First Week at JAARS

We’ve been working at JAARS.org in North Carolina for eight days now. Praise God we can rent a wonderful, 400 sq. foot, 1-bedroom apartment on the center. We’re up at 6 a.m., shower, eat, and walk ¾ mile to work by 8 a.m., then get off at 5 p.m. and walk 3/4 mile home. But don’t expect us to run a marathon.

Gary is working on a new job-skills defining and assessment project for the computer department. It’s not the IT “hardware” kind of work he prefers, but needs doing.

I (Penny) work each morning in Vernacular Media Services (VMS), where they record Bible stories into short videos, with pictures. This program allows a translator (any where in the world!) to record a local language onto each frame of the story. I edit scripts, eliminating confusions, like ambiguous pronouns. I’ve also been able to design flyers on this new “Custom Bible Story Video” program.

After lunch each day, I edit 8 ½ x 11” single-spaced, comb-bound books that will help linguists translate a passage/book properly, word-by-word. This is in Gary’s building, near Information Tech. (IT), but in the Language and Translation (LAT) department. So far I’ve done about 650 single-spaced pages on Hebrews, in three volumes, and 550 pages on Revelations, plus about 500 on Ruth and 300 pages on Psalms.
We're thankful we can help on such a useful projects, but straight hours of working on technical information each day is draining, for both of us.

On the weekends we rent a JAARS center car, so we can get to church and to a grocery story. The green rolling hills and trees turning autumn colors are wonderful. We’ve only been a little bit lost, 2-3 times.