NTM

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words.  However, either due to our internet connection or my lack of computer ability I am unable to upload a picture of Jamen holding our new daughter Jade.  So I guess that means I’ll just have to write a news article at least a thousand words long :)

Maybe it would be cool to give an update on life/ministry (can the two be distinguished?) on each of us.

Jon.  I have just started my linguistic training.  Linguistics is basically just fancy talk for the process of taking sounds in a language and reducing them to writing.  Sounds easy, but I assure you its not :)  Many steps are required to get a useable written language.  Right now we  have been reviewing a process called Phonemic Analysis that we have studied previously in our training.  We are now starting to dive in deeper into the subject, and it is definitely difficult.  I wish I could be more descriptive of what is complicated with the process, but in order to do that I would have to talk about how symmetry would make you suspicious that a pre-nasalized bilabial stop would unite with it’s unmodified bilabial stop conterpart based in the pre-nasalized one’s limited distribution and also by the fact that a pre-nasalized alveolar stop united with its unmodified phone, but despite all this you have a contrast in identical environments making the two phones separate and not allaphones.  I could say all that, but that may be confusing because it contains a lot of linguistic lingo.  Just know that its a blast (for me) and also one of the most (if not the most) useful tools I will get before the mission field.

Jen.  Jen is taking a Spanish course right now through a computer program we got for her.  While we are not hoping that she is fluent in Spanish before we get to Paraguay, it would be nice for her to have some knowledge of the language so that we can start building friendships day one in Paraguay.

Jamen.  Completely potty trained and can identify every letter in the alphabet except “v”.  Is there anything this kid can’t do?  He is truly amazing and we count it a blessing to have him every day.  His favorite things to do these days is play with his matchbox cars (rolling them into things to watch the cool crashes) and also reading Dr. Seuss (or more accurately having Dr. Seuss read to him).  He likes Jade, although most of the time he just kind of ignores her.  At least he’s not jealous…yet.

Jade.  Jade is very healthy despite our concerns early on with her big birthmark.  She is over ten pounds already (geez) and likes to be awake. (especially when we like to be asleep)  She is doing everything a kid her age should be doing.  She is definitely the life of the party at our house and we thank God for this new blessing.

So as you can see life is going on for us as we continue to pursue tribal church planting in Paraguay.  Praise God with us about our support level as it is the highest it has ever been since we started with New Tribes.  We still have a long ways to go, and we are already praying for our partnership time coming up this summer.  By God’s grace we will see an indigenous tribal church established in an unreached people group in Paraguay.

Jamen and Jade

2009.  No doubt I will remember this year.  This year was filled with challenges, as I’m sure all would agree.  The daily curve balls of life just kept coming and coming all year long.  It was a year that we pushed on ahead to finish our training with New Tribes Mission.  A year who’s summer allowed us to make many new friends who will help us with this task of reaching the unreached.  2009 was quite a year.

And now as we enter the new year, we enter it with a new family member.  On December 30th at 10:26 am we welcomed our daughter Jade Noel Quast into the world.  We are very thankful that our prayers that Jen would go into labor naturally were answered as labor pains started 8 hours before she was scheduled to be induced.  She made it through the entire delivery like superwoman.  We both cried as we held her for the first time.

2010 is a new year.  Once again I will have to adjust to dating papers, by first scratching out the 09 I will inevitably accidentally write down first, and then trying to decide if I’m supposed to just write 10, or 2010…I’m not sure.  This  year as you all know we will be taking one last training course supplemental to the training we have already received and then making plans to be in Paraguay the first of next year.  It’s always an adventure I’m thankful for, and now we get to experience the ride with one more family member.

Thank you for your support, your congratulations, and also your prayers during this joyous time.  Please continue to praise Jesus with us for the awesome Christmas present.

So yeah…I don’t think any of us were quite ready for this picture, but it’s a good parallel to today.  Graduation from our church planting training almost took us by surprise.  This semester has been our most chaotic by far, and we still feel like we just got back from summer break (actually I think I honestly still have a bag to unpack…)

I guess we have hyped up our graduation from the Missionary Training Center enough.  We have been talking about the implications of completing the required training, being cleared for membership, and accepting membership starting January 1st.  I guess probably the bigger question on everyone’s mind is:  what now?!

Immediately?  Have a baby :)  Baby Jade is due any minute, and we are waiting for her to come.  No real contractions yet, but we are expecting her to be here at any time.  Until then that’s what is on our mind.  We look forward to (hopefully) catching our breath and enjoying Christmas as our little family.  We have some family coming to visit after Christmas.  We will be in Missouri our whole Christmas break.

In January we start anew with shift in focus.  I (Jon) am starting my linguistics training.  I have mentioned this before, and will only mention it again.  The study of linguistics is a pretty technical field, and pretty boring when you go to describe what it is.  But where I might be able to garner some interest is in describing how it will be used in a church plant.  We are endeavoring to go where no missionary has gone before.  Therefore the language of the people will not have been learned by outsiders before.  Therefore there will be no textbooks to learn the language, and more than likely no system for even writing the language down.  Linguistics will take care of those problems (among other things) making it very valuable.  Now, its not required to know linguistics to go with New Tribes Mission, and that’s why we were able to graduate tonight.  But we have been advised to spare ourselves some time and frustration and get trained in linguistics.  So, we will take another semester to do so.

So what will Jen do while I’m in class?  Well, besides adjust to the craziness of two kids (mom’s are knowingly nodding to that statement), we have just bought Jen a language course in Latin American Spanish.  While this course won’t take her to fluency in the language, it will give her a jumpstart into one of the national languages of Paraguay.  Many of you know that I lived a year in Argentina, and therefore have a good start in Spanish.  This is an effort to even our language abilities so we are closer to the same spot when we get to Paraguay.  We also feel that this move is in accordance to a principle we strive to live by:  redeeming the time.

Everything we are doing at this point we are evaluating in light of Paraguay.  We don’t want to be caught twiddling our thumbs waiting to arrive in Paraguay before we are actively involved in the work.  We will do what we can now, to redeem the time to be better affective when we get there.

What came to your mind when you read the title to this new article?  I hope the picture in my mind came across to yours:  paperwork!  Paperwork can be pretty tedious sometimes.  Whenever I have to fill out paperwork I thank God that He didn’t call me to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a secretary, because I would have to fill out a ton of paperwork probably on a daily basis.

Well, you may wonder why I spent my first paragraph talking about paperwork.  Mainly because it is on my mind…I just did some.  But, for the first time in my life I was happy to fill out paperwork.  This was a special stack of papers…our application papers to New Tribes Mission!

It may seem a little strange to some that we even have to “apply” to New Tribes Missions.  It may be strange to others that we haven’t applied already, so let me explain the process.  About 2 years ago we applied to the New Tribes Mission Missionary Training Center.  Our goal was to one day be a full-fledge member of the mission.  As the process goes, you cannot join New Tribes Mission until you have completed the training.  During the training process not only are you equipped to serve as a missionary with the organization, you are also evaluated to see if you and the mission are even a good fit.  When the training is completed you apply to become members of the team.

We currently stand 4 weeks out from completing our church planting training, and our official interview is in two weeks.  It’s not really a concern that we might not get in.  Remember how I said that during the training we are evaluated?  The Missionary Training Center won’t let someone complete the training only to say that they are not allowed to be members.  That wouldn’t be fair to anybody.  If there was an issue with the person or couple becoming members of the mission, they would have let them know long before so that the issues could be worked through.

All that to say is the paperwork is in!  We have gotten far enough along in the process that now we can officially apply to the mission!  Our interview is with a couple from the home office in two weeks.  If all goes according to every indication we will accept membership January 1st.  We are standing at the thresh-hold, one step away from walking through the door.

We covet your prayers these days.  Praise God with us that He has gotten us to this point.  It’s been a long time since that day in Argentina in 2003 when I decided I wanted to be a part of what New Tribes Mission was doing.  But here we are today, and the time that has transpired was worth every second.

Remembering the past, and turning away from what lie ahead

Till All Are Reached

Jon and Jen Quast

Our silly old bear

One of the things that we like to do with this blog is highlight a current course that we are in, and tie that into what we are doing with becoming missionaries to plant a church among the unreached people groups of the world.  We get a lot of questions from time to time on this topic of missions, but there is a topic that we don’t get questions on often.  The topic is how do you teach a tribal culture from the Bible.  The question here is not what do you teach, but how do you teach.  Not a commonly asked question, but one worth considering.

Think about how we think of a teaching situation.  What comes to mind?  You probably first picture a room, with people sitting down at desks.  Maybe tables, maybe chairs.  Oh yeah, and the room is probably climate controlled in your imagination.  Now I’m guessing that in your mind there is someone standing up front.  Perhaps he is dressed formerly, and he is addressing the sitting down people.  He probably has a projector and a screen displaying the points he is trying to make.  (which by the way he probably has three points all starting with the letter j, and a conclusion to finish his speech)  The sitting down people have books and pen and paper in front of them and they are writing furiously to keep up.  Oh yeah, and one more thing…QUIET!

As we look to present ourselves as teachers in someone else’s universe we have to figure out how we are going to teach. More than likely (in fact most definitely) the scenario will not look like what we saw above.  The way we pass on information in the west is completely foreign to the majority of the people of the world.  To quote a friend of mine:  ”3 points and a poem ain’t gonna cut the mustard…”

Why not?  Let’s break it down.  The place that we are going to meet to teach God’s word will more than likely not qualify for a room.  Try 4 posts and a roof, and you might have a better idea of a typical jungle classroom.  Because there are no walls, many unexpected company may decide to join the meeting as well.  By unexpected company I mean dogs, chickens, goats….I have even heard of a cassowary deciding to join the church meeting and then running off with a model of the ark of the covenant that the missionary was teaching on.  So distractions are in.  Quiet is out.

What about standing in front of the class and lecturing?  In many cultures it may be more appropriate to sit down and teach.  Some may teach by stories.  In whatever situation we find ourselves we will have to be a learner first, a teacher second.  We must learn how they do it.  Teach them they way they learn information already.  Big challenge.

Some other things to consider is our sense of urgency; actually communicating to them through our words and actions that this message is important.  Teaching in the heart language of the people is another huge thing to consider.  If you’ve followed what we have said at all about tribal missions you will know that we will take 2-5 years learning the language of the people before we ever teach.  Why?  We want the language to penetrate all the way down to their hearts.  Teaching in a language other than their heart language (the language they grew up speaking, not a language they have learned) could result in an incomplete knowledge, or simply a partial understanding of the message.  We want the message to take root in their hearts.

So this is kind of a recap (maybe introduction is a better word) to our class we just had called teaching considerations (go figure).  Stay tuned for more next week.  Remember us as we pursue Paraguay.

Till All Are Reached

Jon and Jen Quast

Wow, is all I have to say.  This video communicates the mission so clearly in many ways, but let me take a minute and clarify a couple of comments:

“The spirits eat us…”  This is a common belief worldwide.  The idea is that there are spirits running around the jungle, the open field, or wherever.  They could be big, they could be small.  But in many society’s belief system, some spirits purpose is to eat man.  I recall one tribal group where in their legends (which they believe to be 100% true) the creator god created a spirit called the yama with the sole purpose of eating man.  Therefore the cause of death is not seen in the Biblical light (because of sin) but rather because of a capricious spirit being hunting them (although you can’t see them) and because of a malicious god.  Very significant statement into what the Moi believe.

“Slashed me to remove the bad blood…”  When he got stung by the centipede his family cut him to get the blood out.  Also a common belief around the world, not too distant from middle age time practice of leeches.  The idea is the reason you are in pain is because you have bad blood in you.  Therefore, you must get it out.  Most people wind up dying from the bleeding and subsequent infection than from the centipede itself.  Satan knew what he was doing when he started that lie.

“Are they men or spirits?”  Oh if we only had a nickel… Worldwide, tribal people don’t know what to do with us odd-looking white people.  Half the time they can’t figure out the difference between white men and women…go figure.  We typically have to go to great lengths to convince them of our humanity.  Important if teaching on who man is in God’s sight.

“They came through the night…”  Nighttime is typically the most horrifying time for the tribal animist.  In cultures worldwide, there are reasons why you don’t go outside at night.  Nothing could be more foolish, stupid, unthinkable than to go out at night.  In one group in South America at night the spirits are said to come out to eat humans, but they can’t figure out how to get inside huts, so inside the hut is the only logical place to hid.  In Papua New Guinea one group believes a giant dog (as big as a house) as roaming around looking for someone to eat.  The fact that these believers demonstrated such brazen faith in God to protect them so they could go to Awayo, who had been disagreeable with the believers up to this point, probably was the event that softened his heart to hear the gospel.