This past week Joel had a language evaluation and he is now officially at the level he needs to be at. After a year and half of work it feels so good for him to be done. This is a huge relief to us as it now means that only one of us is trying to get in language hours. I of course am still chugging along. The last stretch is the most work with the least visible progress so you can pray that I will keep motivated to push forward. My goal is to finish by the end of this year, but there are times when I doubt the accessibility of that goal. I do feel like recently I turned a corner in my speaking, which was encouraging, but I am well aware of the distance I have left to travel.
The Near Future
As Joel waits to for me to be done with French, he will be filling-in some important holes in our mission. We have had a lot of new missionaries arrive to the West Africa field and we have more on the way, but we don’t have the information needed to determine what villages we will send them out to. So in September he is going to be trained to do some of this research. He will then make 2 trips out to Burkina Faso to visit possible village works and gather information. This is a huge task, so pray for him. Pray for our family too as it will mean a lot more travel and separation than we would like, but we believe it is what God has for us right now.
Joel will also continue to pour himself into our church and the ministries there. We have new believers here we are disciplining and some new African missionaries and pastors that we want to encourage.
Vacation
My parents arrived today and we are incredibly excited. We are excited to share our life with them and will also be taking some time of vacation with them. This couldn’t come at a better time and we are hoping that it will be time of refreshment for us all.
Great job Joel! praise God for the progress! Andi, I am praying for rest for you while your parents visit and that your drive to nail French will be greatly increased when you get back to it. Love you guys and think of you so often its hard to believe how long you have been gone. So so so thankful for your blog posts.
WooHoo, What good news. Joel is up to speed in his language classes, Your parents are there visiting, You get to take some vacation and spend quality time with them and most importantly you have new converts in your midst. Our God Is GOOD.
Be blessed my friends, We at home will be praying for all of you.
Carolyn