All posts by Kimberly

Winter

Family

“It’s me. Hi! I’m the problem. It’s me.”

Most parents with a teenaged daughter could identify Taylor Swift’s ballad Anti-Hero. With a teenaged daughter in the house, we have all learned some Swiftie lyrics this year. And today, it’s my message to you also. I just want to say, if you haven’t seen many blog posts or read newsletters in your inbox this fall, you didn’t miss them. It is not you. It’s me. 🙂 It’s us.

We arrived back in Texas in August, moved the boys into their colleges and have set up our household again with the gracious help of several church families. As I write here in November, we’ve only got a couple family heirlooms and a lost pair of shoes to track down still from four years of storage with friends and family. We mistakenly believed we could afford a used vehicle, which has worked for us on so many other occasions. But we really failed to understand inflation and the 2023 used car market. We have been blessed to borrow some cars here and there, and God blessed us with a donated 17-year-old Ford Explorer named Frida, who has lots of life left. We continue to search for a used car and never imagined it would take months!

After the final battles in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien writes about some of the warriors going to the Houses of Healing. If I had to sum up where we are at this fall – it is in the Houses of Healing. We moved to Cameroon before the global pandemic and navigated a tumultuous 4-year term, including this past year under a high level of challenge in a variety of ways. The prevailing feeling is “battle-weary”.

Like little Jr. Asparagus in Veggie Tales returning from the pie wars with goop all over his face and his helmet on crooked, we need to heal. We need to catch up on many medical visits, to sleep, to attend to some particular emotional issues with our kids, and feed on God’s Word. It is tempting for us to jump right in to serving, but we are intentionally in a season of rest and healing. It feels like we are hibernating for winter in order to prepare for new spring growth.

It is always energizing and encouraging to share victorious stories with you, but this does not feel like one of those… yet. So we may be quieter than normal.
We may look a bit dazed and confused.
We are processing.
We are reconnecting with the friends and family we left behind.

We are resting.
We still need you all.

Moving Between Worlds

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a poem by colleague Sarah Gerig

When I move between worlds
my coffee always tastes bad.

I open the coffeemaker to dump in my grounds,
just like I did in my other world.

But my scoop is new — larger and deeper —
and I have to mentally adjust.

But my coffee is an unfamiliar brand,
with an unfamiliar flavor.
Will it be strong and bitter,
too heady and heavy,
turning my stomach with its bitterness?
Will it be weak and golden,
unable to renew my vigilance
and fill my mouth with its fullness?

When I move between worlds
the first cup is always disappointing to me
even when everyone else is licking their lips.
For I have not acquired the taste
for the coffee in this place.

When I move between worlds, the coffee tastes bad.

But before long, I learn
which brand suits my style
which scoop measures perfection
which mug fits best in my hand.

Then I know that I am home.

On a Golden Street

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by Anna Rasmussen (TCK 16 years old)

The selfies with friends on Anna’s phone from the past 6 months in 4 countries.

To all the friends I’ve left behind
To let you know, you’re on my mind…

I met you once; instant friends.
I had to leave; friendship ends.

I know I’ll see you face to face
In a different time, a different place

And you will tell me your whole tale
And I’ll treasure every last detail

My whole story, you’ll hear finally
How God has acted oh-so-timely

Somewhere on a golden street
I’ll laugh the moment our eyes meet

As we worship the God who hears
I’ll praise Him again that you are here

Until I see you in that place
Until I see you face to face
I wait and pray and hope to see
That you’ll be there right next to me.

Mr. & Mrs. John Sage!

Family,
John & Jennifer Sage

We were blessed to be able to be physically present for the wedding of Kim’s brother John Oct 21, 2022. We took a thousand pictures and videos, and obviously can’t fit them all here. We want to share a dozen or so for those who didn’t get to attend with us.

God has written a beautiful story of redemption with their lives, and the message of the day centered on the Old Testament book of Ruth and Boaz, the kinsman-redeemer. Jen was widowed with two young kids and God brought them together to be a family. <3 Jen is the perfect answer to prayers for a wife for John! In spite of a drizzly Seattle day, we had a beautiful farmhouse wedding and party! The unlimited coffee cart and photo booth were so much fun!

Anna’s gorgeous hair!
Mom & I getting ready!
Rasmussen men moved furniture before pictures. Very serious business.
Mother-Son portrait where no one knows where to look…
Anna played a 40-minute prelude solo set that she planned herself. <3
Adorable new family
Wedding Party
Uncle Kent, Josh, Dr. & Mrs. Sage during the ceremony
Auntie Kim & Bella twirled back down the aisle
Sages dance – they started dating 50 years ago!!!
Auntie Kim is my new favorite name!
Mom with all her wacky grandchildren!
Cousins Anna & Lena
Cousins Bella & Joel
Rejoice with us in all God has done for John & Jen!

Snap! Crackle. Boot…

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What started as a normal PE class on the morning of September 20, ended as a significant event in the life of our second son Joel. Every few weeks the class learns about and plays a different sport. This was their second day learning about the sport called rugby. Joel caught the ball, saw an opening and sprinted toward the goal line. Snap!

Out of the blue, he felt someone had thrown a 2×4 log of wood at his left calf. He fell into the endzone and scored, looking back for who had tackled him or thrown the wood. No one was there. He got up only to realize he could not put weight on his left leg. He was laid out on a picnic table and the school nurse couldn’t find any injury. They found him some crutches. The tallest they go was 5’11” and Joel is at least 6’4″, so that was less than ideal. After 2 days on crutches, he tried walking again. Within hours his foot turned a swollen blue and toes went numb. We had a prayer partner in the US write on Sept 24 with a burden to pray for our spiritual protection, and within 48 hours we were told to prepare for evacuation. The next week was spent sitting in hospital waiting rooms to see an orthopedic specialist, run tests, etc. By Oct 1 we were told he would need to evacuate ASAP for surgery for a torn Achilles.

Joel joking around outside the hospital. He couldn’t put weight on his foot, and couldn’t get a shoe on…

(You can see obviously that his crutches were too short here. And sadly with the humidity here, the silicone stoppers at the bottom busted open within a few days. He ended up getting tennis ball donations to keep walking on them, which worked, but not so well in mud/rocks – like our driveway…Crackle…)

So, as the Mom, I began a crash course in medical evacuation insurance! We have always paid for it, but thankfully never needed it. Until now. The surgery that was initially recommended was not available in this country. A therapy walking boot or physical therapy was also unavailable. We began extensive paperwork to quickly leave the country. One complication was that we already HAD tickets to leave Oct 12 to Seattle for Kim’s brother John’s wedding… If they evacuated us to the nearest facility (likely Paris, Nairobi or Johannesburg), then we would surely miss the wedding. It was God-ordained that Turkish Airlines would cancel our flight!

When we talked to our mission travel agent, we learned that Turkish Airlines had canceled our flights, so we got a FREE change of itinerary up to 1 week difference. Thank you Jesus! We moved our flights up 4 days to allow Joel time to see specialists in Seattle where family was already waiting for us and where friends had already found XL crutches! 🙂 Our evacuation insurance paid for Joel and Kent to travel First Class all the way over with wheelchair services!

Joel was not a fan of wheelchairs, especially when they skipped by the food spots…

Traveling internationally with wheelchair services was a learning experience. On the first leg, Joel still couldn’t extend his leg all the way and by the time we landed in Europe, his foot was purple/blue again… Twice I tried to bring him extra aspirin in First Class, but they didn’t want Coach passengers invading First Class space… We were at the mercy of the wheelchair services team. In Istanbul they were 30 minutes late and the crew of the airplane had left before the wheelchair team arrived, and they weren’t willing to take him by a restaurant, so he was left sitting alone at the gate for 90 minutes while we tried to get him some food.

We made it to Seattle! We saw the foot/ankle orthopedic surgeon and got an MRI same day. The ultimate diagnosis was a torn calf muscle underneath the Achilles that did NOT require surgery! They just happened to have an XL sized therapeutic boot and Joel was back on his feet in no time! The black color even matched his suit for the wedding! God was so good to us. We were given a few extra days to help Kim’s parents get moved into their new house before the wedding festivities began.

Joel dons his new walking boot outside Overlake Hospital where his uncle John was born.

The end result of our Snap-Crackle-Boot experiences were a greater compassion for anyone with mobility issues and a greater faith in the power of prayer. Joel was very humbled to constantly need help. He is usually the Helper, and now had to ask for help everyday with basic movement. It was a good discipleship experience! Lastly, we ended up with our first (and last) time in First Class and had 4 extra days with family to serve the Sages and get to know our new sister-in-law, niece and nephew! We can thank God for all our muscles and how they work and how they heal!

2022

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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!

My June 6 Ebenezer

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I will always remember where I was that warm Wednesday afternoon, standing in our tiny second-floor apartment in the living room of the married student housing for the University of Oregon. I had just walked in from teaching my sweet Grade 3 & 4 class at Lifegate Christian School. I was rocking the baggy denim teacher dress of the 90’s. Kent told me right away to check the answering machine (remember those?)

Returning from Kenya in 2000. We were babies!

See, we had been applying for membership in Wycliffe Bible Translators. We had met in Wycliffe training school, served overseas together for a year teaching Wycliffe kids/doing linguistics and felt very clearly called to pursue work somewhere in the world getting Bibles in the hands of those without. Kent had applied years before on his own in the middle of a dark season and been rejected. We were told we should finish his MA in Linguistics and reapply. He was entering his final year, so in January we had a friend ask a friend at Wycliffe Headquarters if we should reapply now. The news we received was crushing. They did not want us to reapply at all.

We got that call one dark, cold January night and immediately got on our faces. How had we followed Jesus down this path for so many years and now it was blocked? All doors closed. Not just closed, but bolted shut. Had we heard wrong? Did He really want us to do something different? We surrendered it to his hands, fell asleep and waited. A few days later, a call was scheduled with the Director of Recruitment. He had some questions. Because of my work schedule and the time difference, we were meeting over the phone at 6:00am. I am not sure exactly what happened in that 45-minute phone call, but it began with a list of all the reasons they never wanted to hear from us again, and ended with him begging us to reapply and that he would like to handle our application personally! (He even drove several hours out of his way the next month to meet with us personally on a business trip – and bought us fried chicken! Grad students cannot be picky.)

We were elated to see God miraculously open this door that seemed firmly closed. We began all the paperwork. There were forms to fill out, essays to write, Bible knowledge tests, interviews and finally medical exams. We were working around our full-time student and teacher roles, so it took a few months to get it all done. The Director had told us that they met to review applications once per month and the last meeting before summer holiday would be June 6. All of our papers were in except for my medical form from my doctor, which had been mailed from Oregon to Florida several weeks earlier.

We began to wonder if it were lost in the mail, or lost in their office, or just where it went! This too, felt like another obstacle that we did not understand, and that we were powerless to move. The Director was praying that it would arrive. We were praying that it would arrive. And day after day it was not there. The Director called us the day before the vote to let us know that it had not arrived, so our application was incomplete and we would need to wait another several weeks for the next meeting to vote. It was such a disappointment after we can come so far in so many months. We tried to trust in God’s timing.

As I hit “Play” on the message machine that June afternoon, the Director had called again. He described how he took the elevator down to the mail room on his way to the 9:00am meeting just in case my medical form had arrived extra early – and there it was! Who gets mail before 9:00am on a Wednesday morning? Right on the top of all the mail for the day was the very missing letter we had been praying for for weeks! And it arrived the hour before the meeting to vote. He was able to add it to our application, deemed it complete and present it to the board. They all unanimously voted us in as members of Wycliffe Bible Translators! What a message!

Revelation 3:7-8 say, “What he opens, no one can close; and what he closes, no one can open. I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can close.”

We had seen God open doors that were firmly bolted and locked, and these closed doors had taught us to keep our eyes on Him, not on our circumstances. There would be several times over the next few years that I looked back on this process in 2001, and because of how it all happened, I KNEW without a shadow of a doubt that we were on the path that Jesus chose for us to walk. It was a confirmation that kept us going through 9/11 (and flying to Wycliffe’s Training Camp right afterward), assignment to Eastern Congo when their president had just been assassinated, raising support, and so much more that followed that year.

June 6 is more to me than an ‘Ebenezer’ (rock of remembrance) about membership in Wycliffe Bible Translators – 20 years, it is an Ebenezer to God’s ways being higher than mine.

A New Thing

Family

Something very new and exciting is happening at our house! We have a new arrival.

It’s a bird!

It’s a plane!

No, it’s an app!

While Kent and I were cloistered with our kids during months of lockdown last spring, we saw trips and plans blow away like sand. He typically travels to villages where they want to work on their writing system, but we would never want to be part of bringing a remote group Coronavirus. There was no end in sight to the lockdowns, and no guarantees that the pre-COVID world we freely traveled would ever return. We could see that Kent’s alphabet work needed to shift to a certain extent in order to continue. We urgently want to see languages written/recorded before they die out and disappear. We urgently want to see communities have access to important written materials, Scriptures, health manuals, etc.

One afternoon as we were pondering all this, we dreamed up a new thing. What if there was a cell phone app that would allow the rural, local communities to work on their languages without a lot of help and training, and we could consult at least in part, at a distance? We could get a computer program to do much of the work that we would usually do in a workshop setting in a village. We would need something low-bandwidth for Central Africa (where most of the remaining unwritten languages are in this region). We would need something that was easy to use for folks who don’t have computer experience. It would need to handle databases that can archive online. There were several criteria.

We spent a few weeks corresponding with various IT colleagues in our offices around the world, hoping to find that others had already developed something close. There was one program which did part of what we needed, but we soon learned that it would not be supported in the future. There was another more complex program which required extensive training, but sadly it required constant internet access, which does not work in Central Africa. So finally, Kent decided he would just need to learn programming languages and write the program himself.

We named it A to Z and T, as it helps identify the vowels (like A), the consonants (like Z) and the tone system (T) in languages. AZT is a Dictionary Checker, and Orthography Checker and can record and play back audio of each word in the context of phrases (in various tone frames). It has the potential to be able to build alphabet charts or alphabet books. This all used to be done on paper cards sorted into piles. Now the computer does the sorting, but we kept the cards in the logo.

It was amazing to see Kent’s decades of linguistics, phonology and tone research merge with his love of computers, and to see that God wastes nothing. It is ALL useful! Beginning in July, he began to construct the bare bones of the program. Along the way, I consulted on the interface and making it easy to use and easy on the eyes. We have often wished for a way to work together better, but never imagined it would be like this. We spent September and October adding various functions. It is not yet ready for cell phones, but it is working on computers.

And this week Kent is running it with language data for the first time. It could be the birth of a new era in language development. There is a lot of potential yet to come. We are praying that God would use AZT far and wide to accelerate writing systems for unwritten languages throughout Central Africa.

ARC-EN-CIEL

Family

The ‘Arch in the Sky’ is the way the French say ‘rainbow’.

The little prop planes we took over the rainforest in Congo didn’t have instrumentation to fly through clouds and storms without visibility. So often we would get up in the air and then need to fly around isolated thunderstorms. Once we got to see lightning strike the earth from the top down! It was amazing. Another time we flew right up into a huge rainbow. I watched out the little round window to my right as the rainbow suddenly surrounded the entire plane!

I have been pondering circles, see SHALOM post here, and the rainbow is light and water surrounding us in a perfect circle. I used to always think about Noah and God’s promise in Genesis never to destroy the planet with a flood ever again. It made me smile to think of God’s promise every time I spotted the beautiful arches in the sky.

In the book of Revelation, God takes it to the next level. We get a glimpse of what the throne of God looks like and guess what is there?!

“And around the throne was a rainbow…” Rev 4:3

God is Light, in Him there is no darkness at all. And the full spectrum of light includes every color. God is surrounded by a rainbow. I have been thinking a lot about how this sign of promise is not only for us to look at, but it is also a sign for God to look at.

I have always loved color and blending/mixing colors. My childhood bedroom had rainbow plaid wallpaper, rainbow heart bedspread and a rainbow suncatcher (hey – it was cool in the 80s). But now I know the throne room of Almighty God is surrounded by a rainbow, the complete arc-en-ciel. Last month, I had been feeling compelled to paint this full-circle rainbow and kept putting it off. I had other things to do. Other tasks were more urgent. I delayed and delayed. I spent time in prayer one weekend and felt that I should paint it even more urgently. And still I put it off. You’re on thin ice when God asks you to do something and you drag your feet.

I kid you not, 24 hours after the prayer weekend ended (and I still hadn’t painted that rainbow circle), I went to take in laundry off the line and found two of the brightest rainbows in the sky I have EVER seen in my life. All the neighbors came out. Everyone stopped making dinner. We all just marveled and took pictures for at least an hour.

It felt like a clear nudge to me. I painted those circles the next day! They say a wedding ring is a symbol of covenant love because it does not have an ending or beginning. It surrounds. So is the rainbow like that? Like a heaven-sized wedding ring promising relationship? It feels like a hug from God for me to even think about it. Sneak Peek at my painting:

The Light is brightest on the inside. The darkness is on the outside. I will have to write more on this later. So many things in this Light… in these colors.

There are seasons of trial where we could all use a big hug from God, where we could all use a few minutes remembering his promises to his people. This ‘light and water vapor’ – it surrounds us all the time. We just can’t see it with human eyes all the time. It surrounds us. And it surrounds him too. Many many hard days this year, I have stopped to marvel at the spectrum of light that surrounds his throne.

We will be there.

It will be glorious.

And all will have real and complete justice and healing.

I have great hope in the mucky moments here and now because I can look to what is coming.

Hope you can too.

SHALOM

Family

Have you ever studied the Hebrew word ‘shalom’? It is a fascinating study! It means SO much more than the English word ‘peace’. It involves a wholeness, a wellness that surrounds all of the soul. My journey back to painting and the arts began in therapy in 2013. I was finding it difficult to describe my feelings and impressions after life in Congo. My therapist asked, “Could you paint them?” and immediately I rejected the idea. “No, I don’t think so,” I replied.

Oh me of little faith.

Suddenly, 2-3 images in bright color flashed across my mind. I reluctantly agreed to carry the basket of children’s finger paints back to my apartment and see what would come of it. (It has taken a few years to embrace this idea of being called to art. I’m a work in process.) One of those first paintings was of shalom.

We had lived and worked several years in the UN Peacekeeper’s zone in post-war Congo. We were accustomed to a measured level of civil unrest; we knew the sounds of different guns in the distance. But three weeks before we were due to move away, riots over international politics broke out one Tuesday afternoon. Gunfire and RPGs (and fires) raged on for a couple days in town and Anna and I had hunkered down across town with friends. Our friends decided to evacuate, and several of us were hidden under blankets in the back of armed police trucks to reach the airport on the edge of town.

Something in the situation didn’t move me to leave. I wanted to stay. I still had three weeks of packing to do and goodbyes to say. Kent and the boys were still at our house. Anna and I were transferred to the airport to be ‘safe’ behind the barbed wire next to the Bangladeshi UN Peacekeeper camp.

I asked to be brought back into the city – back to our house. Initially, the police refused, saying it wasn’t safe enough. But after a few hours of flights loading up to evacuate, things were calming down in the city and they agreed to take us. We waved goodbye to the dearest of friends and returned to the back of the police truck and under the heavy blankets. I have never doubted that I would be ready to die should He ask it of me. But I had always worried about what would happen to my young children. Anna was only 5.

And under that scratchy, woolen blanket bumping along dirt roads at top speeds, I was surrounded by a peace beyond words. I knew I was going Home. Earthly home, or heavenly home. Home either way. We were both safe under the shadow of his wings either way. [Spoiler alert: We made it back to our earthly home just fine. And just in time for a very memorable family Thanksgiving the next day!]

The image in my mind was of wholeness, of wellness… of shalom. It’s a circle, whole and complete, never-ending. It is soft and gentle like bulletproof memory foam. I think this is what the Psalmist was talking about in Psalm 17:8-9 “Hide me in the shadow of your wings, from the wicked who do me violence…” Ruth was hidden under the shelter of wings. Many have described God’s peace as this soft, safe shelter. Complete shalom.

Years later, that feeling of complete safety is a clear memory. I have been pondering circles and circle images ever since. I would post you a picture of my shalom painting, but it is currently in storage in the US. Here is a quick digital sketch.

As a person who has been prone to fear and worry since childhood, it still doesn’t really make ‘sense’ that I had so much peace in that moment. I am not naturally a peaceful person. I could never have drummed up enough myself!

Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Do not be anxious about anything,
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

That shalom feeling could not come from me.
It surpassed understanding.

Jesus gave it to me.

He has more than enough for you too.

Today was the Wycliffe World Day of Prayer and our theme was… you guessed it! Shalom. We prayed for shalom over so many conflicts and difficulties around the world.

Do you have a situation where you need shalom?
At school? At the office? In your family? In your country?

Our world seems to need a lot of it in 2020.


Praying shalom for you.