Never a dull moment...

As I look back at the weeks that have passed, I realize that there is always something going on and that we have had very little time to be bored. 

Since we have settled into a more regular school routine, we decided it was time to get the girls involved in a sport of some kind.   About 20 minutes up the street is Brandy Johnson's Global Gymnastics, so all three girls now go to gymnastics on Tuesday afternoons.  They have all taken gymnastics in the past, so they felt right at home and fell in love with their coaches.

This week we were blessed to be invited to attend a field trip with the home school ministry at church, so on Thursday morning we loaded up with lunch in hand and headed about an hour east to the Wycliffe Discover Center.  This was an amazing place. 

A little background:  John Wycliffe was a man born in the 1300's, 200 years before the reformation.  He was a professor at Oxford and he believed that the bible should be translated into the "common" language, English, so that every one could read the Word for themselves; not just those that read Latin.  The Church at the time thought this was absurd and did everything it could to prevent him from doing so.  However, God had a different plan and in 1382 he was the first to translate the Bible into English at the expense of his teaching position.

Jump ahead now to this century and a young missionary in Guatemala was surprised to find that the Guatemalan people could not read a Spanish Bible.  So this man, Cameron Townsend, made it his life's mission to not only translate the Bible into other languages, but actually develop an alphabet and written language for those people of the world who had none.  This led him to found the Wycliffe Discovery Center in 1942.

Here are several pictures from our day at this very educational center.  The kids learned about the Bawaki people who are in need of a written language and bible translation.  They made prayer reminder cards that they have hung in their bedrooms.






Anything crafty is right up Sarah's alley.









They followed a trail around a map of the Pacific islands that Wycliffe missionaries visit and bring many, many different translations of the Bible to.














They also got a chance to dress up in some traditional clothing that one might find on any one of the Pacific islands. 







Later in the day, the kids were let loose on a scavenger hunt through the center's hands on exhibits that took us to many different parts of the world and showed us what our names looked like in 12 different languages, let us hear that the Mazateco People can actually whistle their language and taught us that people actually describe that living without the bible translated in their native language feels like living in the dark. 

This was definitely a highlight of our time here. 


The week ended with Mike flying to Albany, New York for his company's yearly get together and the girls and I laid around the pool and ended up at the Magic Kingdom.  This picture shows the new Fantasy Land that is being built and due to open sometime next year.  You can see the progress on Belle's castle.  Very exciting.