With friends from Neil's hometown who work at JAARS
This week Joyce and I visited the second stop on our director orientation meeting tour: the JAARS Center, in Waxhaw, North Carolina. JAARS--an acronym that originally stood for "Jungle Aviation and Radio Service"--began in 1948. They support the technical side of Wycliffe's work worldwide. While in Waxhaw, we met with fund-raisers who focus on funding technical projects, such as netbooks and solar panels for Papua New Guinean Bible translators, satellite communication systems for Papua New Guinea's eight regional centres, and media and audio projects for remote Papua New Guinean communities (this project has funded many of the songwriting workshops I've facilitated). We also spoke with representatives from Communications, Transportation, Business as Mission (BAM), and others. As in Orlando, we enjoyed sharing about Papua New Guinea in an all-staff meeting.
If you are interested in supporting specifically the technical aspects of Wycliffe's global work, then please visit the JAARS website to find out how you might get involved.
Also, take a look at this short video, which shows how JAARS supports the work in Papua New Guinea. In addition to learning a bit about aviation, computer support, and IT, you'll see some gorgeous footage of our host country and interviews with friends and colleagues.
Spring semester at GIAL has a slightly more relaxed pace for me than the fall. My teaching load includes a number of distance-based classes, individualized directed studies with students, and supervising master's students as they write their theses. I don't have daily classroom teaching and preparation. This gives me time to focus on other important tasks, such as research, writing, speaking, and school committees. This month I was honored to be invited to Simpson University, in Redding, California, to spend time with several classes. Over just a couple of days, I spoke to four different classes. In those presentations, we looked at poetry by Emily Dickinson and Rainer Maria Rilke, excerpts from Shusako Endo's novel Silence , and ideas gleaned from Japanese American artist Makoto Fujimura. Those passages and concepts framed our story of working in Papua New Guinea for over 12 years, and the bigger picture of music and arts in missions. We pray that some of those stude...
Photo by Lou Stejskal This semester I’ve been working with our first World Arts student who’s writing a master’s thesis. Previous graduates have opted for the comprehensive exam option. Increasing the department’s capacity to mentor students through thesis writing is one of the reasons I was brought onto the faculty a couple of years ago. The faculty at that time were overloaded with teaching and administrative duties and couldn’t have taken on thesis supervision. This thesis is the first of four that I am currently working with, covering a range of fascinating topics and innovative, practical research. What is a World Arts thesis about? The one I’ve been spending time with this past week is a very interesting look at culinary arts and cooking in West African epic traditions. The student noted in her West African studies that a widespread epic story includes a number of key moments of cooking and eating. Scholarly study of this epic tends to focus on the ...
Here is a link to our year-end newsletter. Thank you so much for your prayer, encouragement and financial support throughout 2017! We appreciate you!! For to us a child is born, to us a son is given! Isaiah 9:6 A very merry Christmas to you and your family!
Yesterday was (going to be) an exciting day. Peter O'Neill, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, was visiting the Eastern Highlands Province, and as part of his visit he was planning to stop at our airstrip! All of us in the directorate planned to go out and meet him. We went to the airstrip at 8 a.m. to await the Prime Minister's arrival. By 10 a.m., he had not left Port Moresby yet. And by noon, he had decided not to stop at our airstrip after all. Here is (almost) the picture I expected to be posting to the blog, of me shaking hands with the Prime Minister: Somewhat disappointing, but it was still an interesting way to spend a Friday. Always nice to get out of the office. Waiting for the PM, with Eastern Highlands Province Governor Julie Soso
Here's a link to our new newsletter with updates and prayer items from the past few months. Thank you for your continued support! Summer Newsletter, 2019
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