Furlough/Home Assignment

Every once-in-awhile missionaries return to their home countries. In recent years I have opted to return every two years. In that time I am allowed six months for "home assignment" or furlough. In Oct 2006 I decided it was time to visit Wilhelm’s family. I spent 2 months in Bielefeld, Germany, living with Wilhelm’s sister Elfriede.

She lives in a duplex with two other gals and has a special attic apartment

for missionaries or… sisters-in-law.

We had a great time together. I studied German at the Tandem school. I had to walk 10 min to the bus stop and then three stops later get off the bus at the train station (light rail) and have a 20 min train ride into downtown Bielefeld.
The class was like a mini united nations with; Turk, Filipino, Polish, Moroccan, Russian, Brazilian, Mexican, Taiwanese and South Korean students, oh yes, one American.

During my time in Bielefeld I was able to visit Berlin with Elena a classmate from The Philippines and her German boyfriend. We had a great day and I was able to spend some time with Wilhelm’s cousin who also lives in Berlin.

Before going to Germany I had heard that Wilhelm’s father Johann had been in poor health. I had a good visit with him while at my (sister-in-law) Hilke’s birthday party in November. Part one of the day was a brunch with both sets of parents. This is Hilke and her daughter Hannah.
He chose to have no further treatments and was ready to go home. God took him home in early Dec. It was special that I could have that time with the family and father Pleis. I stayed with mother Pleis for another two weeks after the funeral. She helped me work on a PowerPoint presentation in German to show to two supporting churches in the area.

I arrived in Portland, Oregon Dec 18th, just in time to celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday the day before mine.
I have decided that Dec 19th is just too close to Christmas to really have a fun birthday so I delayed the celebration until Jan 19th and had a Murder Mystery Party.

One of the things that I enjoy most about being in the U.S. is to participate in my home church of Warren Community Fellowship.
I sang in the choir, was part of a small Sunday night care group,				a ladies Bible study,

as well as attending an adult Sunday school class. I got to go down hill skiing with the Youth group.

And the women’s retreat at the end of my stay was especially fun.

I always enjoy visiting friends and supporters. This year I took a trip to Phoenix, Nevada and Los Angeles. In Phoenix I went shopping with my friend Kathi for an outfit to wear for a wedding in April and visited an African American church on a day when everyone was suppose to wear African clothes.

It felt as though I was back in Africa!

Some supporters moved from Oregon to Nevada. (Can you imagine?!?!) :-) While in Nevada we did visit some Casinos and found there are other things to do besides gambling. We walked past the gambling tables and machine to get to the fun stuff.

See that rollercoaster in the background? Yep! Though I’m sure there were two loop de loops. I kept my eyes open on the second one!!! Yahoo!

See this nice picture of Venice?

Nope this is in the middle of a casino.

I also ran into another friend.

OK not exactly the most spiritual activity but it was fun to see my friends again and reconnect. They were glad to hear of what God is doing in Toussiana.

I met my friend Judy in LA and met her two daughters for a tour of Nickelodeon in order to see some behind-the-scenes of how computer generated animation is done. I actually still have lots of questions, but it was very interesting. We were able to get tickets to attend the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, another behind-the-scenes look at TV.
	The next day we had tickets to Universal Studios.		Hey!, What are those guys doing there?! Are they really that tall?

I did see some supporters in Long Beach and went to Saddleback church where Rick Warren is pastor (Purpose Driven Life). Huge church but I sat up front and it was ok. Nice people to ask questions. They have 27,000/people of a week-end attending. Wow!

I made a quick trip to Seattle area and saw 7 people in 2½ days.

I was able to attend the wedding of the daughter one of my best friends.

Women were requested to wear hats, which was fun.

OK so did I do any WORK! Well of course I did. When I wasn’t out having fun visiting, hanging out with friends and family and playing in the snow, I worked at the NW regional office of Wycliffe Bible Translators. I helped out in the children’s resources office with Dorothea Landers.

I even taught Phonetics (a branch of linguistics) at a one week learn about Wycliffe event.

Because of the two months I spent in Germany my time in the U.S. seemed really short and I wasn’t able to visit everyone. Next time. Now that I am back in the village Awa and I have gotten together to discuss what happened while I was away. In short 239 people signed up for literacy classes, 191 people stayed through till the end and 111 succeeded in learning to read, write, and do simple math. We had one new village with 80 people who had never been to school before. There were some rough patches and Awa and I were able to find answers for next year. This next season January 2008 we want to try and find funding from the government.

• September 2006, Dubbing the Luke Video
• April 2006, Recording Genesis in Toussiana
• January 2006, Toussian Churches
• August 2005, Christian Jr. Hi in Toussiana
• July 2005, Pastor Pierre Wedding
• June 2005, Locust Plague
• April 2005, Branch Conference
• February 2005, Literacy Classes
• September 2004, Market Pictures
• August 2004, Return to Toussiana
• May 2004, In Memory of Wilhelm
• July 2003, Wilhelm’s Parents 50th Wedding Anniversary
• Feb. 2003, New Office Building
• Nov 2002, Reading Contest
• July 2002, Toussian Translators
• March 2002 Literacy classes
• Jan 2002 Bissa New Testament dedication
• January 15, 2002
• Nov 2002  Language learning, Translation, Revision, Ladies day at church
• Oct 2001  Sunday school outing, Fonio harvest
• Aug 2001  Cobly Reunion
• May 31, 2001  Return to Burkina Faso
• May 5, 2001  Germany, Az, Oregon office work
• Jan 2001  Our time in Germany

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