09.08.08
August in a Nutshell
It’s been a while since I posted and a ton has gone on so I thought I would bring you all up to speed on life in California! August has been a good month and busy. I seem to have blinked somewhere and all of a sudden it was September. Some highlights from August were:
1) Carrie and Molly’s visit. We had a great visit with them. There was wedding dress/bride’s maid dress shopping. An amazingly stellar trip to Raging Waters. Yeah! (My luck at this waterpark has apparently turned in that I finished the day in the same swimsuit I started in. Unlike Water County USA last summer where my suit was ravaged by a waterslide into a loincloth-esque cover and the park gave me a new swimsuit.)
2) Black family visit. My folks and Adam came out for a visit. Lots of eating, random trips and good times. A sweet day trip to Santa Barbara. Adam’s pirate-style pants were also a highlight for me!
3) Perspectives. I started the course Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. It is so far, totally awesome! The course is about Christian missions and everything related to that topic. I will try and post more about it. I love the class and I would recommend it very strongly.
4) Wedding planning. Lots of big things are done! I give props to my amazing fiancée Katie for her organization and motivation. You continue to delight me babe, I love you 
5) Pre-marital counseling. We began the counseling which is being done by another couple from church who were themselves missionaries. We have had some good discussions with them and Katie and I have eally enjoyed our own conversatons on things.
6) Getting sick. There was some kind of bug going around. Lots of folks were out of work sick. Katie and I both got it. Feeling good now though.
Hmmm…a lot has gone on and yet the month seemed to fly by. Those are the big ones though that popped into my mind just now.
08.02.08
Back from MTI
We have returned to sunny/smoggy SoCal from MTI and I am writing from my own room where I slept in my own bed last night…mmmm. Katie and I had a great two weeks of training in the Program in Language Acquisition Techniques. (Read relatedposts here and here) Having taken the course, I feel much better equipped to tackle language learning as a missionary when we go. The course puts many diverse tools in the hands of the student and empowers them to take charge of learning their new language.
It was amazing to see so many missionaries going to so many places. My prayer is that they can learn their new languages and cultures well and the Lord would us them effectively as His servants to those people. I wish all of you could see the number and character of people headed to the mission field and also hear their stories of how the Lord had brought them to where they are at, it is so encourageing and you can’t help but praise the Lord for what He is doing in peoples’ lives and around the world. We are blessed to be able to be a part of that!
So now we are back in California. Lots to do and much busyness getting ready for the wedding as well as preparing to begin our preparations to go to the mission field together (and working, church, etc!). We are in discussions with SIM USA folks now about placements for us and I would ask you to be in prayer for Katie and I and for SIM as we pray about and look together at the amazing and exciting possibilities that are open to us.
We are hoping and praying about going to Niger, West Africa. Niger is the poorest, least developed country on earth. Over 90% of the population is unreached by the Gospel and there are many spiritual and physical needs and few workers. Katie and I looked at many different countries and prayed about where the Lord could use us best and talked about our shared ministry goals and desires and felt the Lord putting Niger on our hearts as the place where the Lord would like us to be. So thats where we will head for now unless He tells us otherwise!
Thanks for your prayers and encouragement! These are exciting times in so many ways for Katie and I and we are excited and blessed to have you all be a part of it!
07.31.08
Rocky Mountain High
We had a good day this past Sunday. Continuing on from our weekend break from MTI classes we carried our adventures north to Denver and beyond. Sunday morning, we went to church at Grace Chapel where some family friends of Katie’s attend. Their church also has a missions focus on the country of Niger which is where we are thinking of going so we also were able to meet with some folks on their mission board and also a Nigerien family that happened to be there! Fun!
After church, we met up for lunch with some of Katie’s Biola friends that had just moved here and then decided to drive up to Rocky Mountain National Park. Well, it was a much farther drive than we thought but the park was magnificent! We hiked for an hour and a half before having to head back to Palmer Lake but we left with the strong desire to come back and backpack or camp there! Below are some photos from the park. Finished up the day with a delicious Dairy Queen chocolate dipped cone so not too shabby in all!
Awesome Colorado-style Weekend
Katie’s version with additional photos.
Colorado is the stuff of fairytales! I always forget how awesome it is here. This past weekend was our first time off in the MTI program so Katie and I rented a car to get off campus and have some fun. This weekend is the last vacation time we will likely have for a while so we wanted to go out with a bang and Katie put together a day of Petersen-family proportions!
PIKES PEAK
We left MTI at 6:30 am and drove down to Manitou Springs to ride the cog railway to the top of Pikes Peak. The cog railway is a railway that uses giant cogs operating on a central rail to propel the train up and down the mountain on slopes that ordinary vehicles cannot go on. At its most extreme grade, the train went up a 26 degree angle! Crazy! In comparison, most cars can only drive up 8 degree slopes. That will give you an idea. The ride and scenery were great and it was so clear that, supposedly, we could see like 5 states from the top. The top was cold! The views were amazing and the Rockies really are beautiful. Apparently, it was after a trip to the top of Pikes Peak that Katharine Lee Bates was inspired to write America the Beautiful. One near catastrophe happened…at the top, a bug flew into my mouth and got stuck at the back of my throat. I kept coughing and drinking a lot of water and finally got it washed down. Well, the train ride is an hour and fifteen minutes with NO BATHROOM! All the water I drank trying to get the bug out suddenly dropped hard-core to my small intestines. The ride down was excruciatingly long and it was a solid hour and fifteen minutes of uninterrupted prayer. Praise God He answered my prayers!
GARDEN OF THE GODS
After, a choice lunch at a pizzeria that was creepily decorated on every wall with photos of Marilyn Monroe, we head to the Garden of the gods for some hiking. That place is awesome! It is a kind of valley in which huge red and gray rock formations jut into the sky. There are several trails that circle the rocks. We hiked all around there for several hours which was a lot of fun. There were also some rock climbers who were climbing some psycho rock faces!
SEVEN FALLS
After that, we had a couple hours until our dinner reservations so we headed to Seven Falls which is a waterfall nearby. The drive back to where the falls are is along the “Most Beautiful Mile in Colorado”…self-proclaimed of course! The falls were ok, very tall and they had steps you could go up all the way to the top so that was a workout. And they had trails at the top. It was pretty cool.
We finished the day at Iron Springs Chateau for a home-style dinner and melodrama. The food was great! Chicken, brisket, beans, coleslaw, biscuits…MMMM! The show was quite fun. It began with a cheesy play that reminded my somehow of a Dudley-Do Right cartoon! It progressed through several old-timey songs from the 1920s and 30s and then finished up with a music and comedy show. It was very surreal. At one point I started chuckling to myself and Katie leaned over and asked what was so funny and I said “What the heck are we doing here??” Ha ha! We ended up a little creeped out/amused but it was fun!
We finally got back to MTI around 11pm. So, in all it was a very fun and tiring day! I definitely recommend Colorado Springs to anyone, there is lots to do, it is beautiful and especially if you like to do things outside. Just make sure you go to the bathroom before you get on the cog railway!
07.25.08
What is language?
We had an interesting lecture today that included a discussion on: what is language? what is language learning? At first glance, this seems like an easy question but closer thought reveals it is not so simple. Let me illustrate from an expamle from the talk.
Many people, when recalling their school days might say, “When I was in school I took history, math, science and Spanish.” Spanish does not really fit in this list. Why? Well, if you took a history class, you would expect to come out of it having acquired more knowledge than when you started. Same with math and same with science. In these subjects, as indeed in most school subjects, a student might expect to finish the class more having more knowledge than at the begining.
Is this true with Spanish, or indeed any other language? Not really. You still posses the same amount of knowledge, you have merely learned a new way to express it. Language is a means of communicating, not a subject to master or a skill to acquire.
On that point, language learning also differs from learning subjects like history and math in another way. You do it naturally. People don’t naturally acquire a knowledge of history. Or math. Or biology. Or whatever. You are taught those things. We all learned our first language without any special teaching or effort. We were simply exposed to it and acquired it. As such, everyone has a natural ability to learn a language. The ability is innate in our humanness. Pretty cool God made us that way.
Anyway, that is your random thought for the night!
07.24.08
MTI Update
It is Thursday night in our first week (out of 2) at MTI. The courses are so interesting. For example, did you know that the English language uses only about 44 sounds but that there are hundreds of other sounds being used in languages around the world? Here is a brief description of some of the course highlights:
New sounds and mouth shapes – we unconsciously speak by forming different shapes with our mouth, lips and tongue. Air is routed through the mouth or nose and the vocal chords are either moving or not. It is fascinating studying common sounds and words I use every day and seeing in a mirror the shapes your mouth makes, where the tongue goes, etc. It is amazing watching other people talk and “reading lips” for the first time. Crazy!
Fricatives – besides having a very funny name, fricatives are consonants that are voiced or unvoiced in which air comes out the mouth impeded. In English we have only 8 but there are 4 others. I know how to do them now!
Sweet new lingo – alveopalatal affricate, bilabial glottalized explosive, uvular trill, velar fricative…the list could go on…
Learning language FAST!! – We are using language acquisition techniques that maximize soaking up as much of a language in context as you can and focusing on comprehension rather than saying it back. The teachers use various languages and it is amazing how much can comprehend after only a little practice! I can now understand and respond to various commands in Jeh (a Vietnamese tribal language) and can respond in dialogue or certain commands in Russian. Sweet! The point is not to learn these specific languages during the time here but to demonstrate that using certain techniques can help you better learn a new language.
Mutual encouragement – it is so great being here with other future missionaries and hear how God is working in their lives and hear about their walk with God in service to Him.
Attending the course with Katie – it has been so much fun being here together! Being able to be in class learning together, encouraging each other, talking about the classes and just having fun together! It is a super glimpse about how fun language school will be!
I reckon this post is long enough. I will share some more later.
Fricatives R Us
Nestled in the Rockies. Performing strange actions with my mouth. My lips and tongue forming unheard of shapes. Unnatural sounds emanating from my throat…where could I be?? Well at the Program in Language Acquisition Techniques of course!
Katie and I are currently pursuing this course in at the Mission Training International (MTI) in Palmer Lake, CO. Rather than a study of a specific language, the course aims at equipping missionaries to learn a new language easier, more quickly and more effectively. We are studying phonetics, linguistics techniques, and sundry other language focused areas. It has been awesome so far!!
Stay tuned for more of the juicy details!
07.23.08
Engaged!!!
It has been a while since I posted and there have been some big changes in the meantime! The big news is that Katie and I are now engaged!! Many of you are aware of the unusual and exciting way our relationship began and has grown and I am amazed to have found such a fun, loving and Godly woman to spend my life with! I am truly blessed. We are both very excited and are planning on being married in January!
The gist of how it went down: Well, every month we would have a special monthiversary date where we would do something extra fun or special. We had missed it in July while Katie was in Oregon so we planned to do it when we got back from Oregon. So I came and picked her up and we went and had some h’orderves in Fullerton and we strolled around town for a while. We still had a bunch of time before the dinner reservations so we drove around for a while and I tried to confuse her about where we were going (I don’t think it worked) then went to this really nice restaurant up on a hill in the Brea/Fullerton area and had a great dinner there. After dinner, I thought you could see the Disneyland fireworks from up there so we waited for them…and waited…and they never started so I said we should walk over to this park across the road. We knew the park well, we have gone there to hang out and talk a bunch of times and it is great. It looks over Brea, very cool. So we walked almost all the way there when all of a sudden we heard the fireworks which were starting way late! So we hustled back up the hill and watched them. Then we went back to the park and that is where I proposed. (She said yes!) We hung out there for a while longer until the sprinklers turned on unexpectedly and we had to make a hasty exit.
So that’s the story (it saves me from writing it over and over again for different people!). We are pretty excited!
06.24.08
Desert Heat
This past weekend, Katie and I took a trip to Palm Springs. I had never been there and although I had a head knowledge that it was in the desert, I did not really understand what that meant until we got there. Palm Springs is in the desert! Sand, dirt, hot as blazes… I am still somewhat baffled at how Palm Springs even came into existence? I cannot imagine why someone would want to live there but it must have a draw for desert lovers and heat seekers…or golfers. I will have to Wikipedia that one tomorrow.
Anyway, we wanted to go hiking on Mount San Jacinto State Park. To get there, we rode a totally sweet action cable car up the mountain! I do not remember the elevation at the base station but you travel up about 5000-6000 feet in elevation in a giant rotating cable car! It was amazing! The car could hold up to 80 people and I must admit that on the journey up, I freaked myself out a little when I thought about how much weight was being held up by a cable I could wrap my hands around! YIKES!! The top station is around 8500 ft I think and it is about 30 degrees cooler at the top (it was mid 70s at the top so what does that tell you about the desert floor?!?) There were lots of trails and we hiked for several hours and it was super. I highly recommend it. Below are some photos from the day. You can appreciate the view from the top and get and idea of the cable car route.
By the way, when we got back to the car (which had been sitting out in the parking lot working on its tan this whole time) there were two plastic coffee cups in the front that were melted! Craziness!
Palm Springs and Coachella Valley from Mount San Jacinto
Other side of the mountain
Palm Springs Aerial Tramway
Mount San Jacinto
Agua Limpia para Managua!
If you keep up with this blog, you will have known that I went to Nicaragua twice on short-term mission trips with my church in Virginia. I worked as a driller on both occassions, part of a team operating a small mud rotary drill and we drilled wells for two villages that did not have access to clean water.
The church has sent another team to Nicaragua drilling and doing community health evangelism. I must say I am quite jealous and when a friend texted me with some old drill slang like “rawhide the bore-hole” I felt a pang of sentimentality. Nicaragua will always hold a warm place in my heart
Anyway, I have a number of great friends on the team and they are doing great work outside Managua, Nicaragua. If you want to keep up on the action, the team blog is HERE!
