October 15, 1999

I'm teaching at an International school owned by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which is the academic arm of Wycliffe Bible Translators. So it's a Christian school and about 70% of the kids are the children of missionaries translating the bible or the support ministries with that. The others are either from other mission organizations or the children of our national employees or the children of expatriate businessmen. They come from a wide variety of countries. Just in my second grade class I have 9 nationalities and they speak 13 different languages! Two mornings a week we offer Mother Tongue Studies in the languages we have teachers for so that the children will still be able to speak their own language and will learn some of the history of their culture.

Education is very important in this community. Within our missionary community it is very important since most of the missionaries are linguists, most of them with a masters degree. In the country as a whole there isn't the same emphasis. The estimate of literacy varies greatly. Literacy is one of the things that we as an organization do, because what good is it to have a Bible if you can't read it?

We're into our second term of school now. I spent my break doing curriculum development a few hours a day, but I also took time for a few little trips. I went to the provincial capital, Goroka, with my roommate and a family and I went out to show the Jesus film in a village nearby.