I might as well blog about this too.
The tone of this entry is not complaining... in fact a great many things are going good for us here.
We just celebrated our son's 10th birthday,
Easter was the other day,
we're very busy at work,
we received a recent care package...
life is good.
Which is why I can talk about failure without complaining or being overly negative.
Failure is something most of the volunteers (missionaries) here experience regularly.
One failure might be that while you're trying to gain acceptance in a village to begin translation work, someone in a drunken fit burns down your village home forcing you to evacuate.
That takes a huge emotional toll on a family, it's a huge setback in the progress of a translation, and in the end a lot of issues have to be dealt with before things can get back on track.
Another failure could be scheduling and planning a training class only to have little to no one arrive because of various problems (hevi's) in their villages.
This is the land of the unexpected... and everyone has to deal with failure in their own way... and recognize that often it has nothing to do with our efforts.
I would be interested in hearing how you have dealt with the disappointment of seeing your labor fall apart in front of you.
Recently I had been working on a new technology that promised to solve many networking issues here, I got very excited about it and worked very long hours on it for a period of a month.
And then, the day we put it into production, something came up very quickly that proved we'd be completely unable to use it and thus, the problem is not solved.
Today of course I felt a little bit like the wind was taken out of my sails. I was so hopeful that this would solve huge issues for everyone.
But it won't.
You know that verse that says 'count it as joy, when you face trials of many kinds?'
I do not believe we are expected to be joyful immediately.
The Bible says to mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep.
There is a time to share in suffering and failure.
First I'm very thankful that my personal inability to succeed in this is nothing in comparison to having my village house burned down.
But we do face disappointment.
And the way we have learned as a family to 'count it as joy' is simply to realize that in suffering and disappointment we aren't alone, and if we bear it well (as Job did), that it can in fact be a form of worship.
Humbling ourselves means that when our pride is wounded from failure, we turn to God to seek comfort and recognize it can only be done WITH HIM.
On the flip side, it's technology so I'm very certain we'll eventually find a solution, (we're tenacious that way)... but we go forward praying for God's help in this.
And we pray for encouragement for others who have faced even worse discouragement.
Finally,
God is good.
Today someone told me something I found very encouraging...
they said,
'well, last year at this translation course, things were hectic, there was lot of network failures and printing problems, but now things seem to just work.'
that told me that our team of computer techs did it's job in the last year... we made things better for the translation folks...
and that feels good.
We strive to continue to make things better for the translation efforts and am confident that with your prayers we'll find a solution to this big problem we've been trying to solve.
