Ric and Sharon Bruce On a journey with you to Thailand
Packing is an art form in our house, and the more comfortable we get with it the more fun it becomes. It’s a familiar feeling at this point. This trip is particularly exciting, since we’ll be seeing family and friends and it’s a step closer to our goal of heading to Cambodia next July.
Here are some pictures of the process (click to expand)
Gadgets aren’t just for Dungeons and Dragons lovers who live in their parents basement anymore! Missionaries have long been using technology to their advantage, and seeing how there are so many options in today’s world I thought I’d give you a brief guide to some of the more useful ones here.
The Importance of Recording:
This big ol’ world is filled with loads of pre-recorded information that we browse and consume based on our mood (television, radio, internet, etc). Unfortunately, all the world’s information is not yet recorded. Language and culture data from unwritten languages must be recorded for the first time. This puts missionaries in a very unique position: we become journalists, linguists, and even historians.
Our task is to capture life as it happens, and categorize and sort the information into a "culture file." Traditionally, this was all done by hand and kept in shoeboxes, filing cabinets, or (in my dad’s case) scattered all over the office. Most of the information was in written form which, needless to say, was painstaking to record and punishing to read. With a few notable exceptions, the quality of these culture files were abominable.
Gadgets can help!
Sharon and I will need to record sound, video, pictures, and written information about events that happen in the natural course of the everyday life of a people group. This is nothing new. HOW we do it, however, may be different.
DSLR Camera
As a new generation of missionaries tries to up the game, we’ve turned increasingly to an old technology for the answer: good pictures. This delivers better results for later study and helps YOU stay connected with us.
Digital Voice Recorder
Capturing crisp, clear voices for later analysis and possibly transcription is essential. People tend to mumble when speaking their own language anyway. You don’t want poor sound quality further complicating things.
Video Camera
Old video cameras were big and clunky. They were cost-prohibitive and distracting, so most missionaries avoided them. Those excuses are gone and video is a staple of most missionary’s gadget toolbox.
Cell Phones
Growing up, we had two daily "checks" on a ham radio station, our only link with the world. These days many missionaries rely on cell phones for the internet and safety, not to mention taking video and pictures!
Well, that’s a small list. A few other useful recording devices could include shotgun microphones for noisy environments, portable netbooks for computing on the go, webcams for clearer communication, and wireless lapel microphones… a step up! In our next installment we take a look at computing devices: What it takes to store, process, sort, search, and organize the data.
Tunnel-vision and focusing on the next step can cause us to forget what God is doing right now. Sometimes it even feels like we aren’t "real missionaries" until we arrive in Cambodia. It’s when we step back and look at what God has done that we realize we’ve been doing His work all along.
Ways God Has Provided:
Emotionally, God has maintained us through some very difficult circumstances. We spent two months in a wooden bunkhouse in Alaska (twice), we lived in a tent for weeks on the Appalachian Trail, and during our training with NTM we have lived in less than ideal housing. God taught us through all of this to be content with the things He has given us.
Financially, God has provided thousands of dollars for us to complete our training with New Tribes Mission, He provided $8,000 dollars for our trip to Cambodia last summer, and He continues to meet our daily needs through the generous gifts of individual donors and churches.
Spiritually, we feel like the richest people in the world. We’ve made great relationships through our three years of training for missions and we will serve alongside some of our closest friends in Cambodia. Our teachers through the years have been grizzled, experienced missionaries who have shared some excellent wisdom with us.
Physically, God has given us both excellent health and maintained it through stressful situations. So many missionaries come off the field for health reasons that this is an incredible praise.
The Results:
All that provision from God has resulted in:
There are far more results, but we don’t have time to mention them all here. God has been good to us, and we wanted to share with you what He’s been doing through your partnership with us.
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