We surprised Roland on his 50th, Thursday September 14th.


/>




His lungs are still good!










And so are his lips!!! :-)






The kids enjoyed the cake and ice cream of course.

Susan and her friends Rilyn & Ciara.

We had our first Ladie's outing, 2nd year students only, to Eugenia Falls.
Here's the gang.






Then we went cliff hanging and had lunch.






I think it was called Old Baldy
....speaking of which, guess who turned 50?




Pictures coming soon.

Time for some new glass... and the second week of class

This week has been a wild one. Started out two Sunday afternoons ago.When we arrived home and everyone had gotten their things into the house (except Elijah) the van door was closed so hard (by Elijah) that the rear passenger window shattered into what seemed to be about a million pieces and shards! I couldn't see Elijah's face when it happened but I'll bet it was TOTAL SHOCK. When the glass came tumbling down onto the ground (Elijah was not cut at all) it sounded as if a huge bag of water was poured out right beside the van. What does a father say to his child whom he had warned at church not more than an hour earlier - "Elijah are you all right?" (of course :-|)

I was shocked myself. How in the world could our brand new van have something this huge broken already? I cleaned out as much glass as I could before it started to sprinkle and headed into the house. Next day was Labor Day, no classes. Praise the Lord I was able to get the van down to the campus garage where there is a power vacuum. A fellow student (bless you Ace Glidewell) helped me get to rest of the window out and design a plywood window to hold us over until we could get the thing repaired.

Second week of classes has been going really well. Lots of new phonetics to learn. If I could plug in some of the strange fonts we've seen used I would try and show you some of what we've been studying. Some things you already know, we now have phonetic names for them. For instance, say the letter 'T'. It so happens that it is phonetically a 'voiceless' 'stop'. here is a look at the chart we use for our reference -->

One of the men from the saturday morning mens' Bible study and prayer meeting I attend (at Rock Mills) took me out to a nearby town auto salvage and purchased the replacement glass for our van! Praise the Lord, and Elijah gets to see God provide on his behalf. That replacement glass cost almost $230! Elijah gratefully wrote a thank you note for more than just the glass I'm sure. Wouldn't you know it, the guy who helped me (remember Ace) take out the broken stuff was available to help me put the new one in place (that is the picture at the top of the post).

We are pressing forward with studies this coming week. It will get more difficult as we continue on. Thank you for your prayers for us and our children, we can't express our gratitude - really - knowing God has many folks lifting us to Him. We thank God every time we remember you and your partnership with us while we're in preparation.

You have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and we have too! Together we trust God with your lives and ours as He accomplishes all He's begun.

Resting in Christ our Lord,
Roland (for the shafer family)
2 Cor 4-5

First Week of classes and...

We have just finished our first week of classes. The kids have been doing excellent making their transitions. All of us have had a great time getting reacquainted with our previous classmates, while the kids have the joy of meeting a few new ones.

The first week of Culture and Language Acquisition (henceforth CLA) has been quite a bit more informative about what we'll actually be working through.

The past three days we've had the "Overview of the CLA program", "Calendar" for this semester, and the "Introduction to Phonetics" modules. Starting next Tuesday, after the Labor Day holiday, we begin the Phonetics classes with daily assignments.

So far we have been exposed to the mechanics of the speech mechanism God has so marvelously designed. It is very inspiring to reflect on the fact that God invented speech and it works flawlessly. There are various ways that speech is produced but each one is incredible in its foundation, communication with others. Relationships require communication and God has ensured that relationships can be established and deepened with communication.


Phonetics is simplified by this definition: studying speech and the mechanics of producing it. We have been introduced to "Sammy" (see above image) the cross-section diagram of the speech apparatus. We will be referring to this diagram through the next four weeks as a visual aid in training our own personal speech apparatus to produce utterances we've never produced before intentionally (for most of us).

Our biggest challenge through this time is to remain focused on the purpose for this section of training, and all of it for that matter, the Word of God might be presented to men, women, and young people who have never had the opportunity before. God is taking us through this preparation for His glory and that He would be worshipped among the nations. We are thankful for this reminder of keeping this in our focus.

Thank you for your prayers for us as we spend the next four weeks in this arduous beginning phase of CLA. We thank God for every rememberance of you, too, and thank God for the opportunity to pray with you.

Roland (for the Shafers)