It has obviously been too long since we have blogged (8 months of silence here is likely a record for us). So what has gone unrecorded in 2022? In January, James navigated passports, visas and international airports on his own for the first time to spend a month at Christmas with us. In February, we all helped our Cameroonian church throw a huge wedding celebration for good friends Yvan and Chella. Then Kim got her third round of COVID and following viruses that felt much like long-COVID. We would not learn for another 6 months that faulty thyroid medication was part of the chronic sickness that happened for months on end. In March, Kent flew off to Kenya to present his orthography methods at a worldwide conference, and stay another 3 weeks to help 3 langauges from 3 other African countries specifically with their tone studies. He was back in the same neighborhood where we lived as newlyweds in 1999-2000. It was fun to see how much had changed in that time! He also enjoyed worship and fellowship with our two best Kenyan friends, who are still like family to us. We also got news that Kim's brother got engaged! In April & May, Kim was balancing subbing, occasional Literacy work, and homeschooling Anna as she finished her first year of high school and Joel finished his first 'college-level' course online. Kent completed the next stage of development on AZT software adding functions to sort vowels and consonants, as well as tone! In June, we helped several colleagues pack up to leave or move back to the US/Canada. Then we treated ourselves to a week in Istanbul - the most international city any of us have ever visited! Istanbul was a wonderful halfway point between Anna studying World Geography and Ancient History, and we all enjoyed ourselves. In July, we landed back in Texas one hour before the Fireworks shows began on the 4th. James picked us up at the airport for a change, and God orchestrated so beautifully a donated home for us to stay all together, and cars to drive for a few weeks. We got to catch up with what He is doing in our home church there, visit with many partners, eat lots of ice cream, berries and Chic-Fil-A. We managed to fit in doctors, dentist, orthodontist, 2 driver's permits, a week with Kim's parents and a week of violin camp too. James showed us his life in Austin, and we left him there to spend a week of ministry to freshman college guys at UT. And now August is wrapping up! We flew back August 3rd. God managed to line up our two airplanes next to each other, the incoming flight from the US and the outgoing flight to Cameroon were next door to each other! We landed 2 hours late, walked off one gangway, turned around and walked right on the last boarding call! We had our feet on airport tiles for about 5 minutes! That has never happened to us in hundreds of flights! God knew we had a deadline and needed to get home to Cameroon before Kim's paperwork expired the next day. He's so good!We've got our house up and running for the year, Kent is back in his office, and Joel has started his senior year back at RFIS, where Kim serves on the school board. This week we celebrated a second church wedding with our local church family, and our front yard flowers have become the hot place to get photos taken. Anna is loving her Advanced Chemistry class the best so far, and Kent is traveling out to a workshop soon. I'll save that for the September news!
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