Road to Rwanda---So What's the Point?

  This is a post by Joel Corbin. We taught him during our time in Senegal (2002-2010).  He is a missionary kid, born and bred on the African mission field. He and his wife and two little bitty sons serve in Gambia in a remote village to the Mandinka tribe. Recently he posted this on FB:      Since I started working overseas in 2017, I’ve noticed that actually being a missionary on the                ground is a ton different than what people in the US realize. Part of the fault of this is on the                missionary’s end. We are so driven to present the best parts of our work overseas as the “fruit” of        the investment of churches and inviduals that we often leave out the hard parts, the mundane           parts, the “real life” parts that make up most of our day- in and day-out grind as a cross-cultural  ...

Road to Rwanda----Letter Confusion

Repost from Facebook, May 12, 2017   Chinese have trouble with "v" and "w". I don't remember struggling with this issue in Taiwan, but maybe I was speaking mostly in Chinese, and here I am using mostly English. When the students were introducing themselves at the beginning of the semester, many said they liked "mooies". I thought and thought about that one, and finally realized it was "movies". Another difficulty was the student who asked me about Easter "wiggles". Dances for Easter, like the "Bunny Hop"? Telling kids to sit still in church? I had her repeat it a few times, and even had trouble when she spelled it, because it was an unexpected word. It was "vigil". You can see how things can get so confusing. However, there are always these kinds of difficulties for overseas workers. Do I have stories? In Zambia "r" and "l" are completely interchangeable. The house worker told me Paul had cut...

Road to Rwanda---Confucius Birth Place

  If one of my previous Face Book  posts shows up in my timeline inbox that might be interesting, I am trying to post it here.  The date on this post is May 1, 2017.  Confucius has been the main force in Chinese philosophical thought since about 400 B.C. I am talking a long long time and a very pervasive force. Yesterday we went to his birth place. By regular train it would have been 2 hours. By fast train it took us 20 minutes (price about $4.50). By fast, I do mean fast. It said it was going about 300 kph. (Rick says that is about 185 mph.) When you were on the inside of the train, the terrain was going by quickly but not at a dizzying pace. However, standing on the platform with a through train buzzing past was quite exhilarating. The town of QuFu itself had a more "Chinese" feel to it than what the big towns have. It was a long day of seeing old buildings and a beautiful forest with hundreds of huge headstones spaced through out. (As we were viewing the forest/ce...