call for missionary work

those who know me, toothdigger, even slightly... know how odd it is that the Lord called me to the overseas mission field in 1979...to translate the Word into a native tongue without a written alphabet, if you can even imagine.

with such a grand calling, i left my job... (no sacrifice there)... and my home (even less of a sacrifice) in so. indiana, drove 18 hrs to norman, oklahoma to study with kenneth pike at the summer institute of linguistics...

(aside: at the summer institute of linguistics, i got my first meal of linguistics with coursework in international phonetics, phonology, and ever so difficult grammatical analysis with pike himself; my first taste of linguistics came at denison university where i took a year-long class as a substitute for the foreign language requirement...just fyi: i am a speech language pathologist and poet

at the end of three months, the wise men and women of wycliffe recognized my spiritual babyhood; and sent me off to moody bible in wonderful, windy chicago (one of my all time favorite cities!)...to get a better, firmer grounding in the Word!

at moody, while in the midst of studying God's awesome Word, i fell into SIN (yes, capital letter SIN!)... of course...

and, i wandered off from my calling... what is that? the first and best destiny? thrown to pigs...trampled upon...

i actually have no earthly idea; i only know i am here now...

the blogosphere may not be a traditional overseas missionary field and blogging may not be traditional mission field work, but i think deborah would have found it to be a pretty effective method of getting her message across to the israelites back in the o.t. times...

so, here i am, blogging for jesus, so to speak...
oh, the whole point of this post: I CAN'T BE A MISSIONARY without TRAFFIC!