Around the Center

I trust you have had a great week. Joyce and I had a really enjoyable one. Working and playing and soaking up the sun. Let me say the last part of that again – soaking up the sun! We have been having such nice weather. Highs in the 70s or high 60s; sun shining with maybe some broken clouds. All this warm will disappear this weekend for a few days. Canada is about to descend upon us.

Where we spend our days is called the Center. Let me give you a photo tour.

On the right is the volunteer office and the main room for sorting and storing stamps. Another office or two is in that building. On the left is the study building – so called because it has about 45 small rooms, originally to translate the New Testament into various Mexican Indian languages. Most of the rooms are used for all kinds of things now – including keyboarding and the room Joyce works in.

It is in the shape of a “U.” The base of the U is behind me as I took this picture. It contains the break room which doubles as the room for ladies doing sewing and quilting, a small kitchen, restrooms, and a library. In the picture above are the two “legs” of the U. On the left top level has the two rooms we are using for keyboarding. On the right top is the room Joyce works in.

Here is what she says does. “I take stamp albums which have been donated to the Center. Presently there are 50 books to work on. I gently take out each stamp with tweezers and place it in the appropriate envelope – sorted by category. The categories are country of issue or the picture on the stamp. These wait for the Men Who Know to decide how valuable each stamp is. Valuable ones will be sold on the internet, less valuable ones are sold in bulk, ones of no special value are used by school teachers in their classrooms. The money generated is put into an emergency fund to assist translators who need to leave their village because of illness or political unrest.” At the present, Joyce is by herself in her room. The reason she is not with the other stamp ladies in the volunteer office building is simple – there is not enough room there.

Here we have the chapel on the right and regular Wycliffe (not volunteer) offices on the left. My cousin, Jim, has an office here. He does the “type setting” after the keyboarders finish their work. Calling it type setting is an anachronism because it is all done on computers now. The top picture was taken from the steps where the two people are.

And there you have it. There are some shed and storage buildings for the construction and repair people. By the way, one of the projects this winter is building a house for a translator couple. It is almost ready for sheetrock.

Okay, all work and no play make Gene and Joyce edgy. Friday we helped Jim and Joyce move stuff away from their walls so the termite eradication guy could do his spraying. They are not having any special problems, it’s just that termites are always a problem here.

Saturday we went to Saguaro National Park (West). There is also one on the east side of Tucson. We toured the visitor’s center and climbed a couple hills. Well, I climbed the hills; Joyce doesn’t do hills well.

Here is the view from Valley View Overlook. It is looking away from Tucson and to the south.

Saguaro cactus only grow in a band running from northern Mexico thru central Arizona to northwest New Mexico. This area is part of the Sonoran Desert. Some centuries old petroglyphs are on Signal Hill in the park. They are a little hard to see in these pictures. Look for the shapes or lines on the rocks.

No one knows why these were chipped into the rock. Maybe religious, maybe to mark land, maybe to be artistic, or simply graffiti.

Sunday we attended worship at LifePoint Church in Catalina. It is only two years old, small, but a nice service. We went to the early service so we had lots of time to rest before the Super Bowl. Did you watch? Wow! What a game. Too bad San Francisco didn’t  win, but a good game anyway.

Enjoy your week. Blessings.