Another week

Another week @ CanIL seems to have gone by. It’s feeling a little more like summer up here these days, with the temperature getting often getting above 30 C (86 F). I don’t mind it, but some others have had a few objections. We play ultimate frisbee on Tuesdays and Thursdays and last Tuesday it was probably about 90. With everyone else lamenting about the heat I took the time to lecture them about what summer was actually supposed to feel like!

And we’ve still been having plenty of other extracurricular activities as well. Last weekend we went to Stanley Park in Vancouver and visited the aquarium there, getting to see the newborn baby beluga whale. And last night a group of us went swing-dancing at a nice park in the nearby town of Langley. I was afraid I might have forgotten the few lessons I’ve had, but it all came back pretty nicely.

Yet despite all the fun I’m having, yes I am still taking classes. There are now 3 weeks left so the deadlines are beginning to loom. But things are looking a little more organized than last week, so that’s good….I think. I believed I mentioned before I’m learning Ilocano in my class that is about language learning. This last week we had a test where we were given a shopping list and had to go to a little market we had made up and buy the items from Esther, who is our LRP(Language resource person) from the Philippines. I was doing just fine until a little incident with a pineapple. While I was trying to barter down the price I was fiddling with the leaves on the top and somehow managed to pull one completely out right in front of Esther! I suddenly realized I didn’t have vocabulary in Ilocano to deal with that situation, so I just agreed to buy the whole thing.

And there is progression on other fronts as well. I talked with two different recruiters from Wycliffe yesterday, and things appear to be in order to officially start the application process. There are still some timing issues, for which I would ask you to pray about. Please pray that God would grant me the wisdom to discern his will, the peace to accept it, and the courage to follow it through.

Thanks so much for your prayers!

Aaron

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Over the hump!

Wednesday of this week was the halfway point for the summer. It seems impossible to imagine that my classes are halfway finished already and that I'll be leaving 4 weeks from tomorrow. But as I look back and compare what I knew at the start of the summer with what I know now, the fact that it's been only 5 weeks is rather impressive. I've been having some discussions about joining Wycliffe and I believe that God is leading me in this direction. As I've written before, I've been impressed by everyone here that works for SIL/Wycliffe and for what the organizations stand for.

But I'm learning more than just linguistics here. Today I had the privilege of leading worship for chapel. It was my first time ever doing that and somehow I got signed up for a praise chapel, which means we spent the whole time singing songs instead of just singing two. I was a little worried about our musical quality, but more concerned that I would be too caught up in a performance mentality to worship. But I prayed that God would meet me while playing and usher me into his presence, and I really do feel like I was able to worship this morning, and since that was the entire point, I don't really mind if there were a couple of mistakes that snuck in.

And then there's the cooking. We still have the communal meals going on and I cooked for 16 people on Thursday. It's pretty fun to get to saute onions in two large skillets at once and to cook 4 pounds of pasta at a time. The community here is just amazing, with so many different people who have been all over the world. There's never a lack of interesting stories to go around.

But all that being said, work is definitely beginning to pile up with several classes having term projects that are now coming into play. One of them is a practice, but still realistic, survey proposal I'm writing for the island of West New Britain in Papua New Guinea, and for the other one I don't even know what I'm doing yet, which is of course part of the problem. But I think I'll get it ironed out during this next week.

Well I guess that's a glimpse of what's going on. The picture here is from a hiking trip we took last weekend while camping. The hike was pretty challenging for me, being very steep, but definitely worth it in the end as the view was amazing. British Columbia is a beautiful place. The combination of mountains and oceans is just spectacular. Keep praying for me as I go about my school work and continue to seek God's will for my life!

Aaron

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Camping Time!

Sometimes, it seems very hard to imagine that I’ve been here 4 weeks already. But other times, I feel like I’ve been around for months. Life has settled into a more predictable routine now that phonetics is over (which I got an A- in). I’m really starting to become more fascinated in the topics being discussed in the survey class that I’m taking. Today the subject was methods of determining linguistic relatedness between dialects. There are a number of different approaches, each with varying strengths, weaknesses, time commitments, and expertise required. Some of these methods lend themselves very well to quantitative assessment, and some very much do not.

But statistics, and mathematics in general, is popping up in more places than I expected. Earlier this week I developed a simple little linear programming model to determine the optimal locations for selecting sites for language programs. It’s not much really, but it’s something, and I’m going to try to expand it a little more.

But not this weekend, because in about an hour and half I’m leaving to go camping. We’re going a couple hours north to the Squamish Campgrounds for the whole weekend. It’s a CanIL organized trip and almost everyone is going. I understand of course that it’s not real camping if you can drive right into your campsite, but it’s pretty much the only kind I’ve ever known. It’s going to be a great time to relax and enjoy God’s creation, particularly since professors were told not to give any homework this weekend!

Well I gotta go get ready. Thank for your prayers, and I’ll be sure to put up a good picture from the weekend for next week!

Aaron

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Happy Canada Day!

Today is the Canadian national holiday, which you might think has a silly name until you think about what we Americans call ours. But regardless, with no classes today I’m quite happy to celebrate Canada! Classes have been chugging along without pause, so it’s very nice to have a break. There are just two days left in phonetics class and we’ve learned all the coursework at this point, including clicks. We heard some language data from a dialect in Botswana that has 28 distinct clicks. At least that’s what they said, I only ever heard about 1.

But starting next week there will be no more phonetics, which could mean a little bit of a lighter load, but it’s not too likely since the other classes are still accelerating. I’m starting to work on a survey proposal for the language survey class. We need to write a proposal for a survey that is as realistic as possible, potentially even directly usable. I’ve decided to do mine in Papua New Guinea, which is half of the island of New Guinea and numerous other offshore islands located north of Australia. I’ll be talking to some on the workers on the ground in PNG to get the information I need.

But despite the work, I’ll let you know that I’m probably having waaay too much fun for my own good. The community here is just great. We’ve organized a cooking rotation so people don’t have to cook every night, and last night a lot of us got together to watch “The Gods Must be Crazy”, which features a click language. This Friday there’s a party for the students hosted by the staff, and I’m really looking forward to that.

So in short, things are wonderful. I’ve been learning a lot here, and not just about linguistics. God has been broadening my horizons through meeting some new people and talking through some old ideas. I've been thinking about what it really means to be able to hand a Bible to someone in their own language. To be able to give someone God's revelvation to man in their heart language, the language that they associate with themselves and their people. To be able to tell someone that God wants to talk to them, and that he doesn't have to go through English or Arabic or any other language. To tell someone that God is intimately and passionately interested in their life, right where they are. It's an amazing thing. It really is.

You can pray that I will continue to feel rested and motivated to do my work, and that I will be obedient to whatever God calls me to.

I confident that God is using your prayers for his glory, I can’t thank you enough!

Aaron

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