50 years – The Third Decade: ’82-93

Setting a Solid Foundation – The Time Between Times

This is the third blog post and it treats my third decade. This one runs from my 18^th year (starting college) to my 29^th (departure for French study).

Places lived: Oklahoma and Texas

• Norman, Oklahoma (1982-86: University of Oklahoma, BA in Linguistics),
• Dallas, TX (1986-88: Grad school (SIL Dallas, MA in Linguistics UT Arlington)
• Norman, Oklahoma (1989-93, Teaching English as a Second Language).

I lived in the Walker Tower dorm at OU, all four years of my undergrad. And I realized at the end of that time, that it was the longest I had lived in any one building. This was a record that would stand until I lived in my apartment in Bamako for 13 years beginning in 1999.

Life-Shaping events:

I came back to the US in the middle of high school where everyone else knew each other. I was pretty much clueless about American culture: music, movies, cars, football, what was cool.

Going to the University of Oklahoma (OU) was a time to really come into my own as a person. The freshman year is a time when EVERYONE is making new friends and starting over, and so it was a time for me to start fresh when everyone else was equally new.

I chose to plug into the Baptist Student Union (BSU) starting with the “Freshman Ministry Team”.

Freshman Ministry Team 82-83 Shirt (The Eternity Fraternity)

It was a major time of spiritual growth and foundation laying. It was here that I found lifelong friends, got grounded in the Word of God, and spiritual disciplines of quiet time and scripture memory.  Thanks to Max Barnett, Ralph Neighbor, Dave Edwards, Ron Dinnocenzo, Nelson Leong and others.

1985-86 Ministry team group: Me, Todd Perry, Alan Rhea, Brian Goree, Jeff Maness,

Back row: John Strappazon, Randy Kluver

I went off to the University of Oklahoma as a Civil Engineering major and wanted to study languages as well. I knew I wanted to live overseas and had received “a call” to missions.  I had the idea in my head that I could go to a country and build bridges and dams, and then on the side I would learn the local language and translate the Bible into that language.  Obviously I had no clue as to what is involved in language learning and translation work. I also did not know there were organizations that actually DO Bible Translation in minority languages.

In my freshman year, the BSU challenged us to read “Through Gates of Splendor” in anticipation of a week-long conference with Elizabeth Elliot. I was challenged by the story of the 5 men who gave their lives to reach the Waorani (Auca) and also surprised to learn that Jim and Elizabeth Elliot actually did training in linguistics in the Summer Institute of Linguistics held each summer right there where I was studying. (In 1985 I did SIL courses in Norman and taught there in 1987).

teaching Phonology II at Norman SIL, 1987

In the fall of 1983, my sophomore year, I decided to get a German-English New Testament to keep up my German until the next semester. It was at first eye opening to read the gospels in German -  everything was fresh and different. What must it be like to read the Bible for the first time in my own language? 

But then I got to Romans and realized that I was not getting much out of the text at all, even with 4 years of German under my belt. Could we expect uneducated people to go very far in their spiritual walk if they could only read the Bible in a second language?

So that is when I decided to change my major to linguistics and pursue Bible Translation.

Grad School:

I did a Masters in Linguistics at SIL and UT Arlington for 2.5 years. It is interesting in retrospect. I made a lot of quality friends there, some of whom are still colleagues today. Dallas-Ft Worth became my second home area in the US. And I got involved in at Hope Church in Fort Worth. This was a key time of learning how to make my faith work in a small group setting and away from the college context where everything is structured for you.

And I studied Linguistics, and really enjoyed it. It is something that has been important to understand in my current work but not something I actually use from day to day.

Back to Norman – The Time Between Times

After grad school, I moved back to Norman and got a job teaching English as a second language at the English Language School on Campus Corner.  This was a good use of my linguistics and I really enjoyed teaching, interacting with students and planning fun activities for them (Field Trips, Dances).

ELS staff with two students on Graduation day

I knew I wanted to go overseas, and was doing this to pay off my school loan. Was this advancing me towards my end goal? At some point, it seemed like I was wasting time, spinning my wheels. I see now, though, that God had a purpose in it. He is truly “the God who wastes nothing”.

My First apt in Norman, OK

In this “Time between Times”, I was gaining valuable experience in the “real” work world. I had my first car and apartment and bills to pay on time.

I was making life-long friends and getting established in a church. We were learning how to make our faith work in the real world.

And when it was time to raise support to go overseas, these relationships provided a strong base for that.

Also in this decade my brother Todd married Maria Countryman.  A super addition to our family!

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Roommates:

At last count there have been 60+ guys with whom I shared a living space for at least a month. In this decade I had 25 different roommates. Roomies that stand out in this decade:

• Les Perkins, Frank January (OU).
• Charles Hilliard (my first summer of SIL)
• Robin Wenger (SIL Dallas)
• And the guys of “Chatauqua House”: Burke Nail, Wade Baker, Kerry Knight, Brady Birdsong, Lance Tate, Craig Brooks, John Allgood. What a fun year living in a big old house with wooden floors near the university. We were all fresh out of school and in our first jobs.

Jann, Brad, Alan, Frank, Les, Russel (last 4 were roommates)

Charles "Chuck" Hilliard at Norman SIL

Languages:

So I’m studying linguistics at university which means I get asked about once a week, “How many languages DO you know?”

• German – 3 years in high school, 1 year in college.
• Mandarin – 1 year in university
• Cheyenne, Hmong, Korean – for linguistic projects and analysis, not actually learned.

Rides:

My sister Tammy in the convertible

• Skateboard: When not riding my bike to class, I rode my skateboard back and forth to class at OU. I never did do any tricks.  Some will remember me skateboarding to class when I was teaching Phonology II at Norman SIL.
• When I graduated from high school, my parents gave me a very fun 1979 VW convertible bug, - definitely the most fun vehicle I have had.

Reading:

• The Bible. Switched to NIV. Started Memorizing scripture and had the obligatory “verse pack”.
• Through Gates of Splendor, Elizabeth Elliott.
• Charles Colson: Loving God.  We read this in our Discipleship Group at the BSU.
• Frank Peretti: This Present Darkness
• Stephen Lawhead: the Pendragon series (esp Merlin) and pretty much anything else he wrote. 
• CS Lewis: Mere Christianity, Space Trilogy(esp Perelandra), the Great Divorce.

I find that God speaks to me a lot through narrative stories – fictional or biographies. This was especially true in this period. I’d rather read an allegorical novel by Lewis, than his non-fiction.

Tunes:

• Russ Taff, Michael W. Smith,  Amy Grant, Steve Taylor, Farrell and Farrell, DeGarmo and Key, Sandi Patty, Petra, U2. Harry Connick, Jr.

• It was in this decade that I widened my horizons from beyond just Christian music – though I had absorbed a lot of “secular music” by osmosis, it was not until the age of itunes decades later that I would fill out my collection with 80’s pop and rock and dance tunes.

Movies:

• Back to the Future,
• Star Trek II, IV, VI.
• Batman (the REAL ones with Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer)
• Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
• Wayne’s World
• Pee Wee’s Big Adventure

TV:

• Family Ties, Cosby, Seinfeld , Cheers, SNL
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, LA Law, 30-something (a show about “old people”)

50 years – The Second Decade: 74-86 [Basic education - or what I learned in school in between moves]

So I am turning fifty this month. And that of course gives one pause to think about his life. Who am I? Where have I been along this journey? This is the second blog post and it treats my second decade (minus 2 years).

Places lived: Ethiopia, Yemen, Oklahoma, India

• Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Good Shepherd School – 74-75 school year: 5^th grade)
• Yemen (American International School - fall semester 1975)
• Oklahoma City (Spring semester 1976, and 76-77 school year: 7^th grade)
• Sanaa, Yemen (77-78 school year: 8^th grade)
• Mussoorie, India (Woodstock School – 78-79 school year: 9^th grade)
• Edmond, Oklahoma (1979-1982: 10^th-12^th grade in the same school system)

  

  Woodstock school, Mussoorie, India (foothills of the Himalayas

Life Shaping events:

Two years of boarding school. 5^th Grade in Ethiopia and 9^th grade in India. It was hard being so far away from home, and this before the age of email and skype and cellphones. Letters routinely took 3 weeks each way!

The frequent moves across cultures – 11 schools in total before I graduated from high school – had several effects on me:

• Like many Third-Culture kids, I becamse leery of forming deeper relationships for fear of the eventual separation. But that also made me into someone who works hard at keeping up old friendships.
• It made me very flexible and adaptable to different contexts and understanding of other cultures.

Senior Picture (High school 1982)

Returning to the US in 10^th grade was a big adjustment after being overseas off and on for 7 years. Going from a small boarding school to Edmond where each class was 600+ students was a big change.  The Youth Group at First Baptist Church Edmond was a safe and accepting place during this time. Thanks to Roger Hagan, our youth minister, and to the kids in the youth group.

Spiritual Growth:

After growing up in a Christian home and hearing about God all my life, I realized that I needed to make it personal sometime in the fall of 1974 while in Ethiopia. So one night after the dorm devotions, I prayed to ask Jesus to come into my heart. I don’t think I knew all that that meant then, and am still learning today.

In India, I was involved in a small group Bible study that met in one of the staff’s home and really began to grow in my walk. 

Roommates:

Boarding school begin a very long phase of having roommates. At last count there have been 60+ guys with whom I shared a living space for at least a month. In these 8 years, I had seven roommates – all before I started university. In keeping with the cross-cultural mix in my life, I had roommates from the US, UK, Afghanistan, Iran, and India

Roomies that stand out in this period

Judd Threlkeld (5^th grade),

Taizoon Shakir, Zaphar Al-Talib (9^th grade)

Languages I spoke then and have more or less forgotten today:

• Arabic – I only remember the odd word here and there, especially loan words that have made their way into African languages via Islam.
• Hindi – an interesting language related to European languages.
• German – 3 years in high school, 1 year in college. Mostly forgotten over the past 30 years but I was very surprised last year in Germany how much was flooding back into my mind.

Rides:

• On our 1976 furlough, I got a Raleigh 10-speed bike from Wheeler Dealer in Oklahoma City. At this stage in life, I was not riding anywhere for transportation, just around the neighborhood for fun and occasionally to the swimming pool.
• Skateboard: I had a few nice skateboard and actually still have my nicer one in storage somewhere. Back in 1976, my brother and I both got cool plastic skateboards “by GT”. We had a game that involved chasing each other all over the apartment complex sidewalks on skateboard and trying to crash into the other. In retrospect, it was very similar to our “passport” bicycle game.
• My first car was a Fiat 124 special. Nothing very special about it as it was always needing repairs. I drove it on one of my first jobs as a spotter for the “Edmond Evening Sun” newspaper, delivering newspaper bundles to the delivery boys. 

Activities:

• Boarding school: Once you get over the initial home-sickness, you can have a lot of fun. In Ethiopia, I was on the baseball team, and was in a production of Mary Poppins and a youth musical called “Come Together”. We made our own darts out of matchsticks and paper and pins. And rigged up strings all around our room to turn off the lights and close the curtains from the bed.
• In India, there were Saturday trips into the Bazaar, and buying gelabees, throwing chapatis like Frisbees off the balcony to the monkeys. And a rainy season that never ended, and towels that never dried out. I was happy to never get a leech. The school organized a lot of dances and this was the era of Saturday Night Fever. My mom always said I learned to dance at boarding school.
• Piano lessons: practicing in the freezing cold in India, learning jazz with Fran Young in Edmond.
• Drums: I did snare drum in 7^th -10^th grade. Marching band in 10^th grade. I wasn’t that good and dropped out.  That hasn’t stopped me from tapping on things since then. I now have a Djembe drum that I really enjoy playing.
• Studying – Looking back, it seems I was pretty nerdy.
• Work: In the summers, I would work with my granddad, George Gaidaroff, who was a small-town pastor and worked in the week as a painter and wallpaper. I learned to paint and paper working with him and have always enjoyed painting. (but not so much wall-papering). 

Reading:

The Bible. I transitioned from the Living Bible to the NASB.

Chronicles of Narnia. I won a boxed set in some sort of Sunday school context in 6^th grade.

The Lord of the Rings. (I mistakenly started with the Simarillon and quickly abandoned that).

Tunes:

I got my first Toshiba cassette tape recorder before I went to boarding school in 5^th grade. It was red and I remember that these were really cutting edge at the time. My folks and grandparents sent me audio cassettes when I was in boarding school.

• I recall listening to Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass – my parents had this.
• We picked up Evie and BJ Thomas cassettes on furlough in 1976
• Then in high school I got a record player and listened to Amy Grant, The Imperials, Leon Patillo, Ken Medema, Truth.

50 years: The First Decade:1964-74

So I am turning fifty later this month. And that of course gives you pause to think about your life. Who am I? Where have I been along this journey? Who and what have made me what I am today. 

My plan is to do a blogpost about each decade. So here goes.

Born: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in Baptist Hospital (now Integris).

Siblings: I was the first child in my family and first grandchild on both sides. By the end of the decade I had a brother 2 years younger, Todd, and a sister 7.5 years younger, Tamara, as well as 2 cousins on each side.

Places lived (US)

• Oklahoma (several places)
• California
• Galveston, TX (where my brother Todd was born)
• Fort Worth, TX
• Pine Mountain, Georgia (Missionary Orientation 



A trip to the Houston Zoo with my mom (1966?)



they still have a lion fountain (2009)

Places lived (Overseas):

Climbing on some ruins in Lebanon (1973)

When I was 8 we moved overseas with my parents serving as medical missionaries.

• Lebanon – 1973, Arabic study for my parents. 
• Jordan – summer or 1973. 
• Yemen 1974 (-1979)

Influences:

• My parents, providing a great home and teaching me to love and honor God from the beginning. And they certainly got me started on my overseas adventure early!
• My grandparents - more of the same. 
• Happy C Boehm – the first teacher I remember very specifically. She came to tutor my brother and me in Yemen using the Calvert Correspondence Course. She was a bit eccentric and had us doing things like making “oobleck” for a Dr. Seuss “Bartholomew and the Oobleck Party”, painting panaromic views of the countryside. She gave me an assignment to find homonyms. I eventually had a handwritten list of 200 or so, that was an early linguistics pursuit.

 Languages:

• English
• French - in 3rd grade in Lebanon, studied entirely by rote watching of filmstrips with an audio track. Absolutely no value was provided from this experience when I started really learning french in 1993
• Arabic - first in Lebanon and then in Yemen. I remember thinking when we arrived in Lebanon that Arabic must be like a code and if I just figured out which letter corresponded with which English letter, I could decrypt it.

Rides:

I don’t recall my first bike ever, but do remember having a great red bike with a banana seat on it, and those wonderful kick brakes and giant raised handlebars. We shipped this in our crate to Yemen. I don't have a picture of it, but this is one that is pretty similar I found on the internet. The epitome of coolness. 

I recall going up and down the big hill on the compound and once I wiped out and walked up the hill and into our house, bleeding but standing very calmly before my mom.

My brother and I invented a bicycle game called “passport” which we played on the tennis court, much to the chagrin I am sure of Dr. Young. The object was to ride over to the opponent’s side of the court and back to yours without him running his bike into yours.

Pets:

• Snoopy, the beagle that our grandparents kept for us when we went overseas.
• Togo, the white german shepherd we inherited in Yemen who would chase rocks.
• Blackstripe, the donkey my brother and I bought in Yemen. The idea was to ride him but he was unridable and so he stayed tied up all day somewhere on the compound grazing to his heart’s content. Eventually we sold him and we always wondered what it must have been like for him to have to work like a real donkey.

 Interests/Loisirs/Memories:

• Jot - I recall watching JOT on TV, along with Davey and Goliath.  
  
• Building forts: In pine mountain, Georgia, they were log cabins made out of pine trees. In Yemen, my brother and I made them out of rocks and mud. They never got taller than about 2 feet high but we had big plans.
• Hiking – lots of fun mountains to climb in Yemen. Not to mention the old Turkish fort which was just across the valley and great for exploring as it was abandoned. 
• I began collecting rocks and also coins while in Yemen. Both of these rather heavy items made their way back to the US when we returned for good.
• Double board monopoly, risk and clue. We had lots of time to kill as MKs and board games were the way to go.

Reading:

• When I first learned to read, I recall just reading out whatever I saw on signs as we went down the road in the car. Unfortunately, I never grew out of this.
•  In second grade or so, I discovered my dad’s old set of Hardy Boys books at my grandmother’s house and began reading these, and doing book reports on them for school. My dad’s set had plain brown covers. I recall at one point listing “Franklin W. Dixon” as my favorite author. Obviously my choice would be different today. 
•  I discovered Tintin comic books while in Lebanon and then totally forgot about them entirely until arriving in France 20 years later for French study.
• “Now that you are 7”. For some reason, I remember getting this book on my birthday, with all sorts of exciting things I could do now that I was indeed seven.
•  Sometime around my 9^th or 10^th Birthday my parents got me a Living Bible and I remember being excited to actually understand more of what I was reading in the Bible.