Rocks of Remembrance

I want you to meet Amos.  (Pronounced Ah-moos.)  Amos is the translator helping Buzz and Myrna convert the Bible into the Ngalik language.  This first picture is of Buzz and Amos.  Buzz’s parents began this whole process when he was just a little boy.  While we were there, and right before Easter Sunday, he completed the Old Testament!!!!!  What a blessing for the village of Silimo to finally have the Bible in their own language.  Buzz asked him what the most memorable verse was to him.  He mentioned Amos 8:11 - It talks about how the Lord said that a time was coming when there would be a famine, not of food or thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.  We went up to his house and saw all these stacked stones in his ponds.  Amos said that when his head was swirling from all the words he was trying to translate, he would run down to the river, grab some rocks and bring them back to his house.  He would write on them verses or words that meant something to him and then stack them in formations in his ponds.  That reminds me of some verses in the Bible in 1 Samuel 7 where God’s people set up a stone as a remembrance of His faithfulness to them.  Every time Amos or anyone else in the village walks past these stones it will be a reminder of what God promises in the Bible.  That is what I want to do.  To leave behind “stones” that will be a solid reminder to everyone that comes behind me of what God has done.  Especially now as we are about to leave behind what has been our home for four years.  What truths have I taught the dorm kids that will stick with them forever? How much kindness have I shown to the Indonesians of the community?  What have I brought the lame man that sits outside the market besides food? 

What are the rocks that I am leaving behind?  I need to remember that life is so much more than just the moment I am in.  I was frustrated today with all the things that have been happening to our family lately.  All of us with this weird stomach bug or amoeba, Emma with bronchitis, Wyatt getting hit in the head with the coconut, now Sophie has a bad infection in her foot and had to start antibiotics.  Tomorrow Wyatt will go and see a doctor about his head.  Please pray about all of this, and that I would look to the solid Rock that never changes and always keeps His promises. 

Thank you-

Rachel