Tolle, lege!

I have been reading a number of fantastic books lately. In the Great Books course I'm teaching, we've been reading Augustine's Confessions and Dorothy Sayers' The Nine Tailors. I've read the Confessions at least three times (that's what you get when you study ancient/medieval history in college). It  is an absolutely beautiful book; I can't recommend it enough. Surprisingly enough, my 13 year old student says he'd rather read Augustine than The Nine Tailors, which is a murder mystery novel! Sweet music to my ears!

In our women's Bible study we've been working through the book Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges. Talk about convicting! The book covers sins such as gossip, lack of self-control, irritability, selfishness, envy, discontentment, and anxiety. Every week we come to the study, announce the topic of the week - "All right, ladies, we're talking about judgmentalism!" -- and every week without fail we laugh uncomfortably, joke that "we've got this one covered, let's skip this week!" and then delve into some serious heart searching and goal-setting to overcome these rampant, subtle sins. This is a fantastic book for a group study (and there is a study guide available).

Other books I'm dawdling in at the moment: On Being a Missionary by Thomas Hale, Cords of Love, a story of pioneer missionaries to Ethiopia, Non Campus Mentis, a hilarious look at college students' take on the history of the world according to the ridiculous things that have been collected from exam books and papers from several universities, and GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy.

Most of all, though, like Augustine, we need to tolle lege  -- take up and read -- the Scriptures. I've been consistently reading my Bible every morning (using the Bible reading plan I mentioned a few posts back) but lately I've been checking Facebook and Gmail before I read. Yesterday in Bible study we talked about Lack of Self Control, and several of us admitted that we have a problem with spending more time on the computer in the morning than in the Word. So our commitment for this week is no internet before devotions (which I'm adding to my previous commitment of "no Bible, no breakfast"). Please pray for diligence in this. We need the spiritual strength gained from daily time in the Word in order to face the challenges of living in such a spiritually dark place (and so do all of you living in America!).

God bless you as you take up and read. May He open your eyes to see the beauty and grace that are found only in Christ, just as He opened the eyes of Augustine so many years ago in the garden and allowed the spiritual scales to fall from his eyes for the first time.

Emily

Day 1 (Again): In which I admit my failure.

I'm back. No excuses. I'm a lazy bum. That about sums it up. Let's try to get this blog rolling again.

I'm still aiming for 90 days of blogging. Since I totally failed, I'm starting over. Please keep me accountable!

I have some exciting news -- I'm hoping to return to Karamoja in September for another year, after a two month summer vacation in the good ol' US of A. My role here will be changing, as will my funding situation, but more on all those details later. You'll be seeing a Facebook page, a website, letters, YouTube videos and all kinds of fun media shindigs promoting the Karamoja station's newest project, a preschool literacy and numeracy program run by me, Martha and Erika, along with Karimojong staff. We'll also be expanding our current ministry to local public elementary schools. Lord willing, next year I'll be teaching one course to the missionary kids -- the Great Books (Omnibus) course with Jamie and Josh -- and I'll be spending the rest of my time teaching at our preschool, doing administrative work for the school, and visiting the local public schools on a regular basis to teach literacy, numeracy and Bible to grades 1-6 and to provide some training for the public school teachers.

This is all still in the works, and the details are still a bit fuzzy, but I've got the green light to go ahead and prepare for my return. I would be glad to answer any questions you have now about our plans for next year.

The other thing occupying a lot of brainwaves at the moment -- I'm getting amped up for the RP Mission team, which will be arriving about two months from now! I'll be ending this term in Karamoja as the mission team leader, and I'm looking forward to serving alongside five young ladies -- my dear friend Kathryn Paar, Stephanie Godlewski, Liz Neel, Rachel Dinkledine, and Stacy Muir. I am itching for them to arrive... but in the meantime I want to make sure I help prepare them as well as possible via email for all they're about to see and experience. We are going to have too much fun completely!

Thanks for your continued prayers and encouragement. If I slack off on this blog again, please give me a swift kick in the backside and remind me to push through the writer's block and put fingertips to keyboard!
Alakara nooi (thank you very much)!

Emily