{"id":471,"date":"2017-04-27T00:18:34","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T04:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/?p=471"},"modified":"2017-07-25T23:48:10","modified_gmt":"2017-07-26T03:48:10","slug":"471","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/2017\/04\/27\/471\/","title":{"rendered":"Travels, Past and Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-473 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/files\/2017\/04\/DSCN4067-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/files\/2017\/04\/DSCN4067-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/files\/2017\/04\/DSCN4067-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/files\/2017\/04\/DSCN4067-600x450.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Stepping into the boat to cross the muddy jungle river felt in some ways like stepping back in time to when we lived in a village not too far from the one I was about to visit.\u00a0 Last week the Lord gave me (Jennifer) the opportunity to travel back to our former island and help give a stage 1 evaluation to a family who is learning a small ethnic language in the jungle.\u00a0 This was my first experience helping to give evaluations in a language other than the national language.\u00a0 There are some extra steps involved in the process since we, the evaluators, don\u2019t speak the language we\u2019re giving the evaluation in.\u00a0 The only other time I\u2019ve seen that process is when I was being evaluated in\u00a0Hobongan.\u00a0 Thankfully my coworker, Kathryn, has a little more experience.\u00a0 We were both encouraged that the results were clear, the family has made great progress so far, and we were able to give them some direction for how to keep progressing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>While I was gone to our former island for 6 days, DJ was home taking care of the kids, shuttling them to and from school, and keeping up with his own ministry responsibilities.\u00a0 He and the workers he oversees moved the furniture and appliances out of another rental house that we are returning to the owner since we don\u2019t have any more new families<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-472 alignright\" style=\"text-align: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/files\/2017\/04\/DSCN4050-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/files\/2017\/04\/DSCN4050-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/files\/2017\/04\/DSCN4050-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/files\/2017\/04\/DSCN4050-600x450.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>\u00a0coming this year.\u00a0 Keep praying for new co-laborers here.\u00a0 We hear that there is renewed interest in our field among those who have recently finished missionary training and are currently raising support, so by next year we should start getting at least some new families again.\u00a0 In the meantime, only having a few families here right now has given me opportunities to work on some long-term curriculum revision projects as well as to travel and get more experience in other areas of consulting.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of traveling, next month I\u2019ll be striking out on my own again, this time for nearly a month.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been asked to attend some culture &amp; language acquisition development meetings in Missouri from May 22-30.\u00a0 And then, since I already have to fly to the other side of the world for the meetings, I\u2019m planning to fly home to Texas for 2 weeks to spend some time with my family.\u00a0 This will be the first time I\u2019ve been home since my Maw Maw passed away, the first time I\u2019ve ever been home from the field without DJ and the kids or for such a short visit, and the first time we\u2019ve been apart as a family for this long (almost a month.)\u00a0 So you can imagine there will be quite a few emotions on all sides.\u00a0 We\u2019d appreciate prayers for that as well as for the travels, logistics, etc.\u00a0 We\u2019re very thankful that our mission\u2019s international ministries team is paying for my international tickets as well as for food and lodging during the meetings.\u00a0 So we\u2019ll just need to cover the trip to Texas and incidentals.<\/p>\n<p>This trip does mean that I will miss Areli and Galilee\u2019s 6<sup>th<\/sup> grade graduation, as well as Tyndale\u2019s 9<sup>th<\/sup> birthday.\u00a0 It was a hard choice to make about whether or not I should even go, but it wound up becoming very clear that it was very important in order for us to understand and contribute to the direction our mission is going in providing good consultant help and culture\/language learning direction for our coworkers.\u00a0 I\u2019m the only consultant who can attend from our field, and this is probably the only year where the workload is light enough here in our location for me to even consider a trip like this.\u00a0 All that to say, we do believe the Lord is directing me to go, but please pray that the kids will be able to understand and still enjoy celebrating these milestones in their lives.\u00a0 Also pray for DJ as he takes care of them and keeps up with ministry responsibilities, since only one other of our teammates will be on-location during that time.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks so much for praying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stepping into the boat to cross the muddy jungle river felt in some ways like stepping back in time to when we lived in a village not too far from the one I was about to visit.\u00a0 Last week the Lord gave me (Jennifer) the opportunity to travel back to our former island and help [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":316,"featured_media":518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[448,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-ethnos360","9":"tag-new-tribes-mission","10":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}