy maintenance man. He is hoping to get winter work and winter-over in Colorado. He is driving to Kremmling, Colorado, and should be there by Wednesday. He is camping his way across the country. If he can find work next Spring, we may not see him till next summer. Lynne and I cleaned up his room, rearranged the furniture, and I am using it as an office until he gets back.
Maribeth is finishing her junior year in Applied Linguistics at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. She will be home this Wednesday for a day before heading out to the Smokey Mountains to spend a week camping with Lynne and Lynne's parents. When they get back she has a week at home before heading to Dallas, Texas, to begin her internship with Pioneer Bible Translators. She will spend about 4 weeks in Texas, and then travel to East Asia for field work. She is going with a group to establish a translation work in an area that has 38 languages (none have a Bible in their language). We may or may not see her after she gets back in the U.S. Not sure when she has to be back at Moody for her senior year, but she leaves Dallas August 8th after the debrief.
Lynne has her garden planted and has been harvesting asparagus and spinach. Over a week ago she killed her first crop of rabbits (6) and cleaned them for the freezer. Mega bunny (our mother bunny is huge) already has another litter of 6-7. We have 6 new egg laying chickens who are growing in the pen with the bunnies. Of the chickens we had this time last year 3 are still alive and laying. Coyote or something got a couple of them. We still have two goats, and are thinking about breeding them to get milk and a baby goat to sell.
As a teacher, I have to take professional development classes to re-certify every 5 years. This past fall I started the Georgia Department of Education's ESOL endorsement classes. Last month I took the test and received my Reading certification for Pre-K through grade 12. Why ESOL? One the assistant principals at Long Cane Middle School asked me that. First, you can get into a lot of countries as an ESOL teacher but not as a missionary. Second, I volunteer at the local Literacy Volunteers office, and they have need of someone who is certified ESOL. Lastly, it sounded interesting. Well, things have changed since I made that decision in October. I may have the opportunity to apply for an ESOL teaching position with my school system. They haven't announced the job yet, but one of the ESOL teachers retired, and there is a vacancy. Covet your prayers. So I spend evening and weekends working on my endorsement classes. I finish the last class June 28th. Even if I never get to use my ESOL or Reading, I have learned a lot that will make me a better classroom teacher.
That is what the current news is here at the Ninas Family Farm in LaGrange. We cooked our first rabbit last week and it was nowhere near as good as Abbey, Liz and Hilda cooked. There must be a secret they aren' telling me. Maybe I was supposed to massage those rabbits while they were alive to tenderize the meat. Anyway, hugs all around to my friends at New Day. I see the tower is getting a lot of visitors. I would love to see another sunset from there . . .
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| My first sunrise from the water tower. Paint on the ladder was green and wet. |
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