My First Survey Trip

Tomorrow I'm leaving for my first survey trip - 10 days in the Benabena language area.  The other team members and I (Bonnie, Dan, and Juliann) will be driving about 2 hours to the language area tomorrow morning, where we'll conduct interviews (Bonnie, Dan, and I) and write phonetic word lists (Juliann). 

For the first few days of the trip, I'll be watching Dan do interviews with local pastors and then I'll be doing the interviews myself.

This trip is a continuation of the first Scripture Use survey undertaken by the survey team here.  They started it last October, but had to end early because of health reasons. 

This survey is very important because Scripture use is so important.  In some places, the Scriptures have been translated, but no one is using them... this is a big problem!  We're hoping to understand this problem better by the work we're doing on this survey.

The reason that I'm so late in writing about this trip is that I wasn't sure I was going until this morning.  Last week I had malaria and this week I've been having some lower abdominal pain.  The doctor isn't sure what's causing the new pain, but doesn't think it's anything serious, so I'm planning to go on the survey.

Prayer Points
- Pray for the pain in my abdomen to go away completely, and for the rest of the team to stay healthy too.
- Pray that the right people will be in each village we visit, to interview and have conversations with.
- Pray that we'll be able to discern before and after this survey whether the questions we're asking really get to the heart of the issue concerning Scripture use. 

Thanks!  I'll write about how the survey after I'm back in early February.