The World Wide Webers

Well, we have officially finished the first transition in our journey to Papua New Guinea! We have sold and moved out of our acreage home and have moved into a cute little rental home in Marshalltown. When we were at our Equip training in Orlando in June, they taught us the importance of saying good good-byes so that you can say good hellos. So far, so "good". Here is a little of the photo record of this part of the journey: We said good-bye to the swing set, rope swing, barn, camp fire and our house of 8 years. Good-bye swing set Getting ready to jump onto the rope swing Good-bye camp fire Wonderful friends from church helping us move Good-bye acreage & home We have enjoyed our hellos to our cute little rental home in Marshalltown. We get to attend last-minute programs at the library, 40 minute grocery shopping trips (as opposed to almost 2 hours), walks on a sidewalk, chatting with neighbors, and a 10-minute drive to church! We have already b

Joel digging with the backhoe for the septic tank Eli looking on while they work The septic tank is installed... Our portion of the house  trim is done...  Most of our things are packed... Must be time to move! We will be moving to our temporary, rental home in Marshalltown this Saturday.  One more step on our journey to Papua New Guinea!

At a Good Friday service in 1980, Leonard Bolioki stepped to the front of the church he attended in Cameroon and began to read the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. Always before, this passage from John’s Gospel had been read in French, but this time the priest had asked Leonard to read it in the local language, Yambetta. As he read, he became aware of a growing stillness; then some of the older women began to weep. At the end of the service they rushed up to Leonard and asked, “Where did you find this story? We have never heard anything like it before! We didn’t know there was someone who loved us so much that he was willing to suffer and die like that… to be crucified on a cross to save us!” Leonard pulled out his French New Testament and showed them that the story was in the Bible. “We listen to this Passion Story every year during Holy Week,” he told them, but they insisted that they’d never heard it before. That, says Leonard, is what motivated him to translate the Scriptures into

It was a Friday evening, around the middle of March, and we had just  sat down to eat dinner. A pick-up truck that neither of us recognized pulled into our "farm" yard. Joel got up from the table and went outside to speak to the two men who came to the door. They walked out to our outbuildings and looked around for about an hour. When Joel finally came into the house, I asked, "Who was that? And what was that all about?" He went on to tell me that it was a local farmer who was interested in renting & modifying two of our hog buildings for raising bottle calves. Joel said, "I told him what we will be doing with Wycliffe and that the whole place will be for sale soon...I told him he should just buy the whole place." To make a long story short, we had several conversations with the farmer over the coming two weeks which resulted in us agreeing to rent the buildings to him and him agreeing to put the word out for us that our acreage would soon be for s

This morning, I was standing with my hands in dishwater, look out the kitchen window at the tractors driving by, the new greenness of the grass and the leaves and blooms coming on the apple and pear trees we planted last year. My mind was all over the place: how will this meeting to negotiate the sale of our house go tonight?...well, we're never going to get to enjoy the fruit from those trees...I love this time of  year, except missing my husband...just think, you'll have to wash all the dishes by hand in PNG...dang, I was going to start laundry first... The view out my kitchen window (see those baby trees back there behind the big one?) Then, in the midst of this whirlwind in my brain, I felt the warmth of the sun shining in the window and saw its brightness and the beauty and life it brings to everything. I was overwhelmed with the thought that God's glory and warmth and life giving power make the sun look like a shadow. Is His glory the sun magnified 100 times?

Well, it's official! As of yesterday, March 1st, we are officially members/employees of Wycliffe Bible Translators! Now the work begins! We have begun getting e mails about our ministry budget, coaches, Equip training and I'm sure there are many more to come! To tell you the truth, it's a little overwhelming. But, we are trusting that Wycliffe has excellent, professional and capable people who know what they are doing and will help us along the way. And there is a looooong way to go!