Winter Days

It was snowing again when I got up this morning. Just a few minutes ago, I took this photo of the driveway of the guest house where I'm staying. That's my old maroon Buick, sitting there getting covered with a blanket of snow! It's still snowing as I write, though it seems to be lightening up just a little.

With the Christmas season coming on, I'm taking a few weeks' break from calling pastors. Most churches have too many Christmas events going on right now to think about their missionary budgets and calendars! After Christmas, I'll be back calling pastors as usual, and Lord willing, I'll be able to fill in the few gaps that I have left in my 2010 calendar.

But in the meantime, what will I be doing? You can be sure that I won't spend all my time sitting around playing computer games (though those can be nice for a study break once in a while)! One thing I'd like to focus on during the next few weeks is my French studies. I'd been using some free material from the internet for some time, but had been getting more and more frustrated with it, as it was usable but slow and cumbersome, and not really suited for my learning style. But most of the really good material is quite expensive. I'd been keeping my eyes open for something better that was within my price range, and was contemplating purchasing some audio CDs when I stumbled across two other websites* with free material, one offering video courses and the other with short French lessons by podcast. These are both much less cumbersome and much better suited for my learning style, so I'm hoping to make some real progress in French over the next few weeks.

Besides studying French, I'll be spending some time working on some of my ongoing ministry projects. All the BI consultants - even new, less experienced ones like myself - participate in helping to develop various tools to assist our consultants and national translators (don't worry, all my work is checked by an experienced consultant before it is used for an actual translation). I'm currently working on several tools related to the books of 2 Chronicles, 1 Kings, and Esther. I'm also working on a study of Solomon's Temple, which will help our translators as they work through translating the difficult passages on the Temple's construction in 1 Kings 5-7 and 2 Chronicles 2-4. Finally, I also have several books that I'm reading to help prepare myself for the ministry of a translation consultant. So I'll have plenty to do even when I'm not traveling from church to church!

* The websites are www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french and www.learnfrenchbypodcast.com.