My Website

Hello, due to the business of my schedule, I am going to be updating my New Tribes website www.ntm.org/amy_heckman. Please check there from now on for updates. For those of you that don't know God has used several things to redirect me to Mexico. Feel free to read all about it on the news section of my website. Thanks for your interest.

Traveling Around the South

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to share at a church in west central Florida. It was so neat to meet new people and visit with some that I already knew. It was also cool to share with them what God has been doing in my life, and in Mozambique, Africa. It was also an encouragement to see people who were interested in being a part of my support team. People who want to reach others with the gospel and do so by helping missionaries.

We recently celebrated my brother's 14th birthday. It is exciting to see God working in his life, and to see him growing up. My family and I also celebrated my birthday by going to a rodeo. We brought along a few friends, and had a great time. We also got to wander around the fair afterwards.

For the half time show they had little monkeys riding dogs hearding rams. They were fun to watch.

Mom and I recently took a trip to Alabama to surprise my Grandma for her 80th birthday. We had a wonderful time with her and my Uncle, Aunt, and cousins. To complete the surprise my Mom's brothers came down on the weekend. It's been quite a while since Grandma and all her children were together at one time. We had a wonderful party for Grandma, and some of her friends came over for it. Even though she guessed that my Uncles were coming, it was still a great time.

My adorable cousins eating and cooking.

We played games, visited, and enjoyed the time together celebrating Grandma's birthday.

This past weekend we took our youth group up to Georgia for Dare 2 Share. This is a program that gets teens excited about the Gospel, teaches them to share it clearly, and sends them out to practice sharing while collecting food for a local charity.

We even saw snow Saturday morning. We had lots of fun riding in the vans for hours. Notice the guy in the back. We also had lots of fun and fellowship throughout the entire trip.

We had a great time, and it was a big encouragement to me to continue pressing on, and to remember why I'm working hard to develop a good strong support team, before heading to the field, to help spread the Gospel.

The Past Several Months

If you've read the news on my new website, then sorry if there is repetition. However, here is a summary of what I've been up to the past few months.

I took a trip to Michigan for Thanksgiving and had some great opportunities to share with friends and a church about Mozambique. I also had the priveledge of being in a dear friend's wedding. It was a wonderful and memorable trip.

I returned to Florida, and landed right in the rush of the holiday season. Though we were very busy as a family we had a very good time spending Christmas together with everyone including Brett and Debby,my aunt, uncle, and cousin, as well as a friend of ours from the NTM Headquarters.

For New Years we went down to spend it with my grandparents, uncle, aunt, and cousins, in Southern Florida. On the way down we spent the night at Debby and Brett's and in the morning before we left, they told us that she is pregnant, and due in September. Needless to say I'm very excited to be an aunt!

Now that the busy schedule has settled down a bit, I've been working on getting my paperwork ready for going to Brazil (so I can learn Portuguese for about a year before heading to Mozambique), working with our MK youth group, and trying to plan out my time and travels before heading to Brazil.

So that's what I've been up to, and I will work harder to keep this updated! :)
Have a great day.

New Website

Hi everyone, so as you can tell I haven't been the best at updating this blog, but I plan on doing better. Also, I got a new ministry website. Check it out at www.ntm.org/amy_heckman Thanks, for your interest.

Where in the world?

Where in the world have I been?

After school, I went to Florida for a while, to work, spend time with family, and decide which country to go to.

In March I went to Oregon to work on building up a support base so that I can go be a missionary in...I'll tell you in a minute :)

I took a little trip up to Northern Idaho, in April, to visit friends and make new friends.

I've been able to share with people all over Oregon what God is doing in my life and about where I'm going.

Where in the world are you going??

The Lord used a lot of different things in my life to help me make this decision. Advice of people I respect, people I know there, leadership there, people going there, and a friend who told me that God will open and shut doors you just have to get moving and trust Him. So the decision is MOZAMBIQUE, Africa.

Tuesday I leave for Missouri for 2 weeks, where I will go to Refresher Course, and be in Jenny Lowe's wedding.

Then I come back to Oregon to help with VBS, share at some other churches, and spend time with my home church.

Tenatively I will be leaving for Michigan in August, be there a month, and then head down to Florida for awhile longer.

Lord willing, I will be headed for Brazil in Feb or Aug 2008 to learn Portuguese (Mozambique's trade language), and then on to Mozambique.

August to December 2006

My Last semester at New Tribes Language Institute was spent in the linguistics class.
This was a stretching semester. One main thing I learned through this is that my mind is not linguistically bent. However, I learned many useful skills for the future. I also had the wonderful experience of spending 6 weeks working with, learning from, and building relationships with the Cherokee people in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Here are some pictures from my time there.

My Language helper and I. We along with Jenny my language learning partner would work for 2 hours a day gathering pieces of Cherokee language, so that later we could analyze it.

We were able to enjoy the beautiful fall colors while we were there. We also had the opportunity to go to the rodeo at the state fair in Tulsa.

In order to build a better relationship with our language helpers, we would go to events that they went to. Our language helper went to the gospel singings, and so we went along too. She also sang in them, as you can see on the left. We went to a Cherokee church. This helped us get more exposure to the Cherokee language, and we got to know some wonderful people.

Although we were able to enjoy many experiences, we spent most of the time sorting, filing, and analyzing. Then when the 6 weeks were up, we went back to school and started on the 2 week analysis and write up of the Cherokee language from the data we had gathered.

Michigan trip

While I was in Michigan I spent some time at my grandma's with family. I had the privledge of witnessing to my cousin, who got saved. What a joy. I also spent some time with some friends that I went to Bolivia with, in 2001. We had a lot of fun, and it was a nice vacation.

Summer

Here's my latest news letter, letting you know what I've been up to this summer. To enlarge it, click on it, then, in the new window, find the orange box with 4 arrows on the lower lefthand side. Enjoy