July - August Update

July has come and gone. How did that happen? Seems like most people we know took vacation time away this month. The change for us was being home for the month!

Though Tom is home a lot more than I am, this was the first month this year we've both been home all month. Ok, almost all month. I did have a four- day trip to Orlando for meetings, but that hardly counts. Any flight under 10 hours seems local these days. Though to make up for the relative ease of the trip, I did have a cancelled flight, an extra night in Orlando...and almost ten hours total in security lines and waiting at airport gates. But at least Orlando is a friendly and cheerful airport, full of families on holiday in amusement park t-shirts and hats and carrying stuffed animals so large that you'd think they'd require their own airline tickets.

The highlights of this month were visits from Kate and her boyfriend, Jordan, and then also several of Kate's girlfriends.  Jordan headed back to NY after time here to get acquainted with Kate's family culture, meet her grandparents for the first time, and meet a few family friends.  Kate and the girls were here for a few more days then headed West on a road trip. It was tempting to hop in the car with them, but Tom and I disciplined ourselves and stayed home. We've had some good, much needed focused time of work this month. That's one of the beauties of working from home instead of an office...you can just keep working. But wait, that's also one of the dangers!   Fortunately, we usually get hungry or feel the need for a walk sooner or later. 

To see some of the junction of Susan’s team and Tom’s work, check out these videos (whose thumbnails you see here) at

http://www.wycliffe.net/stories/tabid/67/Default.aspx?media=m_vd&library=T

Tom has a myriad of web projects... along with fixing things that break from time to time when something changes around the various systems from which we pull data.

He is also making progress on our kitchen!  The counter is in and the backsplash is going up.  Slowly but surely we are moving ahead.

I'm working on numerous projects including preparation for the following upcoming meetings:

August — Leadership Development Roundtable 2, Malaysia. Leaders from numerous mission organizations to are meeting to share ideas, grow together and collaborate as we seek to discern God's desires and plans for leadership development and the encouragement of new leaders in our organizations.

September — Communication workshop, Nairobi, Kenya. Meeting with Wycliffe communication leaders from all across Africa.
Missiological Consultation and celebration of GILLBT's (the Ghanian Wycliffe organization) 50th anniversary, Accra, Ghana.

October — Global Communication meetings, Calgary, Canada.
Global Leadership Team meetings, Germany. 
Wycliffe Europe Area Communication meetings, Germany.

November — Wycliffe Global Alliance Board meetings.

Please be in prayer as my colleagues and I prepare for and travel to these meetings. But first and foremost, please pray that we would be attentive to God's direction and leading as we seek to discern how He would have the Wycliffe Global Alliance and its many organizations participate in His mission. And keep Tom in your prayers as he continues at home in the often intense work of maintaining and improving wycliffe.net and as he also stays connected with our parents.

Some of you occasionally ask about our finances so we thought we'd share a bit. God has been so good to provide for our needs day-to-day over all these years. And He does this through His people. Many of you have been supporting our ministry with Wycliffe from the very beginning...more than 25 years now. Thank you!