Today was a busy day. Calvin and I started out the morning with a meeting for Got Style at church. (An ABC evangelism training program.) It was interesting to see where our church stands as a whole in their evangelistic styles. My primary (most comfortable) “evangelistic style” is Analytical - no surprises there - followed by Relationship and Incarnational (servant evangelism) as areas I am somewhat comfortable in. Personally, while I scored high in the intellectual arena, I think that works more in harmony with relationship-building. I’m not a huge “talker” until I know someone.

After we got home at around 1:00, we translated 2 Samuel 11 and 24 until dinner. I must say, the narrator in 2 Samuel 11 (as in much of the Samuel corpus) is a literary genius. Unfortunately, you just don’t catch much of the interwoven suspense/surprise elements of the David and Bathsheba story in the English. I love translating Hebrew narrative - the (almost) sacrifice of Isaac was another fantastic read when I translated that some years ago. Chalk one more point up to learning original languages! Anyways, I’m happy to say that we’ve now completed all of our translation work for Exegesis of 1 & 2 Samuel for the semester.

The special Saturday dinner for tonight was “Italian Chicken,” in the crock pot. We put a whole chicken in the crock pot with some chopped up potatoes, and an entire bottle of Italian dressing. It had been cooking since 8:00am on low when we unleashed it. It turned out very well - extremely tender (fall-off-the-bone) and juicy. The potatoes weren’t bad either. We paired the dish with some of those canned crescent rolls and a bottle of Tuxedo White, which was decent, but not as good as I remembered. It’s possible that the food pairing wasn’t quite right, but we’re still learning.

After dinner, it was back to Hebrew: we finished Micah 6:13-7:10 for Hebrew. Tomorrow we hope to finish the book and be done with translation work for Intermediate Hebrew. Progress! Micah has been both frustrating and rewarding to translate. At times, it can be difficult to put the Hebrew into readable English if I even understand what it’s saying myself. That’s when the text isn’t corrupted by some textual error. However, there are some great passages that just really flowed - the beauty of Hebrew poetry never ceases to amaze me. Once again, so much you just don’t pick up in the English - so much you just can’t transfer since they are poetic devices for the Hebrew language.

I am reminded constantly how much I love Hebrew. I have battled through Akkadian all through this semester. Somehow I manage A’s and B’s on my quizzes, but I have a sinking feeling that at the insane rate we’ve had to learn it, it will seep out of my mind within a few months. If nothing else, it has reinforced to me where my real love lies.

So, today, it’s been church, chicken, and Hebrew - and a little Stargate thrown in at the end.