August 2007 - Posts

• Getting ready

  Mary Esther has spent hours getting ready for her “extension of stay” permit as her visa expires on Monday.  It’s amazing what paper work is required and what can “go wrong” in the process.  The “good” part—she has gotten a lot of reading done while sitting in lines at the City Office waiting for the paper work to be processed.   Mark’s been catching up on work for his upcoming two weeks absence.  He goes to Nairobi tomorrow.  It’s a 22 hour trip.  We’re thankful he has real plane tickets for this trip.  Please pray for him as he learns about Sign Language translation consulting and meets the members for the Kenya, Ethiopia, Burundi, and Zambia Sign Language translation teams that work with DOOR (Deaf Opportunity OutReach).    Yesterday the news from “Y” is that a Deaf gang boss in her city approached her saying a Deaf man had come to him needing income, but the man didn’t want to be involved in thievery.  The gang boss knew where in the city to go—he asked “Y” if she wouldn’t please employ the man.  We are thankful for the Light that is shining brightly there.  Please continue to pray for “Y”, that she will succeed in building a company that can employ people like this. She is looking to get into internet sales, but is struggling with the computer end of things. Also, she has moved to a more provincial area recently, and overcome incredible challenges living in primitive conditions.   Posted Aug 30 2007, 04:20 PM by Penner Place Filed under: Other Stuff

• Home again home again, jiggety jog

  Thank you for your prayers for our return trip.  We got the last two seats on the red-eye going from San Francisco to Atlanta.  We were both in middle seats with very little wiggle room for sleeping, but you know what they say:  “Any seat on the plane is better than any seat in the terminal.”  Our biggest question was the Atlanta-Japan flight. It was overbooked--we checked on line and coach seats were selling in the $3,000 range, and had figured out who would go on ahead to Japan if only one seat was available.  Imagine our surprise when we got the call and were handed business class seat assignments!  Not only that, the plane arrived an hour and a half early, so we walked out the door of the airport just 30 minutes after touching down. The young single Deaf man who stayed in our place over the summer left it in terrific shape, and we are glad to be back home.     ME:  And we definitely ARE back home. Today I went to get my hair cut.  I had waited all summer to get back before cutting my hair and looked forward to the shoulder massage and catching up on the latest news.  We talked about the weather and summer travels and of course food.  I told how we had been in a part of America that grew lots of potatoes, that we had potatoes to eat every day, and that in Grand Forks there is even a shop specializing in chocolate covered potato chips.  The response: “Did you try one?  Did it taste good?  I don’t care for all those different flavors of potato chips! My favorite potato chips are sea-weed flavored."  Yup, I am most definitely back in Japan again! North Dakota and the last 9 weeks are a very long way away. We enjoyed our nine weeks of "chocolate", but are glad to be back to "seaweed" life again.   We are trying to catch up on work the next few days before heading north to be at the Yamagata Deaf church on Sunday, and then relax for a few days up North before Mark leaves for Kenya, where he will be doing Sign Language Bible translation consulting.  Posted Aug 23 2007, 05:07 AM by Penner Place Filed under: Other Stuff

• Heading out

  Thanks for praying. A friend gave Anna a car, so she is relieved to be able to get to her job and church and internship for her last year at Biola. This has been a crazy week in some ways, but we got lots of loose ends tied up, enjoyed seeing Daniel a lot, had a great party with Daniel and all the people that go visit him, and now we're packing to go back to Japan. Pray for us this Sunday as we present our ministry at Church on the Hill in San Jose, and then head to the San Fransciso airport to fly standby to Atlanta, and then (still standby) from there to Japan on Monday the 20th. The flight to Japan is overbooked, so odds are . . . well, actually, odds are pretty much irrelevant, right? (Odds on the car getting us to San Jose and well beyond were supposed to be pretty good. Odds on getting a one way rental from Twin Falls to San Jose were terrible. Etc.) So . . . pray that we will get where we need to when we need to. Thanks.   Posted Aug 17 2007, 04:56 PM by Penner Place Filed under: Other Stuff

• Update from San Jose

  About 40 miles east of the small town of Twin Falls Idaho, is an even smaller town called Burley. There sits a blue 2000 Neon, with a not so big engine with a compression ratio ("the single number that can predict the performance of any engine") of zero. It was supposed to be one of the more reliable cars in our price range (and Anna liked the tinted windows and a fancy sound system), but I guess it doesn't take a very big hole in a piston to cause the demise of a vehicle. We had several friends offer to drop a used engine into it and bring it back to life for us, but no one within shooting range of Burley Idaho. So, there it sits. For the cost of the repairs they had done so far (water pump, timing belt, and a few other minor repairs), they took it off our hands. I don't think the car repair place wanted us spending another couple nights on their couch, because the owner was doing all he could to figure us a way out of there. Three tickets on an airplane and you may as well buy another car. Bus would have taken days (and nights!) that we didn't have, and renting a car would be cheaper than bus three tickets anyway. But, he warned us, as he was calling various places to find us a rental, the Twin Falls airport rental agencies never have one-way rentals—just their own franchise fleet cars. We thank God that one agency had one small car free for one-way rentals. I think we've seen WalMart parking lots that are bigger than that entire airport. But no matter, they were willing to let us drive the car one way to San Jose. We were thankful! This week Andrew and Emily are away, freeing up their car for us to use until we leave the area next Sunday. Another thanks. Anna had planned to use the car to get back to school in LA this coming weekend, and to drive back and forth to work and for her internship this year. If you know of a small, reliable, inexpensive car for sale in the SF Bay Area, or in the LA area, she would appreciate knowing about it. Her cell phone number is: 408-821-9240. This week there are many things to care for, some basic, some very small. Pray that we will discern wisely. Give thanks that we arrived safely and have a big God who is good all the time! Posted Aug 13 2007, 04:01 PM by Penner Place Filed under: Other Stuff

• On the road again . . . sort of

  So . . . the car is gone. It was more to repair than to buy another. We've got a rental back to San Jose. Will keep you in the loop. Posted Aug 11 2007, 02:27 PM by Penner Place Filed under: Other Stuff

• Stranded! (Maybe)

  Greetings from Burley --we are on the road.  We left UND yesterday right after class ended at 9AM and by 2AM this morning we had been driving for 17 hours.  We kept awake by listening to lectures on Genesis and rolling down the window to admire the stars and Milky Way.  Going through the narrow Yellowstone Park road Anna's prayer was answered when she didn't hit a deer that suddenly crossed right in front of us.    After the long hours in the car we were looking forward to getting to our motel in Jerome about 30 minutes away when the car stopped.  Two hours later, the tow truck came for us and we are now waiting to see if we will be on the road again soon. There are two possibilities.  1) It's just the timing belt, and we can be on our way in four today.  2) The valves were bent (or worse) when the engine suddenly stopped, and we need to replace the head. Scenario 2 is the more likely, they say, since we were traveling 80mph when it happened.   Pray!  We should know which it is in a couple of hours. We thought we needed to be in CA for church tomorrow. God knows.    Posted Aug 11 2007, 09:34 AM by Penner Place Filed under: Other Stuff