Thursday, October 25, 2007

Update

You may have noticed that we've rather given up on the blogging for now, but I figured there may still be a few people checking here now and then. As of now, I am definitely planning to write more regular entries once we are in Africa and there are lots of exciting new things to write about. I suppose that may be rather ambitious though; I'm sure we'll both be busy and have limited internet access. We do update our photo album a bit more often. There's a video of Daniel "commando crawling" on there now.

Until January, we are here in Norway. We've been having a beautiful fall and enjoying plenty of walks outside in the sunshine. We are very much in "preparation mode" at this point, but are still trying to stay connected here as well. I've started thinking about some of the luxuries I have here that I probably won't have in Africa. It makes me appreciate them more in the meantime. Like hot showers, good chocolate (I have been to Tanzania, and you really just can't get that there), wireless internet while sitting on the couch, and neatly packaged fresh meat. Another luxury we won't have is disposable diapers. We're trying to prepare ourselves for that by practicing with cloth diapers now, and so far I don't think it's that big a deal. But then, so far I still use disposables for nighttime and when we go out. And here we have a washing machine.

We have been to six different places in the last few weeks to speak about the work we will be doing in Tanzania with Wycliffe. It's great just to spread awareness about the need for Bible translation and get people interested, but at the same time we are still in the process of developing a support network and getting our funding in place. So we are waiting in some suspense to see this month's financial statement from Wycliffe, to see if there is any response from all these speaking engagements. We've also been getting lots of vaccinations, and right now we are doing a test run of a medicine that is used to prevent malaria. Possible side effects include hallucinations and depression, so it's important to see how we react to it before we get to Africa. I have been having a lot of weird dreams, which is a common side effect, but so far no daytime hallucinations! ( :