Jon and Jen Quast Preparing for Tribal Church Planting in Paraguay 
Most of the time, before Friday night comes, I have a pretty good idea what I’m going to write about this week. This week I was continue to give news on our Culture and Language Acquisition Practicum, that continues to stretch us and prepare us for ministry. However, occassionaly a topic comes up rather unexpectedly that I can’t wait to write about. This weeks topic is one such topic. It simply cannot be put off for another week.
Many of you have heard our future plans for ministry, and the timeline needed to accomplish this goal of a tribal church plant in Paraguay. This plan and timeline has included a year in Mexico (before Parguay) to do Language study at a school there. The reason for that was leadership in Paraguay was not set up for a Spanish language program, and the school in Mexico would be the avenue for that.
This week I receieved an email from the New Tribes Mission field chairman in Paraguay. His email, among other things, stated the following: ”We want to let you know that we decided that the NTM Mexico e2 program will no longer be the first part of NTM Paraguay’s e2 program. In other words, the norm will be that folks will come to Paraguay rather than going to Mexico when they finish their partnership development.” (e2 is simply new tribes lingo for learning the national language and culture)(partnership development is also new tribes lingo for prayer and financial partners to be able to do overseas ministry) The part I want you to catch is that Mexico is no longer a stop on the Quast train!!
So what does that mean for us? Basically it rewrites our timeline for ministry. We will finish our Church Planting training around Christmas time this year, and become members of the mission in January. I (Jon) will then take the Linguistic training course also offered here at the Missionary Training Center until May. We will have the summer off for partnership development, before returning in September to complete the final 6 weeks of linguistic training in Oklahoma (the Cherokee nation linguistic practicum) that will bring us up to October 2010. Lord-willing we will be able to finish partnership development time fairly quickly, as we will then endevour to be in Paraguay January 2011. For those who are trying to do the math in their heads, let me help…we hope to be in Paraguay in 16 months.
16 months. That will put Jamen at 2 1/2 year old, and baby Jade (who is less than 4 months away :) ) will be 1 year old. We cannot tell you the excitement we feel to be a step closer to the country in which we will spend a large portion of our lives.
I will put a plug in here regarding our needs. The field of Paraguay has given us a monthly amount that they recommend we have committed before coming to the field. Currently we are receiving 8% of what they recommend. Some have committed to give but haven’t started yet, and if you add those committments we are at about 25% of what our monthly ministry needs will be. As you can see we have a little ways to go, but we are trusting God will give us what we need to be most effective in ministry. We are excited to see what the Lord has already provided us to make us most effective in training.
We are thrilled to share this news with you. We weren’t ever dreading going to Mexico for a year, but logistically it does make things a lot easier for us, as we will make one less move. Please join us as we thank our heavenly Daddy for the way He works.
