Saturday, July 23, 2016  Workshop total was 13,086, my last full day in the capital city

Today I went out for breakfast with some SIL colleagues to a pastry shop. I was expecting to eat only a pastry, but discovered that they had a breakfast menu that included omelets. That just happens to be my favorite breakfast menu item, so I had one with ham, mushrooms, and cheese. Then I tagged along with the others as they did their grocery shopping before we returned to the SIL center.

Shortly before noon, I left for lunch and a long visit with one of my former roommates from the 1980’s, when I was learning about linguistics, literacy, and Bible translation. I had not seen Mark for more than 20 years, and he had married in the meantime. We’ve kept in touch via newsletters, but today was my first opportunity to meet Diane in person. Mark and Diane are working in a Bible translation project under the leadership of a different organization, and they arranged their schedule so that they’d be here in the capital city at the same time I was scheduled to be here. We spent about three hours together, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Sometime this afternoon, I received a text message from the workshop coordinator. The message went something like “We finished well. Final total was 13,086 words and all the semantic domains were treated. Big closing ceremony. I showed screen shots of the words that have been uploaded to the internet.”

What a blessing and privilege for me to receive a divine assignment to be involved in something like this! It’s not an easy assignment--definitely not a lark—but oh, so satisfying to know that I’m doing what I was created to do!

Tonight I’m packing my bags. A taxi is scheduled to come and pick me up at 11am tomorrow and take me to the airport. My journey home (from SIL center here to our house in NC) will take about 36 hours, so I’ll see Anita, Evan, and Angela again Monday evening. I’m looking forward to that! It was good to come here and be part of this great beginning here, but it will be good to be back home again.

Thanks for praying me through this trip.

Kevin Warfel