Packing Joys

We are in the midst of packing. And although the house and routine is in slight disarray the little boys are not affected in the least bit.



NOTE: Sam's right arm is not in a cast...it is in a long sock in order to prevent him from sucking his thumb because he has sucked an open sore on the knuckle already.

John Turns 2

On November 23, John turned two! In spite of coming down with a cold that day, he still seemed to have a wonderful day. We had a great day with him and Sam and friends, and we feel so blessed to have enjoyed two wonderful years with our sweet little Johnny.

Here, just for memory's sake, are a couple pictures of his other birthdays...the first one in Texas...the second one in France...

I had asked him the day before his birthday, "What would you like for supper on your birthday, John?"

He replied, "Beans...yogurt...milk."

"And what would you like for breakfast?"

"Ice cream cone."

All right. Using some motherly poetic license, I instead gave him a yogurt and fruit smoothie for breakfast, and from there, we headed to the park, where John had so much fun picking up rocks and acorns that in our whole hour there, we didn't even make it to the playground (actually I kept asking him if he wanted to stop picking up acorns and play at the playground...and he kept saying, "No.")

I snapped a couple photos of the brothers sitting together beside one of the oak trees.

After his afternoon nap, Johnny helped me make an ice cream cake. By "helped," I of course mean that he licked spoons and spatulas and ate cookie crumbs that had strayed from the pan.

I have to admit that I didn't make John what he requested for his birthday supper, but I did make him what I know to be one of his favorite meals: spaghetti and asparagus. He was immensely pleased to get to use the red "You Are Special Today" plate.

In the evening, some good friends came over for ice cream cake, playing and visiting. Here are a few videos of the evening's events...

The two-year-old blowing out his candle:

John and Asha, cake-eating buddies and fellow two-year-olds:

John opening a birthday gift:

Dallas Morning News Clip!

ɬ is the International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for the relatively rare sound in the world's languages that is technically called the voiceless lateral fricative. How does the mouth make this peculiar sound? Dr. Stranj Sonde of MIT says, "The tongue touches the alveolar ridge ever so slightly while curved in such a way that air is allowed to pass on both sides of the tongue with enough force to make a slight buzzing sound. The sound that is heard is the air passing through the mouth, while the voice box itself makes no sound."

Dr. Sonde continues, "However, we have new evidence of a similar yet surprisingly different sound--this particular speaker of English sends air so forcefully over the tongue that his (in particular right) cheek flaps vigorously against the tongue creating a type of trill instead of the normal slight buzz. This 'trill' effect has never yet been documented in linguistic journals!"

The International Phonetic Association has no symbol to represent such an exotic sound and all of the linguistic communities are all excited about what they are seeing. The new evidence has appeared from an unusual source: a home video of a two year old boy from the metroplex area. The boy's parents,who are linguists themselves, say, "We were surprised to hear the unusual sound that he made, but even more surprised about the public's reaction to a simple home video posted on YouTube."

News of the new (yet unofficially named) sound , the voiceless lateral trill, has not only thrilled the niche of small linguistic departments in large universities, but has also tickled the ear of the some celebrities and political leaders.

Lady Gaga has 'gone gaga' herself over the clip saying, "Its just like, so...like...cool!"

French President Nicholas Sarcozy remarked, "C'est magnifique! J'aimerai bien croquer ses joues!" (Wonderful! I would love to pinch those cheeks!)

Prince William has flown in his RAF helicopter to visit the boy in his simple mobile home dwelling. His Majesty is reported to have congratulated the parents and also bought a couple pairs of cowboy boots while in Dallas.

Pope Benedict XVI himself has sent word saying, "There might be a cardinalship in the future for that boy!"

With such a fantastic reaction, Dallas parents Adam and Ruth Huntley can only say, "We would be proud of our son even if he wasn't such a linguistic phenomena." And they are.

-Didja Bilivit, Dallas Morning News

SOURCE: dallasmorningnews.com


LISTENING NOTE: You can notice the special sound occuring where in standard English the sounds 'ch' (as in 'chair'), 'sh' (as in 'shower'), and 'tr' (as in 'truck') are heard.

Choices...

Yesterday, Ruth returned from working on our latest newsletter.

As she came back into the house John quickly did some type of behavior that required Ruth to spank him. The following dialogue ensued.

"John, I don't want to spank you the first thing that I do as I come back to the house. How about I give you mercy? Mercy means that I don't give you what you deserve, that means I don't give you a spanking. Judgement means I give you what you deserve, that means I give you a spanking. So what do you want, mercy (no spanking) or judgement (spanking)."

John hesitates, looks slightly into the air, his forehead slightly wrinkled indicating some confusion. He then quickly threw off all confusion and hesitation and with all the gusto an (almost) two year old can muster cries out. "JUDGEMENT!"

(His mother gave him mercy anyways)

Child Labor Laws

John will be turning the big 2 in about three weeks and he loves helping washing dishes. Of course, we do not restrict any child who wants to help with dishes. We let desires like this remain unfettered and free. Here he is standing beside his chair that he pulls up to the sink. At this point he is relegated to rinsing and putting the dishes in the drainer. Note the large water stain on mid-section due to pouring a cup of water on himself. Here is a picture of John's work of stacking the dishes after rinsing.

We are proud of John that he is learning and enjoying this task. Now, we are not naive enough to think that this dish washing euphoria will last forever, but it is nice right now. And after all, we can only live right now.

Disciplining in Hope

John.
1 hour.
3 time-outs.
4 spankings.
1 new record.

Substitution

Here is a good poem that succinctly describes a essential concept of the Gospel...substitution. All the horrible things that should eternally happen to us because of our sinfulness was put on a sinless Jesus on the cross, so that instead of being treated like our guilt demands, we are treated as if we lived the perfect life of Christ. And you receive all the benefits from that substitution just simply by trusting in it. Good news, huh?

He hell, in hell laid low;
made sin, he sin o'erthrew;
Bowed to the grave, destroyed it so,
And death, by dying, slew.

-S.W. Gandy

Becca and Da' Boys

Aunt Becca arrived on Wednesday and the boys (especially John) are super excited. John often cries out "BEC-CA!" when awaking from his nap. The boys are really starting to notice each other and John often gets real close to Sam's face and John speaks nicely to him and Sam smiles in return. We are happy that they are getting along well for the time being. John learning a little piano from Aunt Rebecca before bedtime.

John has recently really taken a liking to reading. Sometimes he can entertain himself for well over an hour just by sitting in Sam's swing and going through a pile of books.

For those considering....

I can't help but remark how many times I've given the same advice to couples that I received from my father-in-law that he gave to me when Ruth and I were dating. Sometimes one must just give the advice publicly for more to hear. So if you are in that situation...

"Most people use rose-colored glasses when considering a spouse and abandon their magnifying glass, and after they marry they pull out the magnifying glass and abandon their rose-colored glasses when it really should be exactly the opposite."

-P. Molitor

Deserted Islands and Prison Writings

As one learns a language one sees that a language has a certain turn of phrase, an idiom, a proverb for every situation.


There is so much social information that informs when it is appropriate to say [oh well] with a rising tone denoting in some situations when one is saying sarcastically or triumphantly "See, I told you that particular negative outcome would happen and you didn't listen to me!" or if you say [oh well] with a falling tone often meaning, "That outcome was mildly disappointing but it is not too important to worry about." (Well, at least that is what I mean by it).

There is one particular phrase that we English speakers use often to introduce a situation when we want to ask a person to make a very limited choice about something from a large set through the medium of an extreme hypothetical situation. To make that last statement make sense...here is the phrase,

"If you were stuck on a desert island which X would you choose?"

Its a pretty good feature of our language, enabling you to extract information from a potential marriage partner with juicy tidbits like, "If you were stuck on a desert island and could only eat chocolate chip cookies or oatmeal raisin which would it be?"

While this phrase is an extreme hypothetical situation, however, sometimes it is not very far off from reality. This is an issue for us as we decide which books to bring to Africa. Our limiting factor for bringing stuff is limited to our airline baggage so bringing many heavy books is not an option. And where we are going there is no good Christian English literature to be bought. So, we must choose the few books that we will take with us on that Puritan deprived "deserted island" that is Central African Republic.

I (Adam) have been thinking about this for about a year and I have come up with my short list of about 10 books that I will bring. My main criteria for choosing these books was how well the book answered these two questions, "What book has been the most consistently helpful in encouraging me in my Christian walk? and What is a book that is written about something that I would like to learn more about in the next three years?" After choosing the books I noticed that the books and their authors have some similar features.

1. Almost all of the books are written by or written about (biographies) men from the 17th and 18th centuries.
2. Almost all of the men were pastors.
3. Almost all of them are Puritans.
4. All of them believed in the sovereignty of God in all affairs of their lives. In other words, God was in control, planning/allowing the suffering in their lives often through the wicked acts of other men.
5. Almost all of them were either being hunted by authorities for execution, in prison, (or consistantly threatened with both) and wrote their books in the midst of these difficulties.

Interesting, huh?

Although I didn't plan it that way that is the way that it happened. It is not a coincidence.
Why are the most heavenly minded books written by those who at any point in time were faced with the end of their lives?

The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:2, "It is better to go to a funeral than to a party because this is the end of every man and the living take it to heart."

A party makes you think about relationships and fun and pleasure (all these things are not bad within themselves). But a funeral makes you think about God and eternity. And if you are constantly forced to deal with those realities in light of the good news of Jesus then and only then do you become helpful to those people in the relationships, fun, and pleasure.

Christians who have the most miserable circumstances in life or who are threatened with/close to death often are the people who can give you the best perspective on life, because their ropes are much more loosened from the moorings of this transient world. They can see the glorious light of eternity much clearer as the dull, thick, sunglasses of this age are removed.

So I couldn't help but ask you and myself, if some Christian were stuck on a deserted island and you (or your life metaphorically) wrote a "book" about Biblical truth. Would someone pick you?

a habit picked up along the road

It's been a while since we've posted! Somewhere along the last 1,000-mile stretch of road travel (of which we've had a number of thousands recently), Sam learned to suck his thumb (or other fingers) with gusto. He was facing the back of the car, and it was hard to monitor his activities too closely, so we missed the fact that he was picking up this new habit...until we got home and saw what he had learned to do!

Though we sometimes pull his thumb/fingers back out of his mouth, he doesn't seem to mind: sometimes that actually makes him smile! But he is quick back to sucking as soon as possible.

We took a video of Sam with our webcam, and since Adam's computer mysteriously records video without sound, and my computer mysteriously won't work with the webcam at all anymore, an old-fashioned "silent film" of the thumb-sucker will have to do for now.

family memories

Tonight I was virtually flipping through some of the photos in my "My Photos" folder, and came across this particular image. I looked at it for a while, and couldn't help but smile. Yes, it's true; though this picture may not evoke good feelings on the part of most viewers, I look at it with (surprisingly) quite fond memories.

Maybe what makes some memories so great is just that they happened to us as a family! So, Molitors, and large blue minivan (a.k.a., "the Tougher"), here's to you! We've been through a lot together:

949

Although it is not a common marital milestone (that is celebrated)...today does mark 949 days since Ruth and I said our vows before God. We have grown in our appreciation, love, understanding, and committment to each other and we're thankful to God for that. So here's to 949 (x50) more!

"He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord." Proverbs 18:22

Sean and Heidi's Wedding Day!

Today we celebrated the wedding of two very dear friends, Sean and Heidi (now Mr. and Mrs. Scott!) It was a beautiful wedding and we are so happy for them!

We said goodbye to them as they cruised away in their convertible...

And John enjoyed the ride home in his car seat.

Once we arrived home, we decided we'd take a photo of the boys lying on the bed in their matching outfits (thanks, Mom and Dad Huntley!) It turned out looking kind of like a mug shot.

Papa & John, Speaking Sango

We're starting the adventure of learning our next language! Here you can see how John chimes in with Sango just like he does when we prompt him to speak English or French. It is amazing to think how easy it will be for him, as a young child, to pick up new languages that will require much more study for us, as adults, to learn.

Sango Language Learning Fun

One of the most interesting things about learning a language is seeing the different ways that a language/culture categorizes reality.

We are now beginning our study of Sango, the main trade language of Central African Republic. Although French is used in official documents and learned circles...Sango is the language that common people (especially in the capital Bangui) speak most.

I learned an interesting verb in Sango today. The verb is toto (said with two 'low' tones). It can mean 'cry' for a baby or 'bark' for a dog.

Interesting, huh? All sentimentalism aside...a baby's cry and a dog's bark do have similar qualities, don't they?

The Need (illustrated in sugary bite-sized form)

Here are our good friends the Tolivers explaining the great need of Bible Translation in the world.

Skittles & Bible Translation from John Toliver on Vimeo.

Through the night...

As the subject line suggests Sam slept 7 continuous hours last night. Although we know that it is highly improbable that he will do this again tonight, it is however a good sign that sometime soon we (especially Ruth) will be getting some more sleep at night. And, of course, that is always a good thing.

A New Look

Our good friend Emma drew the picture of our family that now adorns the blog. We just wanted to say thank you for the lovely drawing Emma!

Big Smile

For all of you relatives who suffer from "little-Huntley-baby-boy-video-addiction" we decided to give you a little bit of relief from your withdrawl symptoms by giving you this. Sam has started to smile more and more. The video for some odd reason has no sound but I'm looking over Sam and "cooing" at him and he smiles everytime I coo. With John's antics and Sam's smiles we are having a good time with one another.

Gettin' on Your Prayer Bones

We received some information from our Wycliffe branch yesterday giving us some general information about living and working in Africa.

They wrote concerning the organization's overall strategy in completing the great and difficult task of Bible Translation,

"Prayer is our greatest strategic resource."

Yee haw! In a day when pastors are groomed to be more like CEOs with clever marketing strategies...it is great to have leaders who still solely trust God for results.

Sam and John hanging out together

John really loves Sam, and today it was cute to watch Sam looking at John and smiling at him when they were lying side by side on a blanket on the floor!

Misc.

As the subject line suggests many miscellaneous things have been going on in our lives. We just enjoyed a week-long stay of each set of grandparents! We enjoyed the time being together with family. They enjoyed meeting Samuel and John really appreciated the extra attention. Also, since the grandparents have left we have picked up our daily French study again. It sure is nice to get back into the language.

Well, here are some photos that are posted here in no particular order.

Here is a meal that Ruth made last night (Ruth took the pictures) that was fantastic and was very different from our normal fare. It starts off with some "Herbed" rice (parsley, mint, cilantro) that you finish off with some fresh squeezed lemon. Some roasted brussel sprouts.

The entrée was grilled eggplant drizzled with homemade pomegranate dressing topped with shredded mint and pine nuts.

Here is John helping with the brussell sprouts (which he likes helping prepare and not helping consume).

Tonight was also Sam's first "real" (non-damp washcloth wipe down) bath. He actually seemed to enjoy it!

Here is Sam after his bath, smelling like Burt's Bees baby lotion.

Here is Ruth rejoicing over our first beet crop! I'm sure that Ruth's famous whole-beet borscht will be on the menu in the next couple of days.

Da' Word

As always Spurgeon always seems to capture the Christian's experience just right...

"The Bible is God's Bible; and when I see it, I seem to hear a voice springing up from it saying, "I am the book of God; man, read me. I am God's writing; open my leaf, for I was penned by God; read it, for he is my author, and you will see him visible and manifest everywhere."

And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 2nd Peter 1:19-21

A Moment in Our Day

...just in case you thought that we were all happy all of the time... :)

A Haiku Composed After the Events of Tonight's Supper.

Cookie-less sorrow

Due to uneaten supper

John knows all too well.

A few photos of the brothers

Such a sweet little Samuel! We can't help spending lots of time looking at him!

Meanwhile, John uses the slight distraction of the adults to his advantage.

Samuel Paul Huntley is here!

Samuel Paul Huntley was born Monday, May 31st at 7:37 in the morning. He weighed in at 8lbs. 12 oz. and was 20 1/4 inches long. He is named after the old testament prophet Samuel and after his grandfather Paul Molitor. We are very thankful for how the Lord has given us a healthy boy and a safe delivery.

"Grandmomma" Huntley has been enjoying her time with both of their grandsons."Granddaddy" has too. Our wonderful midwife Lisa (left) and her assistant Brittany (right). Lisa also was our midwife for John, she's great!

Weighing Sam on an old-fashioned scale.

The family (minus John) just before we went home.

Once we got home, John really took to his new brother ("Samo" he calls him). He constantly gives him kisses and is always very concerned when Sam is crying and seems to want to help him in some way.

Our prayer for Sam is that he may be like his namesake in the Bible and be a man who will love the truth of God, and will live a life of godly integrity. Ruth is doing very well and she is happy to see him "out"! Thankfully Sam came just at the end of the semester when almost all of Papa's work of grading his students papers are finished. Unfortunetly, the Huntley Grandparents will be leaving on Saturday, but the Molitor Grandparents will be coming soon!