Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Regroup, Reorganise and Review

We’ve regrouped!

We had a full class for Lesson 9 last Sunday. Trish was back from her marvellous (and highly successful) mission to Fiji, there weren’t any walk/runs for Colleen, and Larry and Joc were not baptising half a dozen young people. It was great having everyone altogether again.

As for L9, it has now been posted on the blog. In fact, all the reorganising of the Pages Tabs I mentioned before is now complete. I’ve grouped all the lessons so far into pairs and posted the pairs on individual pages. For example, Lesson One has been combined on the same page with Lesson Two to give Lesson 1 & 2. This gives us room to post five more lessons before we have to re-reorganise again.

I’ve also added the latest Why Learn Greek illustration—we’ve got 10 of them on there now. Schweet!

As for next class, everybody—including me—thought it was about time for another review. It’s been many months since the first one (way back before Lesson 4!) and we’ve covered a fair bit of ground since then; especially with regard to vocabulary. So, next Sunday is Number Two Review Day!


God bless,
Ἰακωβος

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Quick Update

Okay, seat-belts on—this is gonna be fast…

Lesson 7 & 8 are now posted and I’ve started combining Lessons to save space (see L1 & 2 tab above this post). With our last vocabulary list, we’ve now touched on 1/3 of the words in the Greek New Testament! Yippee!!! Well done all.

Am still working on the homework for L8, so don’t worry, Trish, there’s still time for you to finish the L7 homework—that’s if you’re back from your Fiji mission, of course.

…done!


God bless,
Ἰακωβος

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

On Sons and Runs

My bit of a rest might have come to a close, but I’m still not able to devote all my time to preparing for Greek class. There’s been a development…

My son David flew into Auckland Airport two days ago to begin a two month visit to Godzone. He’s 17, lives in Glasgow, Scotland with his mum and brothers—and I haven’t seen him in over 6 years. Needless to say, this will distract me greatly. Let me apologise in advance: Sorry all, but again you’ll have to wait till late Saturday to get the next Lesson notes!

Last Sunday’s class went off without a hitch. Larry and Joc didn’t have any problems with the magic world of the Greek Present Indicative or the conjugation pattern of the –ω verbs. Even the movable nu made sense. So now everyone is set to tackle the slightly different –εω verbs and learn the paradigm form of 1st declension nouns.

Sandy also had time at the end of class to give a quick lesson on memorisation…but I can’t remember how that went.

Okay, I’ve added the latest Why Learn Greek and will get Lesson 7 up sometime today. Happy reading!

Oh, one more thing—I forgot to post Colleen’s latest championship time in the Mangawhai run/walk last Sunday. Despite freezing wind and driving rains she pulverised the 9km course in 1 hour, 11 minutes and 31 seconds. Outstanding! Well done, Colleen.


God bless,
Ἰακωβος

Friday, July 2, 2010

A Bit of a Rest

I’ve been enjoying a bit of a rest this week. Not only have I just finished the homework assignment for Lesson 7, but I haven’t even started preparing Lesson 8 yet. Not to worry, though, the reason I’m not rushing to get everything done is because in order to accommodate everyone’s real life events, Lesson 7 has been spread out over two weeks.

Last Sunday, Larry & Joc had to attend several baptisms at their church and were unable to make it to class, so Colleen, Raewyn and Trish had to take the plunge into verbs without them. This Sunday, the situation will be reversed; only Larry & Joc will be grappling with Lesson 7.

Colleen is going to be busy breezily slaughtering a field of 700-plus competitors in another Sport Northland Run/Walk. Be kind, Colleen, for they know not what they do.

As for Trish, she won’t be at class because she’s in Fiji on a 10-day mission with Marine Reach Ministries. She’s an optometrist and will be staring into dozens of eyeballs in many skulls of poor people living in small, rural villages. It’s a great service she’s doing and we all pray to the Lord that she blesses and is blessed mightily!

Raewyn didn’t have anything else on, but rather than sit through the lesson again, she decided to do some home-study that day. Thanks, Raewyn, for allowing us to mess with your schedule. We hope it won’t happen too often (I for one am shocked, SHOCKED, to discover people have lives outside of Greek Class! But, of course, we must forgive them, mustn't we…?)

Okay, I’ll be getting L7 posted soon, but will wait until Monday to put up the latest Why Learn Greek—don’t want to spoil the surprise for Larry & Joc.

Oh, one more thing—Sandy, my beautiful and lovely wife and assistant, has created a Paihia Baptist Church website and, naturally, she’s linked to this blog there. I’ll put a link up to the PBC site, too, but you can go there and have a look by clicking here if you can’t wait for me to finish my loafing arou bit-of-a-rest.

God bless,
Ἰακωβος