[Sanford News] Rain, rain, don't go away...

Well I am sitting here at my desk at 5:30 in the morning as the strong NE winds are blowing thru the village.  The wind is great, but one of the problems with it, is that it is so strong that it carries most of the rain away from us.  We are now getting quite low on our water tank and periodically we have seen those wonderful black clouds that bring much needed rain, but we can only watch in horror as the wind whisks it off down the coast past us with hardly a drop unloaded into our tank.  So, we are thankful for the wind, but we do need rain.  Sometimes I think we can never be pleased.  If its rainy season – we want sun; if its dry season – we want rain.  Lucky for us God isn’t like the federal government.  Imagine if all of our flip flop prayers for sun or rain came in the form of petitions to the government?  By the time our request for rain made it to some Senate sub committee, we would be all dried up or we would be in rainy season and be ready to send another petition for sun.  Of course this is no negative comment on all you senators out there; we love and appreciate your…what’s the word…thoroughness?  Anyway…

 

Speaking of rain, all our talk about needing rain has brought some interesting comments from the people.  Although they do their best to put on the mask of religion and holiness, they freely admit that the rain is clearly not something that God has control of, but is the product and work of men.  Some have even said to us, “Why didn’t you tell us you need rain?  We’ll go to the rainmaker and have him bring some to you.”  Funny how my reaction to that is, “Yeah guys, little do you know I have already been to THE Rainmaker over this issue and He has it all under control.”  Anyway it has been a good reminder of their desperate need to come face to face with the Creator and to understand Him in truth and stand wholly on the Word of God. 

 

Please continue to pray for the Lujans as they get their house finished up and moved into.  It is a lot of work and their desire is to get into language study as soon as possible.  You can also be praying for us this coming week as we have our first language and culture evaluation.  Hopefully we will do ok and get an accurate picture of the progress we are (or aren’t) making and what we need to do to proceed.  It sort of feels like taking the SAT’s in high school, but man I hope I do a bit better on this test than the SAT’s…I was that legendary guy that thought all those little fill-in circles were dots for connecting so instead of figuring the square root of 235, I said, “it’s an elephant!”

 

Could you do it? Our regular section devoted to debunking the one of many myths people find for not going into missions- “I could never learn another language”.

Your mission – should you choose to accept it, will be to find the verbs used in the following sentences.  I will give you a series of sentences, and you need to break down the sentence and find the verb.  Remember that word order is not always the same as English.  For extra credit, locate the pronouns and define them too.  Your prize?  You get to go to Burger King and order a Whopper of your choosing – with or without onions (go without).

 

Ep bat kipung                                         It’s raining

Landon i burbur lon rumai                       Landon is sleeping in the house

U kukutus ep yai                                    You are cutting the tree

Met inan sai pirim                                   We are coming down

U nuki kenak ep bat elpung naunau         Do you think it is going to rain now?

Dit sik lon rumai                                     They are at the house

 

 

Lane & Karrie Sanford

New Tribes Mission – New Ireland Province

lane_sanford@ntm.org