Blessed and Confused

Whew! Just one more week of school left, and I have nothing left to do! I finished the busiest week of my life on Sunday at 4am. But I made it through! I'm taking break from catching up on my reading and movies in order to make a post, because my word! It's been ages.

I have no news about the status of the team. I may or may not still be the only one signed up. That being said, the deadline to register is tomorrow. That still gives you today and tomorrow to fill out an application, though!

The good news, though, is that my great aunt gave me $1000 for the trip. $2000 in and only 100 has come from outside of my family. I love my family! God blessed me so much when he gave me my family.

And God is blessing me so much when it comes to this trip. Jessica sent me an e-mail last week asking if I would consider going on the Kenya trip, because it was almost completely booked and the Cameroon trip still only had me. I turned her down, because Cameroon is where I feel I am supposed to be, and God has given me with half the funds I need. I completely trust Him, and it is SO SCARY. I am terrified I will have to buy a plane ticket to go home in the next two days. Do you know how expensive it will be to buy a ticket to fly home within three weeks? I don't want to think about it. But that would be so much easier than everything I am going to have to do in order to go to Cameroon. I have so much I have to do! And I can't start any of it until they tell me if we're going! Hopefully I'll know by Friday, but I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't find out until Monday what's going to happen.

God,

I don't know what you have planned for me, but You are Almighty and All Powerful. I don't know if I will be home in April or July, but I trust You.

You are seriously confusing me by giving me the means to go. The opportunity might not be there. I am so blessed by You, but also so confused. Please give me the opportunity to go.

Amen.

Please, please, please, please, please come!

God has given me $1,000 so far to go on this trip. In less than two weeks I have raised a quarter of the funds! Hallelujah!

I still need $3,000 to go, but it's looking very promising. So, if you would like to donate, if God has laid it on your heart that I should go to Cameroon and you should help me...

Please make all cheques out to Wycliffe Bible Translators.  
Be sure to attach a separate note and write, “instiGATE: Cameroon, Project of Karima Horton.”  
Deliver or mail your deposit donations to:

Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada
4316 10th St NE   
Calgary AB, T2E 6K3
Canada
Attention: Karen Friesen, instiGATE Coordinator

That's a prime example of copy and paste right there. I love you, ctrl + c.

They are still looking for people!! I talked to Sarah Barnes yesterday and found out - I'm the only one signed up for the trip. THAT'S NOT GOOD. Please, please, if God has laid this on your heart, if you are feeling the least bit interested, please sign up. I feel so very pulled towards this trip and I believe God wants us to go. Don't worry about the money. God will provide it if you are meant to go. Look at what He's done for me already. God is good, all the time! Please, just pray about this trip. People need to sign up! Also, my e-mail is Sarahkarima@gmail.com. If you would like to come on this trip but don't feel like making a commitment and submitting your application, shoot me an e-mail. If you're at Tyndale, stop by my room. I would love to convince you to come and will even fill out the application for you. Okay, just kidding about that. But I will talk to you, show you what Wycliffe and CABTAL are doing, where we're going. I can even talk a little about Cameroon culture now, because I spent 2 hours talking with Sarah yesterday.

Wow... I really didn't mean for this post to just be about getting people to come... But oh well. I have to get back to writing my paper now, but I'll try to post more about the trip and Cameroon later today or tomorrow, because, like I said, I talked with Sarah for two hours yesterday. I feel like a wealth of knowledge (although I'm really not).

Please pray there will be a team going this summer, but that even if a team does not go, the Aghem people will see what good a written language is and be able to celebrate God's Word in their own language. Pray I will find the financial resources to go.

Some pictures for you!

This is Cameroon. It is surrounded by Nigeria, Chad, The Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo. The little island you cannot really see on this map is the Bight of Bonny  

This is a close-up of Cameroon. Here, you can kind of see Yaounde, which is where the team will be from May 17th to 25th. Then we will travel to the Aghem people, which I would point out on this map where they are, but I don't know where they are... On June 24th we will travel to Kribi where we will debrief and do some final projects. On July 4th, we will leave Cameroon and arrive....

here, in the city where I've lived since September. As much as I love my new friends, my college, and the family I've gotten close to up here in Toronto, this is not where I want to fly into on my mom's birthday. But! If we all hope hope and pray and the Wycliffe people decide to be nice and reunite a poor home-bound student...

I can fly here, to this beautiful, wonderful state which I miss so much... Oh Georgia. How I love thee and miss thee. And come on. It's my mom's birthday. How awesome would it be to fly in and see my mom for the first time in seven months on her birthday? Can you say best birthday present in the world? I can.

So, there are some pictures of where I'll be from May to July. In my next post, I'll talk more about CABTAL - Cameroon Association of Bible Translation and Literacy.  But first, I need to do a little more research on them. I'll probably get really fired up about what they are doing and want to post right away once I find out more about them, so be on the lookout sometime in the next week for another post. It would be sooner, but I have an essay due, and that's kind of important... Just a little.

As always, pray that the team leaders, Jessica and Sarah, and Wycliffe will find the right people to come on this team. Pray there will be enough people to make a team. I sent in my application and deposit, and donations are starting to be promised to me, so pray I will make the team and God will give me the means to go, because I currently have $5.14 to my name. (Don't worry. I'm at college. I don't have a life to spend money on, anyway.) Pray the world will be spread about Bible translation and even if a team does not go that the Aghem people will see what a benefit this will be and accept their new written alphabet.

God is good, all the time! All the time, God is good.

Who am I?

I was told I should write about who I am and why I want to go. For those who think I write a lot... Sorry about this one. I like to talk about myself.

Academically, I am ending my first year as a Linguistics major at Tyndale University, and I'm so far passing all my classes so I will soon be a second year! I love Linguistics. It's a tiny major at Tyndale, with only three students and two teachers, but that just makes it awesome. (The other two girls who are in Linguistics - you know who you are - you are coming on this trip. I will get you to come.) Linguistics is the study of languages, and it is the coolest program you could ever be in ever. EVER. I have always had a knack for languages and I always really loved studying them, and now, with just two semesters of studying, I know even more about languages than ever before and am capable of breaking down a language into it's basic structure with just a few short sentences. How cool is that? So cool. So cool. And now I may get to go to Africa and put all my studies to the test outside of the classroom!! This is it. This is the ultimate test. How well will I do? I don't know! But it should be terribly exciting, even if I do horrible.

Who am I personally? I grew up in a Christian, missions-oriented home. My two wonderful and supportive parents met on the mission field while working for Operation Mobilization, got married, traveled around the Middle East for a bit, and then spent ten years in Egypt, where they had me and my awkward but intelligent oldest brother Tarik. Tarik, the lucky duck, lived there for seven years. I only lived there for the first three years of my life and do not remember any of it. Except, I have a memory of pitching a fit because Tarik and Daddy were riding horses and I was riding in a wagon with my mom, and I remember riding on my dad's shoulders through the city.

BREAKING NEWS!! I just found out Tarik gave me $400 to pay for my deposit! Whoo!! God is good!

But back to my life. We adopted my brother Karchie from Romania when he was 8 and I was 7. I can honestly say my life has never been the same and I have changed for the better because of him (I love you, Karchie!!). We've had our fights, but in the end, he's always my brother whom I love. (Aww...) because of Karchie, I have a strong passion for working with children who do not have all the opportunities we did. They capture my heart and I just want to be able to help them. This is what first made me interested in missions and teaching.

And spiritually? I am a Christian, and have been since I was little. It wasn't since then that I have been strong in my faith, though. It was not until I was in high school that I thought Christianity was more than just rules to follow and being a good person. Being a Christian is a way of life. It's a relationship with the God who not only chose me to be His beloved daughter, but sent His only son to die a painful death so I can be not only saved, but forgiven of all my sins. I did nothing to deserve this, but God chose me before time began to be His daughter as long as I constantly give my life to Him and daily ask for His help and forgiveness. It's a process and I'm no theological scholar, but everyday I learn more about God and how He wants me to live my life. And I'll admit, most days I don't want to read my Bible or pray because it takes up time I feel like I don't have time, but I always have to remember, "Everyday you chose not to read the Bible or pray, you are telling God you do not need His help that day." My pastor at my home church said that in a sermon during one of the three weeks I was home for Christmas break this year. I'm pretty sure God was directing it straight at me.

So that's who I am. That's me. That isn't all the events which made me who I am, but I have plenty of blog posts for that later. Be on the lookout for one entitled "Why me?" or some such, because that will be about why I want to go and will include some pretty life changing events for me.

I will end by asking for your prayer or your thoughts. Jessica and Sarah still need more people for there to be a team. Although my financial situation is starting to look promising, if there is no team there is no trip. Also, please join me in praising God that He gave me the money to make the deposit. God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good. Amen.

You know you wanna come....

I have seven days to turn in my deposit for this trip!! It's exciting and terrifying at the same time. I just have to remember, God will provide. If He wants me to go, I'll find this money. It's like a treasure hunt where the map is me constantly praying and remembering God is in control.

I decided to post again mainly to get more people aware. A full team has not yet been reached!! If Jessica and Sarah do not find the proper 10-12 people, no one will be going to Cameroon this summer to help out!! Can you imagine that? I mean, the Aghem people are seriously excited to have this group come in and help spread the Word. And, okay, I'm not sure if the people as a whole are excited to have a group of foreigners come in, but the ones doing the translation work and in the churches are. When I talked to Jessica the other day she told me about when she and Sarah visited them last year and talked with them. And now they are taking a team back in order to help show these people how exciting having a Bible in your own language can be.

As English speakers, we often forget what it is like to not be able to have access to information. If someone asks if we've read something, we haven't not because it isn't available to us in English but because we're not interested (or we're too lazy to go get the book). The Aghem did not even have a written language until someone went in and showed them the Bible. This is a life-changing event!! Even taking out the spirituality of it, this is important. Although for me bringing God's word is the most important part, these translators have done more than that. The Aghem people now have a way of writing down their thoughts, writing down their history. They now have a place in the world which will never be forgotten. They are not just a small language group anymore, they are a people with things to say and ideas they can write down. The next Shakespeare may very well come from this tribe, and it will be with only a small amount of outside help. Don't you want to be a part of that? It is so exciting to be able to guide people, to see them understanding on their own just because you said a few simple words. They can go on and do so much more now, just because you gave some time. Teachers, you know what I'm talking about. You get to share with someone about something you love, you see their eyes light up, and you know they understand and can now learn even more, possibly going beyond what even you know. I know this because of the day camps I worked at for a few years. I'll write another post about that later, because there is no way I can condense that whole experience that changed my life into one paragraph and in this post, I want to recruit you, not talk about me.

And you'll be able to see a whole new culture. It'll be the greatest thing. I can't imagine spending a summer in Africa will be anything like spending a summer anywhere else. And I'm not talking about a glorified vacation, like a lot of people think missions trips are. This is a working trip. Not only are we going to be almost constantly with the Aghem people, we have to learn their language. The whole point of this trip is to help the translators and to excite people about having the Bible in their own language. I don't think English will be the number one language here. That being said, a love for languages, cultures, and a little linguistic background would be helpful. You also have to be 18 or older (sorry if anyone younger was fired up about the trip and then read this...). Although this is a Wycliffe Canada trip, Americans are welcome (even if you aren't also Canadian, like me), so all my friends in Georgia, pray about it. All my friends pray about it! And, if you're a friend of a friend, you should pray about it. And everyone! Maybe God is calling you to come up to Toronto and come on this trip. Anyone who is even a least be interested, contact me and I'll give you all the information I can. Or, if you want to go straight to the source, and I suggest you do, go to this link http://www.wycliffe.ca/involved/instigate.html look at the Cameroon trip, the one on top, and then pray about it and apply, if you think God is so leading your heart. I'd love it if Jessica e-mailed me and said they had enough people for the trip and that it was going to happen! Remember, if God wants you to go, He'll provide the means.