Do I really need a degree?

So I've gotten this question a couple of times and would, consequently, like to address it.
"Do you really need a degree to do Bible Translation, Elizabeth?"
The answer: Yes
A degree is just a piece of paper saying that I've taken all the classes and I have sufficient knowledge in the discipline that is required of me.
So the degree isn't the important part. It just says that I have the education. So, what people are really asking is, do I need an higher education. And the answer? Yes
When you're about to undergo brain surgery, do you want someone with a degree? Or someone who "felt like brain surgery was important work and needed to just go out and do it"?
Bible Translation is kinda a big deal. We're dealing with the Word of God here. I'm not translating children's books where, if I mess up, the worst that could happen is red would be labeled orange. There are issues of salvation that I'm playing with here.
Bible Translation is important work and I do need to go out and do it, but I need to do it with excellence. And so I need to be well educated for this job in order to do it to the best of my abilities.
Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, it's expensive. But yes, it's necessary.

Apprentices Rock!

Apprentices are an awesome invention!
Today I went to Northwood Church because I run lights for their Student Ministry. The guy in charge of A/V is talking to me about how he's really proud of their light system but they can't take advantage of it because most of their tech people peaced out at the same time and the lights just fell into disrepair. "Hmmm," I thought, "clealy you did not have apprentices! Otherwise, people leaving would not have been a problem!"
So we get started and the typical Wednesday night structure is worship, sermon, repeat. Middle school first, high school second. Well, I left during the sermon to go get a Sonic drink and noted the time to be back for the High school worship. I came back 20 minutes early to find the middle schoolers worshipping again! Without a set list (also an awesome invention) I had no idea I was needed again! I asked the A/V Guy if they had set lists that I could get a copy of every week. Guess who's job it is to do the set list? I don't know, he peaced out with the rest of the tech people. Oh! If only if only they had had apprentices!

How to know if you need an apprentice:
If you dropped off the face of the earth one week, what would happen to your ministry?
If the answer is "it would collapse in on itself" you should probably invest in an apprentice.
How to get an apprentice:
"Hey you, you wanna learn how to _________" has a 50% chance of success.

Where are you?

So, Session 1 complete! I did well enough on my exams. Not 100/As like I would have wanted! but well nonetheless. I have two days off that I get to enjoy and relax (aka work very very hard on partnership development) and then it's back to class on Friday with Phonology, Phonetics, and Second Language Culture and Acquistion.

But now to whats been on my mind,
Once I was completely lost in thought and someone came up to me and asked "Where are you?" I looked at them. I LOVE it when people have such insightful perspective! Another person present asked them what they meant and they explained, "Well, she's certainly not here." And that's the truth.
How often are we not here? How often are we not where we are but where we're going? You sit down in a meeting and the moment you arrive, you start thinking about the next thing on your to-do list and what you'll need and how you'll get it etc etc etc. Do we ever arrive anywhere? I mean, I know it's about the journey, but can't it be about the destination, too?

My plans? uhh...

So, things are changing in my life right now.
Not BIG things like my career plans
but things like when and how.
I would love to explain to you right now what things are changing and how and what that means and why, but I really don't know any of those answers!
I have NO IDEA whats going on in my life.
But! There are things we can pray for:
1) $1500 for unexpected school expenses
2) GIAL permitting me to take Graduate Level courses next bimester
3) Partnership Development, I am at 32.8%.

If we all just loved Jesus and acted like it, this wouldn't even be an issue

Recently I've been thinking about what it means to be a Christian. Or, more specifically, what you have to do. And I've come to the conclusion tht it's not as simple as people make it sounds... and yet, at the same time, it's even more simple than that.
I was reading the church's description of "What do I have to do to be a Christian?" And the page said, confess, repent, and then say this little prayer and then PRESTO. You're a Christian.
But it's more than that, isn't it? Because being a Christian isn't a destination, it's a journey. Being a Christian, you pursue Jesus. It's more than saying "Jesus, I accept you as my Lord and Savior." You now have to go and live that out. You have to go out and feed the hungry and clothe the naked and, if you don't, even if you think you're a Christian, Jesus says that He doesn't know you. (Matthew 25:31-46) But it's more than that because the Bible also says that people will come saying "look at all of this that I did in your name" and Jesus tells them too, "I don't know you." (Matthew 7:15-23) So those are the two extremes. We have to sit between them, doing things for our God, yet doing them for the right reasons.
And that's just one aspect of lifestyle! Let's not even get into baptism and speaking in tongues and all the other doctrinal, church dividing criteria!
I mean, at the end of the day we need to just love Jesus and everything else will happen naturally, but so often those become just words and our lives don't change as a result.

Are you willing to bet your life on it?

If you stopped believing in God, how would your life change?

Right now, I'm reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan and that made me start thinking about this. How drastically would my life change? Would it be drastic enough?
Chan describes a "lukewarm Christian" (a title which I personally think is a bit generous) and one piece of the description is that they don't live their life by faith. They're comfortable and happy and if bad things happen, they don't need God, they have their savings account. Chan said that these kind of people, if they one day decided to no longer believe in God, wouldn't lead very different lives at all.

And that made me wonder, if I didn't believe in God how would my life change?
And, after a few moments reflection, I realized that I wouldn't have a life. Not because without God there wouldn't be life! That's a different scenario. Even if I didn't believe in Him, it wouldn't stop Him from existing. But if I didn't believe in God, my daily life would change. Without a firm belief in God, why be kind to your neighbors, why love your enemies, why keep yourself pure, why bother with good morals? But more than my daily life, I wouldn't have any life at all because I had given it up to Him a few years ago. If I didn't believe in God, that would put a damper on my career as a Bible Translator. But furthermore, if I stopped believing in God, I just wasted the past few years of my life. All my energies, my focus, all my efforts would have been for naught and that knowledge would sap the life out of me too. But even all of that, that's just the effect my love for my Lord has on my life. But if I didn't believe in God anymore, my best friend, my strength, my comforter, my teacher, my love would be gone. And if you've ever lost a best friend, you know how that takes a bit of your life, too.

And this realization, the realization of the dependency I have on God, to be completely transparent, freaks me out. I like to be in control of situations. I trust me. And here I discovered that one minute I was in complete control and THEN... I blinked. Now, God as my entire life in His hands. and I have to trust that He's going to take good care of it. And, I mean, I know "the bible tells me so" but there's a difference between "knowing" it to be true and betting your life on it.
It makes me think of the analogy where a guy walks across Niagara Falls on a tight rope with a wheel barrel with a man inside, makes it, then invites you to get in the wheel barrel. You know he can take you across and back, you just saw him, but are you willing to bet your life on it?

God has plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. But are you willing to bet your life on it?

The Adventure that is life in Dallas

Thursday morning I woke to an unearthly wailing that sounded as if all the victims of Texas' Death Row rose to extract their revenge on all the living Texans. It was six am. I was in the middle of texting a friend "are you awake, what's that noise?" When my landlady came out and told me that we needed to climb in the tub until the alarms went off. It was a severe tornado warning. At 6am. The only upside to being frightened awake an hour before I needed to be up was that if the weather was severe enough to sound an alarm, school must be closed and I can sleep in. Right? wrong.
Instead, I was in Phonetics, 8am, groggy and irritable. What's worse? No one even mentioned it! Apparently such awakenings are so routine in Texas they're not even worth mentioning!

Friday evening, I went over to hang out with a friend at the house of a PBT family. After four slices of pizza, we went out to Walmart to get t-r-e-a-t-s for the big kids and the children were put to bed. At Walmart, I found the exotic fruit section, and in it, the cactus pear. I picked it up, squeezed it gently to see if it was ripe (not that I know what a ripe cactus pear feels like), and rolled it around in my hands feeling it's uniqueness. You see, I was under the impression that a cactus pear was the fruit of a cactus, not a cactus in and of itself. But I very quickly discovered my mistake as I came to notice the very tiny stickers irritating my flesh. As I moaned about the annoyance i slipped in a small puddle of water and fell in a heap. My friend looked back wondering if I had fallen on purpose "for dramatic effect." I had not! (That would have been overkill and I'm far too talented an actress to make that amateur mistake!) I had decided to eat this cactus pear very aggressively as revenge. We returned home with our t-r-e-a-t, somehow managed to stab a hole in the bottom of the ice cream tub resulting in the necessity to eat the whole container in one sitting. After nursing my pride with ice cream, I nursed my wounds with first tweezer (very cheap tweezers), tape (which pushed them in further), washing (which only irritated it), and finally layers of glue which I peeled off. Still, almost 24hrs later, the stickers will not relent. I ate that pear. (And, regretfully, it wasn't even that delicious)