Jon and Jen Quast Preparing for Tribal Church Planting in Paraguay 
Jamen's new favorite is blueberrys, and this was blueberry heaven
Ok, so not only is it time for me to resume our weekly ministry news update, it is also time to introduce you to our newly made-over old ministry site.
The summer came to a screaching halt about a week ago. Not a screaching halt as though we had an unexpected stop…but the summer went at a breackneck spead all the way till the end. We got back to Missouri last week, where we took a couple of days to re-adjust ourselves and Jamen to our apartment, and got ready for classes to begin. Classes for our third semester of Church Planting Training at the Missionary Training Center started Monday morning at 8:00 am.
So we hit the ground running so to speak. Our first two classes are Phonemics (boy, that sounds fun huh?) and our CLA Practicum (affectionately called “Dobu”, but more on that later) Jamen is no longer in the nursery here at school. He has graduated and moved up with the “big kids” in the minis class. He loves being able to walk around the bigger room with bigger toys like slides and swings. Woohoo!
Phonemics actually is fun, if you are wired like I am (Jon). Phonemics very basically explained is the process of getting the words that you say on to a piece of paper. Sound easy? Well, we will be doing this some day soon with a group of tribal people who don’t know how to read and write. They don’t know how to read and write, because reading and writing don’t exist for them…there’s no books, no paper, not even an alphabet developed in the places we as New Tribes Missionarys go! We have the priviledge of learning another people’s language, listen to what they are saying and how they are saying it, developing an alphabet, and teaching them to write and read it. (I assure you, although I have explained it very succintly in 3 sentences the job, it will take years, prayers, and buckets of sweat to have a chance of this happening) We could not be more excited to be a part of this!
Our CLA practicum, or Dobu class, deserves its own new article. And so it shall get one. But just in overview the class is designed to let us “role play” a tribal situation in which we apply all the tools from our training thus far, and use them to learn the tribal language and culture. This class brings the whole training together.
And last but not least, I’m sure you noticed things look a little different around here. I am pleased to present our revamped MyMinistry Site, now called NTM Blogs. I trust that you, like myself, find this page much simpler to navigate and find information. The very first thing you see as you enter is a news article, like this one. To the side you can still access old news articles, search the blog for the one thing you read about but can’t find now, read New Tribes Mission news, and see our most recent postings. To read about our Ministry, go to the “About” above you. You can still give online through the give button. And at the very top you can be connected back to NTM.org.
And the best part? Still the same address! www.ntm.org/jon_quast
Thanks for reading, praying, giving, encouraging.
We will keep studying, praying, preparing, and going!
Till All Are Reached
Jon and Jen Quast
