Somewhere Between 2 to 11 Years Old

Test 2 is finished.  One more book to go before we move to Papua.  All the students at our school who are working on their 5th or 6th book say, "Watch out, book #3 is the hardest!!!!"  GULP!  "How can it get any harder?" we ask ourselves.  On this test we wrote over 60 sentences.  40 of those from different vocabulary words.  20 in a story format about any random topic that they chose.  Then we had to talk on 1 of 20 topics (again random) for 10 minutes.  I shared about when a person asks for help suddenly.  My story went all the way back to college when I was a student nurse and a student came to me having just fallen off his motor cycle.  For 2-3 hours I picked glass out of his leg and cleaned it. "Saya berkota, 'Jangan niak speda motor lagi.  Dia berkota, 'Saya akan niak speda motor lagi!'" (I said, Don't ride your motor cycle again.  He said, I will ride my motor cycle again!).   Many years later, he came to our church and asked if I remembered praying with him.  I did not.....  but no real surprise.... I love to pray with my patients!  So I was also able to blabber on about this in Indonesian about how I love to give support to my patients by praying with them, etc.  Darron talked about joyful and happy experiences....the birth of his four boys!  Aubrey talked about talking with close friends.  Andrew talked about meeting with friends.

 So you can see how diverse our language skills are getting.  And yet at times we all still feel like a 2 year old.  So we are somewhere between age 2 and 11 in our skills.  It's pretty random, depending on the day, the setting, the context and our brain recall!!!

Thanks for your prayers.  We need all the help we can get.  We plan to take a trip to the Safari on our break.  People have told us that the lions and tigers will come right up to your car windows.  Friends have hugged dolphins.  So we are excited to let our minds rest and explore our world.