Tag Archives: history

15 Years

I was walking in the door of our little university apartment after a long day teaching boisterous third graders. Kent was soon to graduate with his MA in Linguistics, but his university schedule varied. He was already home, sitting on our couch with a grin. He made me listen to the answering machine message right away. (And stood behind me with a camera, ready to capture my face on film. Yes, film.)

The message announced that we were voted in as new members of Wycliffe Bible Translators. June 6, 2001. I knew I would always remember the date. For six months we had been filling out essay questions, getting physicals, taking Bible tests, etc. Everything that could have gone wrong – did. I’ll save those details for another post.

The Committee was to vote at 9:30am in Florida on membership. We’d been told that our file could not be considered because it was incomplete. Kim’s Medical Document had been MIA in the postal world for quite some time. We had sent it from Oregon in plenty of time. No one knew where it was. Our Member Application Guy (he had a much cooler title I can’t remember) walked to the meeting discouraged & decided to stop in the mailroom one last time “just in case”. Everyone knows the mail doesn’t come at 8:30am… The form was there! Our file complete by miraculous means. And we were voted in, against the odds.

So began a journey for Kent & I to learn more & more to trust God and wait for his perfect timing. And what a journey…

15 years
3 kids
17 moves
3 languages learned
French Alps
Cameroonian hillside
Kenyan family
Congolese home
Becoming Sr. Members
Kent – a Linguistics Consultant
Countless flights & frights
The sheer delight on the faces of those reading their own language in print for the first time.

Looking forward to the next 15!