Olson Family
News & Views

 

Preparing with New Tribes Mission for Tribal Church Planting and Bible Translation in the Philippines
Issue #17. December 2005

 

 

Horizontal Scroll: The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined…
           - Isaiah 9:2

 

 

Temporary Address:

George & Ginny Olson

501 E. 14th Ave

Belton, TX 76513

 

To download a printable copy of the newsletter:

zip word version (3.7MB)

zip publisher version(5.54MB)

After downloading, change file extension from "piz" to "zip" before extracting.

 

 

home: www.reachthetribes.com

 

email:

george_olson@ntm.org

george@reachthetribes.com

ginny@reachthetribes.com
Isaac: elendil_ike@yahoo.com

 

Cherokee Heritage Center

 

Elephant Rock

 

Tulsa Zoo Animals

 

Deputation Calendar

 

December 16 – Graduation

December 20 –

Move to Temple, Texas

 

December 21 – Jan 5

 - Holiday family visits

 

January 24 – Feb. 14

 - Isaac & George mission trip to Philippines

 

February 15

 - Begin deputation activities

 

June/July 2006

 - Move to San Antonio, TX

 

Late November 2006

- Move to the Philippines

 

Kid's Corner

We asked our kids, "What was one thing you liked about living in Oklahoma?"

 

Isaac (age 12): "I liked living in a big building all together [with other families].

 

Sarah(age 9): "I liked babysitting the little kids!"

 

Abby(age 6): "I liked going down to the track and climbing the crab-apple tree!"

 

 

     "Is the bed rolling?" I asked.

     "What?" Ginny answered.

     "It feels like the bed is moving," I said.

     "That's because we have been in the car for 12 hours, it is 105 degrees in here, a gerbil died, Sarah cried, and we are having cheese for breakfast!" came her reply. The cheese referred to was the left over cheese sticks that had been our snacks on the drive up from Texas.

     And so began our final semester in the training. We started very hot and very tired, with no air conditioning, and no food. Thankfully, though, there is a grocery store 10 minutes away, and I was able to get up in the morning and get something besides cheese sticks for breakfast!

     It is hard to believe that the end of training is finally here. This has definitely been the busiest of our academic semesters!

 

Cherokee Adventure

     The big thing this semester was our move to Oklahoma to live with the Cherokee people and study their language for 6 weeks. This was preparation for what we will be doing in the tribe with studying a tribal language and developing an alphabet. Even though Cherokee already has an alphabet, we were tasked to develop one in our project so that we could learn how to put all the linguistics training together as if we were in a tribe. This was an incredibly valuable learning experience for us! And, also, we were "blessed" with the opportunity to be in another communal living type of arrangement, where we shared meals, bathrooms, living areas, etc.

     I thought one of the best ways to communicate what we did down there would be to put some of my journal entries here in the newsletter, because they were written as we were experiencing the adventure.

 

For more pictures of how we lived and our working areas, click here.

For some pictures of our adventures and some Cherokee songs, click here.

 

10/3/05

     Well, here we are in Cherokee land. We arrived on Saturday. Isaac had a fever all day. [We had to clean before moving in]. We swept and swept for several hours, and then bleached everything down to kill whatever resident germs were around. This place is used as a summer church camp for kids. It is called the "Cherokee Baptist Association Campground."  We picked up lots of trash in the rooms – old candy, bottles, etc.

     Yesterday, our planning day, I had a fever all day and had the chills. Our rooms are about 25 feet by 15 feet, and we get two of them. One is for our living area, and the other is for a school room for Ginny to homeschool. We had to work hard late into the night Saturday to get our stuff unpacked from the trailer, in order to get the bedding so we could all go to sleep. Then all day Sunday we had to work to make our living arrangements livable, to make the school room workable, and to plan for our first day of Cherokee language study. All this while I had some kind of sickness. Everyone in our family has had this so far except Ginny, and I am praying that she does not get it because of what she is doing right now. She is very busy keeping our living arrangements and homeschool arrangements in order, as well as cooking for the whole camp this week.

 

10/6/05

     For the last 3 days I have cycled between feeling almost well and bouts of fever and chills. The Lord in His goodness has seen fit to heal me in a natural way rather than a miraculous way. He has given me strength during the day to do the work I am here to do for Cherokee study – planning, entering data in the computer, rehearsing language phrases, etc. Then, I have come down with fever and chills again and had to lie down.

     I miss spending time with Ginny and the kids right now. The only time I really have been able to see them is when I have been feeling sick, which doesn't allow for good interaction. I am praying for a full recovery and to be able to spend some good time with them.

     Our language helper is John McCarter. He is probably close to 70 years old, and has been a believer for most of his life. I am praying we will get a chance to spend some time discussing the Lord with him [besides just studying language].

     I found another cockroach in the sink this morning.

 

10/7/05

     There was another cockroach in the sink this morning. Getting ready to eat the cockroach was a tarantula in the sink. I caught the tarantula and killed the roach.

     When I showed the tarantula to the kids, they all begged to keep him for a pet! Whose kids are these?! Well, we kept him for a pet, and Sarah named him Turkey. So now we have a pet gerbil [the one that didn't die], a pet snake, and a pet tarantula.

 

10/10/05

     I think I am finally getting over the sickness. It was difficult last week to press through while feeling ill and having the bouts of fever. We now have several transcriptions of [Cherokee] verbs being spoken in different contexts, which will account for the beginning of our grammar analysis.

     Ginny and the kids are in back in Camdenton this week to visit our friends the Burts. I talked to Ginny and she said Sarah and Ema [Sarah's best friend] have been inseparable.

 

10/14/05

     Ginny and the kids got back yesterday! Yeaa! It is so nice to have them here with me [even though I am working all the time].

 

10/17/05

     An interesting thing happened yesterday. The folks at the church that is right here at the camp had been talking to Matt, one of the other students. Then later in the afternoon, when they were coming for evening church, they came up to us and said that someone in a green car from California had gotten in an accident about a mile up the highway, and they thought it was Matt, because he is from California.

     So Daniel (another student) and I got in a car to go up to the accident site. Meanwhile, Isaac went to Matt's room to check on him, and he was in there, having just gotten up from a nap. We got to the accident site and it was obvious Matt was not involved in any way. So we came back and had a good laugh about it.

     Later that evening, the folks from the church came by asking how they guy was who got in the accident. They found Matt, and he told them he was fine, and it was just a big misunderstanding. They had taken an offering to help cover his medical expenses from the accident. He told them it was okay, he wasn't really in an accident. They insisted on giving us the offering, and told us to use it for groceries! Praise the Lord, that made up the difference in the food budget for us the group! We were very thankful!

 

10/28/05

     Today we were going over some verbs, and the conversation when something like this:

     George: Okay, how would you say "We brought back a fish."

     John (our language helper): Uh-chut o-guh-ni-NO-thla

     George: Okay. That means that in order to say that we brought back more than one fish, we would have to say "Uh-chut te-guh-ni-NO-thla"

     John (laughing): No, no, no. That's like you just said that the fish brought you back!

    

     I did finally figure out the source of my mistake. It turned out that this word for 'bringing back' had an unusual form when we wanted to say "we" with only 1 fish. The problem was quickly resolved.

 

11/7/05

     Studying Cherokee in this environment is interesting. My co-worker here put it this way. He said, "It is just like teaching someone to try and fix a car. You say, 'Okay, today we are going to learn how to fix a car. Here is a hammer, and here is a blunt screwdriver. You have 5 minutes to fix the car. Go.' "

[This is an obvious exaggeration, but we certainly felt that way being as busy as we were then!]

 

November 26th: As I write this, I have my linguistic write-up complete on the desk beside me. 60 pages! It feels good to be done with this, and we really believe the Lord used this time to prepare us for the ministry ahead of us!

 

Graduation and Plans

     We are graduating December 16th! Wow! What a great thing! After graduation, we will move to Temple, TX until around June or July. In late January, I will be taking Isaac with me for 3 weeks to scout some of the ministry areas in the Philippines. Please pray for us as we travel and seek the Lord's will! Pray for Ginny and the girls while we are apart for those 3 weeks!

     While we are in Temple, we will basically have 3 tasks. First, we will be plugging into the operation of our church in Temple, helping out wherever we can. Second, we will be doing our "deputation," which means "preparing to move overseas as a missionary." This involves communication with the field, raising prayer and financial support, planning, visas, immunizations, passports, packing, purchasing airplane tickets, and whatever else is necessary! The 3rd task will be to begin (as time allows) a study of the national language of the Philippines, either Tagalog or Cebuano, depending on which area the Lord sends us for ministry.

     In June or July we will move to San Antonio, where we will get involved in our church there for a few months before heading to the Philippines.  Then in November, on to the Philippines!