My Hope

  Old Brain Made New! Arabic makes my brain hurt on a daily basis.    It’s hard thinking about everything in the masculine, feminine or plural.    I’ve (almost) gotten used to reading from right to left and the different forms the letters take depending on where they’re located in the word.      It’s tricky and complicated working between different dialects since we’re living in Lebanon but ministering to Syrians and while most words are the same, many are not.      It’s also complicated working between formal Arabic and dialects.    Formal Arabic is used in most written texts, particularly religious writings, but is not spoken by the general public.    Just imagine that everything was written in the style of the King James Bible (or older) but spoken as we do now.    I tell you this not to complain, but rather to give a glimpse into why Arabic is considered one of the hardest languages for native Engli...

We just got back to Clarkston and in less than 24 hours I’ve visited multiple families, shared the importance in being obedient to God and had an international experience that one only finds here at the Clarkston Culture Fest!    It’s good to be ‘home’… for the next three weeks.    Then we’ll say goodbye to this home and make our way back to Bainbridge to get the girls settled before Tommy and I leave for a training in Lebanon.    Our lives over the next couple of months are going to be extremely transitional and segmented and as difficult as the constant goodbyes are going to be, we’re also looking forward to them.    I’m glad we aren’t just taking off from here without getting to see friends and family back at our other ‘home’.       We spent the last two weeks focusing on language learning…. Sort of.    We’ve really been focused more on how to be a language learner.    Americans are so used to only speaki...