Kwa heri (Goodbye) until the New Year!
We are going to be taking a break from posting here for the next while (probably until the New Year), so if you are interested in keeping up with our comings and goings make sure you are signed up for our newsletter! Blessings.
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Our house has been full of both excitement and nervousness as Chris prepares to leave on his very first language survey trip bright and early tomorrow morning at 6:30am! I wish I could say that everything is all prepared and we have spent the evening relaxing with our feet up…but that is far from the truth. In actuality Chris is still packing after a long day at the office, but we still have a solid 8 hours until the survey truck will be rolling out, that’s plenty of time, right? In all seriousness, preparation for the survey has been going well and in terms of the language aspect of things Chris is good to go! Part of preparation for the survey was to visit the immigration offices in Njombe and Ludewa in order to get permission to travel to the Kisi region and do the language work there. We are thankful that these meetings went extremely well and the local authorities were happy to grant Chris and the team passage to Kisi and are very interested in their work. Some ways that you can be praying for us are listed below: (1) Please pray for Chris for a safe, productive, fruitful trip. (2) Also, please pray for me, as I will be alone for however long it takes for them to get to Kisi, do their work and return. This is the first time that I will be staying on my own here in Tanzania and I am very thankful for the community here that has overwhelmed me with offers of meals, rides and company to make this time a little easier. Next, enjoy a couple pictures from Chris' permission trip. The first is of some tea fields along the way, the second is of Chris standing in front of a sign for the Ludewa region of Tanzania. Transition. Transition. Transition. I feel like a broken record when I say the word. It's something that I've said, heard and thought about many times over the past 6 months. I used to think when this happens we'll settle for a while, or when that happens we'll be able to relax for a little bit. I'm only just beginning to realise that transition is going to play a major role in our lives for the foreseen future. The past few weeks and the coming weeks are no exception. We've recently packed up our things and moved out of the house where we've spent most of our time in Dar. We are temporarily living in a hotel while we attend a conference after which point we will he moving into a Guesthouse and then an apartment for our remaining time in Dar. After which we will be moving into a house in Mbeya where we will be settling for at least the next 5 months, Lord-willing. I've begun to lose track of the number of places we've lived over the past few years but it's getting close to 20. I'm beginning to not mind as much anymore though. This world is not our home. Constantly moving has prevented us from getting (too) comfortable and reminds us that we are only travellers through this life and have yet to reach our final destination. Finally, here are a couple completely unrelated pictures of a Dar es Salaam sunrise over the Indian ocean from the other day, isn't God's creation magnificent? In our most recent newsletter I (Lauren) wrote about the special guests who were able to visit us for a few days at the beginning of May…my parents! My Dad works abroad and was able to stop by with my Mom for a few days on their way to his job. It was such a blessing to be able to see them, even though they were only able to stay for a few days. We had an opportunity to give them a tour of the city and show what our day-to-day life is like here. It also didn’t hurt that they brought what was probably one of the world’s largest care packages, weighing in at just shy of 100 pounds (thanks Mom!).
While we had originally planned to have a quiet, relaxing weekend with them on the beaches of Dar, my Mom made a last minute decision that she wanted to go to Zanzibar for the weekend. We ended up spending about 24 hours in Zanzibar (talk about a whirlwind trip), but it was still worth going and many great memories came out of it! All this to say that we are very thankful for loving, supportive parents who come and visit and even take us on crazy adventures every once in a while! First off, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been praying for us over the past month. We have really appreciated it and have been enjoying getting back into our full-time language study as Chris’ health continues to improve!
Given everything that happened with the accident, I never had a chance to write about our trip to Mbeya last month, one of the highlights of which was a hike that we went on to a coffee farm! Hiking has always been a favourite activity of ours; however, since moving to Dar es Salaam we haven’t had much of an opportunity to do this. Therefore, we took full advantage of our time in Mbeya to hike and explore as much as we could! We have a lot more to tell, but I am not going to say anymore on our blog and put in a shameless plug for our newsletter, which you should sign up for if you want to hear more about how things went in Mbeya! If you would like to be added to our newsletter list click here. While you’re signing up for our newsletter, check out our website which includes information about our work here in Tanzania, as well as pictures from our adventures here in Dar es Salaam and our trip to Mbeya. In the meantime, enjoy a few pictures from our adventure in Mbeya! As many of you have likely heard, on Monday morning, here in Dar es Salaam, Christopher was riding his bike when he was struck from behind by a bus that was passing by him on the highway. By the Grace of God, not only is he alive, but he did not suffer any broken bones! This is truly a miracle that we are praising God for. For the past few days, he has been spending lots of time in his bed and at the hospital recovering from the extensive bruising and road rash that he received from the accident. Unfortunately, he has also suffered a deep wound to his right elbow which is now infected so we ask that you pray for his continued healing and safety!
Thank you to all you who have been praying, despite his infection, Christopher has been recovering quite well from the accident! The answer for Lauren and me is seven. It took seven different electronic devices for us to finally print a picture of our passports that we desperately needed a few weeks ago while applying for our Tanzanian driver’s licenses. I’ll back up a little bit and explain the story.
Lauren and I were recently able to begin the process of importing a vehicle to Dar es Salaam from Japan (which we are extremely thankful for!) when we came to the realization that we were lacking one crucial element, our driver’s licenses. To make a long story short, we intended to rectify this problem by going down to the Tanzanian Revenue Authority office and using our current driver’s licenses in order to get Tanzanian licenses. The only problem is that they did not need copies of our Canadian driver’s licences, they actually needed copies of our passports! Now in theory we could have just gone home and come back another day with copies of our passports, but it is really hot out in the afternoon when we finish our Swahili classes (40°C or warmer with the humidity) and the office we study at is pretty far away, so we were determined to get it all done in one trip! We had a sinking feeling in our stomachs when the lady at the desk told us that she could not process our applications without passport copies, but like I said, we were determined. Our passports were at the language study office so we got a lady at the office to use her scanner (one device) to copy the passports onto her computer (two). She then emailed us the copies. I downloaded the copies onto my phone (three). Lauren took a picture of the copies on her phone (four) and sent a WhatsApp message to a fellow orientee’s phone (five) because neither of our phones would connect to the computer at the print shop. He then connected his phone to the computer at a print shop (six) and sent the copies to the printer (seven!), where they were printed and we were relieved to have solved the problem! As a side note, we actually received our licenses just last week and it was slightly terrifying to know that we are now ‘qualified’ to operate a vehicle in a country that drives on the left side of the road and has many different traffic laws from our own. Anyways, it will probably be a little while before I have the nerve to get in the driver’s side of a vehicle, but we are thankful that everything worked out for us to at least receive our licenses! Well now that we have been living in Dar es Salaam for two weeks (wow!), I feel as though I can at least begin to speak with some authority about our experiences here thus far. In our latest newsletter update I described our experience thus far in Tanzania as “surreal”, which I think is the only word I could think of to describe it. For years we have been studying, planning, preparing and fundraising just so that we could be where we are right now. Sometimes we have to stop and look around and remind ourselves that we are finally here, in a sense we’ve finally “made it” and in another sense, we are just beginning! One notable thing that I couldn’t talk about our experiences in Tanzania thus far without mentioning is the way that God has been taking care of us. There were quite a number of things that happened in our first week that were quite surprising or different than we had expected, but God has managed to resolve all of the issues that came up in ways better than we could have anticipated. We are so thankful for this and so grateful to finally be here! Now enjoy some photos from our first weeks in Tanzania! The picture above is of the office where we are doing our orientation and language learning in Dar es Salaam. This picture is of everyone who is participating in orientation and language learning with us. This one is of Chris' first time to the Indian ocean.
It’s hard to believe that it was almost exactly a year ago that I was loading up our little Hyundai to road trip across Saskatchewan and Manitoba for most of December raising support for our calling in Bible translation, leaving Lauren behind to study and write her final exams. At this point last year we had no assignment, no idea where in the world our assignment was going to be, and, to be quite honest, no experience in public speaking and fundraising. The idea of fundraising was a daunting task and reaching 100% seemed like an insurmountable obstacle in the beginning, but God took care of us and now we are on the road again! While there are many parallels, loading up our little Hyundai to road trip across Saskatchewan and Manitoba for most of December this time is very different in a lot of ways. Not only do I have my beautiful wife by my side, but are we 100% funded (Praise God), minus some one-time costs that we are working to raise, and I have had (more than) my fair share of public speaking experience over the past year. All this to say, what a year it has been! God is faithful and He has been good to us. …Because when you reach 100% of your monthly budget for the first time it deserves a celebration cake! Praise God!
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AuthorChristopher and Lauren Merke have joined Wycliffe to help fulfill the goal of seeing the scriptures translated into every language of the world! Christopher and Lauren live and work in Mbeya, Tanzania doing linguistic, language survey and vernacular media work. As a linguist, it will be Lauren’s responsibility to analyze and evaluate the linguistic and cultural data that is collected by language survey workers. Her role is very important because it speeds up the Bible translation process and makes translators for effective, ensuring the Good News of Jesus Christ reaches people as quickly as possible. Christopher will be fulfilling two roles as a language surveyor and as a vernacular media technician. As a language surveyor, Christopher travels to remote villages in order to gather linguistic and cultural data about various people groups and language groups. This is critical information, as it lays the foundation for Bible translation work through seeking answers to critical questions in the first stages of the Bible translation process. As a vernacular media technician, Christopher’s role will be to help translate various materials, such as the Jesus film and Christian radio programs, into other languages in Tanzania to ensure that the Gospel reaches as many people as possible. Christopher and Lauren are thrilled to be able to use the gifts that God has given them and would like for you to prayerfully consider partnering with them in this journey! Archives
September 2016
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