Bring Your Own Shoes

Good morning Eric,

I realize this letter is in some sense pointless, and yet I still I write it. As I write, you are probably in a minibus headed this direction and soon I'll be in a truck headed yours. We'll meet in the middle possibly before these words ever post online. Oh well, I'll write it anyway, if nothing else as a way of helping the world (or at least the tiny slice of the world following this blog) experience in advance what you, or better yet, WE are in for this summer.

We've met only once, one Sunday afternoon when my family and I stopped by Moody Bible Institute on our way between grandparents' houses, and yet I feel like that meeting told me a lot about you. You are quiet, maybe at times, reserved, not unlike me. You enjoy linguistics enough to finish a BA in linguistics at Moody and are interested in translation enough to pursue an internship with us this summer. I look forward helping you experience as best you can the world of applied linguistics and Bible translation over the next 11 weeks.

Maybe less like me than I'd like to admit, I also learned that you are helpful, as you voluntarily reached out and helped us situate our kids at the restaurant we went to together in Chicago. Thank you for that. We will need and greatly appreciate those helping hands at various times this summer, so we hope you packed them along. I've already seen that you have a heart for evangelism and cross cultural ministry, and you seemingly have loads of experience in both. I look forward to seeing how the sharing of our past experiences and unfolding of new ones sharpens us both this summer.

I can't promise you a great experience, in fact, I've given up trying to craft one in preparation for your coming. Instead I've come to realize that the quality of your experience with us depends a great deal on YOU. How will you handle the remote conditions, the weather, the woes of a young family.  How ill you engage the language and the work we are a part of? These are choices you will make and will greatly affect what you walk away with come August.

But, I warn you, no matter what you do, you won't be able to escape some comparison to the intern we hosted two years ago, a young man famous in our lives, known to our kids only as Maateyos. Maateyos dove into Gmz language learning right from day one and he actually seemed to enjoy sitting in on 8 hours a day, 5 days a week of people talking in other languages. But over the three months that Maateyos was here, his hard work paid off, as the last month he was able to work one-on-one with a Gmz translator (who knew next to no English) and begin the major projects of key term collection and the Luke Bible dictionary. Maateyos exceeded my expectations both in the office and at home, such that the night of his departure was one of the saddest nights of our Ethiopian lives.

"There could never be another intern like Maateyos" I remember thinking to myself, and yet immediately I knew the fallacy in my thinking. Sure, Maateyos left some pretty big shoes to fill (literally, he left his size 11s behind), but you know, Eric, we are expecting you to bring your own shoes. Ones that already fit you, that are broken in after 4 years at Moody, after the ministry trips you've taken over the years, after growing up as an MK yourself. You are who God made you to be and for whatever reason he has brought you to Gilgel Beles for this summer, wanting to accomplish something, first and foremost, in you. But secondly, I think he wants you to be a part of something he is doing in me, in my family and in the Gmz translation project.

I can't guarantee an easy summer. In fact, I've got a few things up my sleeve that might make it just a bit more difficult. Already, you've seen that I forgot to tell your hosts in Addis Ababa about your gluten-free diet. Apparently, everything they left for you to eat for breakfast was gluten-filled. My bad. Back in April, we talked a lot about how to get you from Addis Ababa to Gilgel Beles without the cost and stress of me and my family having to drive all the way in. In the end, we went with a plane flight and a bus ride, but just last week, a major new plan was demanded of us that, which, had we known, could have made the trip much cheaper, easier and probably more fun for you. Sorry. Yesterday afternoon, upon my request, the Catholic fathers cleaned out an old storage place, and set it up as a little dorm for you to stay in, but I warn you…it don't exaggerate when I say LITTLE. To be exact 6 feet by 9 feet. I tried to get a picture of it, but it is one of those cases where you can't get the camera lens wide enough to give you true perspective.

At least it's your own space, we thought, as long as you don't need room to breathe. Oh, but the bathroom, well, we definitely we have you covered there. Just a short walk from your storage room (I mean dorm), you will find a beautiful building with six choices of squatty potties.

We were joking with the Catholic Fathers that you could choose one for Monday, one for Tuesday, one for Wednesday…and so on until Sunday comes on which day you can just go out in the forest. I apologize  for the humor at your misfortune. I could apologize for the heat and humidity right now, and then after the rains come and cool things down I can apologize for the mud and mildew. I could apologize for my whining and crying kids who quickly grow tired of being cooped up in the compound where we live without English-speaking friends to play with. I could apologize for a million other things that I know will add to the list of stresses you will experience this summer, but at the same time, I know it wouldn't be right. You are coming to experience the life that we live, the work that we do, and hopefully through all of that, you will hear God's voice either pushing you toward or pulling you away from a similar path. That is our prayer.

In just a few hours, we will welcome you into our lives, yes, for the next three months, but more than likely for much longer than that. Remember, bring your own unique shoes so that after you are gone, we'll better recognize your footprints that you are SURE to leave all over the project and our lives!

With great expectation,

Your brother in Christ,

Travis