It’s Thanksgiving today, and we’ve been in Asia-Pacific for 11 days now. We had a Thanksgiving dinner last Saturday with the other NTMers here. It’s been hard to think of it as Thanksgiving with this warm, humid weather, but we’re still definitely very thankful to God for guiding us here and for all of you who have been involved in that.
We haven’t officially started our language study yet, but we’re in what they call the ‘warm-up’ stage. We try to get out and meet our neighbors, take the angkot (like a city bus) to figure where things are at in town, use what few phrases we’ve learned and get used to the sounds of the language. This Saturday, some of our friends who’ve been here longer, are taking us to a bigger city to do some shopping. Some things just aren’t available here.
This morning, we went to a International Christian school and applied for Elroy and Evangeline to attend there next semester. The school is only about a mile away, and if they go there, we would take them on the angkot in the morning and pick them up by the same way when they’re done. We have to wait two months before we can start riding our own motorcycles around, and we’re already very anxious for that. But it is good that we will get a little more accustomed to the way things work around here.
In another week and a half or so, we will begin our official study of the language. I, Lincoln, am expected to put in 40 hours per week on this, and Alisha 20-30 hours. As much as I love language stuff, it is a little scary to think of all that we need to do.
Praise:
-We’ve got our house pretty much set up
-We’ve met a couple neighbors and learned some phrases
Prayer:
-We want to start building relationships with some of our neighbors
-That we will both be able to learn the language well
Thanks!
The McIlroys
