Kabiye Team News
July 2, 2000

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings from Albertville!  Allez les Bleus!! (French for "Go Blues!") The Bleus is the affectionate name for the National French Football (Soccer) team.  They just won the Euro Cup about 30 minutes ago, which is a huge deal in Europe.  People are still screaming on the streets, setting off fire crackers, and honking their horns.  All of the men on our team watched the game together up at the school, and have headed downtown to see what the reactions are of all of the crazy fans here.  We were just discussing last night that America has Basketball, Football, and Baseball (and some other things) but all Europe really has is Football (Soccer).  Everyone is crazy about it.  The fans in Germany and England have been doing things we couldn't even imagine and certain fans in Germany were suspended within their countries borders until the Euro Cup was over.  Isn't that crazy?  Well, enough about Football!

We pray that each of you is doing well.  We are preparing to take our final exams in two weeks, and are getting excited for both sets of our parents (and Dave's sister Ashlin and her friend Bobbie) to come!  We have a full schedule of travel planned when they come to visit and then we'll be off to Africa!  We have a lot of stuff to get finalized before we leave and it seems that time just continues to creep up on us.  We are trying to cram as much French review as we can into these last few weeks.  One of the friends we've met here at the centre who is a former missionary kid, raised in France, is meeting with us on Tuesday nights for 2 to 3 hours to review tenses and conversation and especially help us with our pronunciation.  This is extremely helpful because she is American and can give us "American" hints on how to form sounds that our mouths have never made before!  This will also be the big challenge in Kabiye.  We've found that unless we get our pronunciation pretty close to exact, people outside the school just stare at us blankly until we get it almost right.  But, God has been faithful. Although we are not fluent at all, we can communicate most of what we want to say and can understand most people if they speak slowly to us.  Dave really feels like he has made  a lot of progress this last month and I would definitely agree!  Thank you for all of your prayers for our language learning, and don't stop now.  Kabiye is not far off!

A phrase that we are beginning to put into reality a lot lately is "Necessity is the mother of invention".  We've done all sorts of things we never would have thought of doing in the states, but that have provided a need at the time.  A couple of these have to do with being "car-less". For example:  We use the handles of Hannah's umbrella stroller as hooks to carry up to 8 plastic bags of groceries (more than this will tip it over backwards) home from the store.  (Since our little red sack on wheels will only hold so much).  Matt and Andrea Miller were late for a movie they were going to see a few months back because the girl they had asked to babysit understood the wrong time and so Andrea jumped on the book rack of Matt's bike, stuck her legs to the sides, and Matt peddled them with great speed downtown.  The best invention of all, though, in my opinion, is that of our makeshift cradle roll chairs.  Every Sunday evening, we have a team worship time and in the middle, one of the girls takes all of the children into another room for cradle roll (Bible Class).  We have no way to keep them all seated in little chairs or anything, so all of the dads take off their belts and we "seatbelt" each child into a big person chair.  They love it and feel grown up, but visitors to our worship time usually give us horrified looks when we say, "Okay! Cradle Roll time.  We need 5 belts!"  We always give them a full explanation, but their initial reactions are pretty funny!

Please continue to pray for the Kabiye and for all of the pregnancies on our team!  For all of you who haven't heard, Jane Neal is also expecting a new baby! (Only 2 days after us!)  Our team is blessed with new life, but with it comes extra responsibilities.  So, please pray for God to give us wisdom and for God to provide what these new babies need, in the way of health and physical blessings.  We love each of you and praise God for your prayers and for your friendships.  We love to hear from all of you, so if you get a chance, please drop us a line!  We are sending a recent family picture taken here at the Centre.  Hope you enjoy!  May the grace of the Lord, the love of God, and communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all! 

In His Love,
David, Becky, and Hannah

"For Christ's love compels us!" 2 Corinthians 5:14