Christmas together as a family in Independence (KC), MO | FAMILY UPDATE: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, from all the Prices. We were all able to be together in one place this year for Christmas!
Pictured left to right: Kirsten (17) is finishing her senior year of home school as a dual-enrolled, early college student at Calvary University. She is on track to complete an Associate of Arts in May of next year. Matthew (23) lives on his own in Atlanta now, working as a freelance User Experience designer for apps and websites, while he looks for full-time work in that field where he can work in an office with a team. He has his prosthetic arm and is learning to use it; he had surgery in Kansas City last week to shorten the stump to help decrease the weight and they will make adjustments to make his prosthetic more useful now that the end of the humerus has been removed; Elizabeth (26) is a social worker, serving HIV-positive homeless people in Kansas City and also working on her Master’s in Social Work, and is married to our wonderful son-in-law, Stephen Sell (26, not pictured); Ariela (10); Jonathan (29) is a math student and software engineer in San Francisco; Pamala; Todd; Timothy (30) is starting a new job in KC as a social worker for the Missouri Dept. of Social Services; and Daniel (13). | | | | | | Ariela learning to use the roller blades Daniel gave her for Christmas | | Pam’s mom, Barbie Hughes, now lives near us in Belton (KC), MO | | Saying goodbye to the last of the kittens (above and below). We’re thankful Kirsten found homes for them. | | | | Making cookies as a family (above and below) | | |
NEW MAILING ADDRESS: We continue full-time in Bible translation ministry as faith supported missionaries, but since Todd’s role in phase 2 of the Bible translation project is that of Bible Translation Consultant, we can live in the US since meetings are held via Zoom, rather than in person in Croatia and Serbia. For our entire 32 years of married life we have rented homes since we moved often and lived in various places in the US, Bosnia, Croatia and Hungary. Now that we can work remotely from the States, we feel like it is much better stewardship to own a home rather than rent.
God has been so gracious in that He has provided a house for us which we bought on December 17! Our new mailing address is 15907 Ryan Dr., Belton, MO 64012. We are humbled and thankful for how the Lord worked all this out. By His provision, we had enough money for the down payment and closing costs so we purchased the house. And then, totally out of the blue, we got word that one of our monthly financial supporters had passed away and left us an inheritance. We are amazed at God’s provision, as we can use this large gift to pay off a lot of the principal on the house in order to save a huge amount on interest on our mortgage. How grateful we are for the Lord and His people!
| | At the signing to buy our house | | In the entryway of our new house! | BIBLE TRANSLATION PROGRESS: I’ve been working via Zoom and our synchronized Bible translation software with Zoki and Stanoja to do spell checking of the Gospel of Luke and 50 chronological Bible stories in the Ludari Roma language. This is a lot harder than it sounds! There is no automated spell checking or dictionary to consult since this language has never been written in a standardized way before. For example, there are four ways that the “ch” sound can be made; since there is no dictionary to turn to, Zoki and Stanoja have to try to sound out the words and decide what sounds right to their ears. We use the Croatian alphabet to make it easier for them to read, but Ludari has one sound that Croatian doesn’t have; we have to decide when that Romanian letter should be used, which is not always clear.
Can you imagine, if we had no standardized spelling in English, what it would be like to decide how to spell our words if we only went by the sounds! There are over 14,700 words we need to check, and currently have completed all but 2,800 of them. (It takes about three hours working together on Zoom to check 400-500 words.)
And when do you write something as a compound word, a hyphenated word, or as two words? Is it “bedroom”, “bed-room” or “bed room”? Why do we spell the names of three superheroes differently: “Batman”, “Spider-man”, and “Iron Man”? Pray for us as a team as we do the spelling and grammar checks, and as Zoki, Stanoja and Sergej check each verse as a team and with other Roma in the community. Pray we can meet the deadline to finish the printing and recording of Luke and 50 Bible stories the end of January 2022.
MONEY MATTERS: Thank you for your generous financial support! Unexpected donations have for years filled the gap, but our monthly pledges are currently short $1,168 per month. Please pray that this amount will be pledged soon by individuals, groups or churches who want to support our work monthly for the sake of Bible translation for the Roma. If you would like to make a monthly pledge, please see the giving information at the bottom of this page. If you would like us to speak and present our mission work to your church, Sunday school or Bible study group, to ask them for prayer and financial support, please let us know. Thank you so much! | | | | To donate by mail, phone or to set up monthly automatic transfers: PIONEERS (account #110250) |
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