NTM

Maybe you’ve noticed that is has been three weeks since our last weekly update.  It’s been incredibly busy.  But then again, maybe you didn’t notice because it seems like business is a subject to which we all can relate, because everyone’s busy.  Sometimes we are busy with things that we have to do.  Sometimes we are busy with things we want to do.  But other times we are busy with things we get to do.

Our business can be attributed to the class that we are going through…Culture and Language Acquisition (or affectionately known as Dobu).  Yes, we are still in this class.  This class is one of the most pivotal in our missionary training here in Missouri, and accordingly it lasts about half of our semester.

While we are not experts at how to do this whole missionary job because we have gone through Dobu (the class ends Monday), we do feel better prepared for the task ahead.  We got some practical and technical things out of this class.

The first technical thing I’d say we have acquired is process.  On day one of arriving in a new place, you want to know all the ins and outs of your new surrounding.  Since you’ve gone to teach them about Jesus, natural you want to know the spiritual beliefs right away.  Unfortunately, on day one, you are not ready to process those kind of deep level understandings.  Jumping in too deep, before learning how to swim, normally leads to “drowning” in the culture.  We have practiced a process to take us from the beginning stages of culture learning to the deeper ones.

Another technical thing we learned during this class was how to use our computers in a way that is acutally a help to us for learning language and culture (can I get an amen?).  New Tribes Mission has created software to help us file anything we encounter overseas in a way that we can retrieve information as we need it.  Think of it as a digital file cabinet, only there is no paper and the drawers don’t get stuck when you’re trying to look for something.  The program that was use in language and culture study is really unique, and computer unsavy people like me needed all the help we could get.

A practical thing that we learned is how we react under culture pressured situations.  Now that our sessions with our culture and language helper are over, we are taking a big step back and looking at what we said and what we did while we were taking this class.  This will be helpful to see what we are doing right, and be encouraged, and also what things we are doing wrong but may be blind to.

The information learned in this class was priceless.  It was a lot of work, and coupled with our other responsibilities (church, campus work detail, outreach) made for a busy month, but well worth.  Thank you for taking the time to read, and remember us in your prayers.

Till All Are Reached

Jon and Jen Quast

Right now at the Missionary Training Center, the third semester class of which we are a part are engrossed 100% in our course called the Culture and Language Acquisition Practicum.  We however effectionately call this class “Dobu” for reasons that I will explain as we get going in this post.

One thing that a tribal missionary must do before he can ever hope to teach is to learn.  He must learn the culture and the language of the people he has been sent to live among.  (For us this will be a tribal group in Paraguay)  Our missionary “toolboxes” have been filled with many helpful tools to do this.  For learning language we have taken courses such as Phonetics and Grammar so we can learn how to make different sounds that we are unfamiliar with, and also arrange words in grammatical ways we may not be used to.  For culture we have practiced techniques and also researched kinds of cultures so we can think outside of our American culture and hopefully correctly assess the tribal culture.  We have already taken these course, but one more course remains in our Culture and Language themed courses…the practicum.

This is the class where we try to pull everything together that we have learned at the training center thusfar.  How we are doing it is one of the highlights of New Tribes Mission training.  Our professors, about 10 in all, have been dressing in complete tribal “disguises” and acting out the Dobo tribal culture to us.  They speak some English which, in this drama, is the trade language, but they mostly speak their tribal language.  We right now are engaged in sessions where we are trying to learn their language and culture using the tools we have.  Jen and I are in a small group of 6 people who meet regularly with a man named Kinosi.  Kinonsi is our language helper we have hired.  On top of these individual sessions we get to watch all the professors act out a Dobu tribal scene, so we can gain insight into the culture.

It is so encouraging to be using what we have learned.  And alot of fun too!  We have learned alot of language, and the culture still holds alot of mystery to us.  I can’t say we haven’t made any mistakes, because we have.  In our first session with Kinosi, I introduced myself and my wife Jen.  We proceeded to ask Kinosi about himself and he told us what family he was from.   Apparently for the Dobu, it is a point of pride to which family you belong to.  When asked what family I belong to I said “Quast”.  He then asked Jen what family she was from.  He became quite uncomfortable when she replied “Quast” as well because to him he thought we were from the same family before getting married!  Woops!  Oh well, you live and learn.

While you will always make mistakes when learning language and culture, our ability to function in a tribal location has been greatly enhanced because of the training we are taking a part of.  We have a workable plan starting from day one in the tribal village, and going all the way to the day we leave.  We know what to do, and how to do it.  Now we need pray to the Lord for the strength to do it, and to the Holy Spirit to make what we do count by Him working.

Remember us as we will continue to take this practicum for roughly the next month.

Ivanga man from Papua New Guinea

Dream with me for a moment.   As you know, my wife and I are currently in our final year of church planting training with New Tribes Mission.  But dream with me 15 years from now.   We will have left our official training long behind.  We will have studied Spanish, moved to Paraguay, and into a tribal location.  After several years of studying the tribal language and culture we will have taught this unreached people group starting in Genesis and teaching clear through to our Savior Jesus Christ.  Lord-willing we will have believers in this good news which will constitute the fledgling church.  While we are discipling these believers and training leadership we will concurrently be translating God’s Word into their language.  After all this hard hard work, (which will probably be more like 25 years) with great smiles and indescribabale emotion we will present them with their very own copy of the Bible, for the first time in the history of the world, in their language.

But what if they can’t read or write?  This is consistently is the case of people groups that we work with as New Tribes Mission.  It is rare that we work among literate people.  In fact, it is more common for us to work among people that have never held a piece of paper or pencil in their hands!  While our unapologetic goal is always to see a mature church planted among the unreached people groups of the world, we cannot deny the need to occassionally do things that on the surface don’t seem super spiritual.  Literacy is one of those things.

I have become convinced of the need for people to become literate.  Having access to the scriptures is of the utmost importance if the child of God is to grow in Him.  There are many examples in church history of the general populace being in spiritual darkness because they did not have access to the Word of God.  They were dependant on church leaders to tell them what was true and what was false, rather than read what God said for themselves.  Unfortunately these church leaders weren’t always accurate in what they shared from God’s word.  Simply put:  people need personal access to communication with God, and God communicates greatly through His Word.

It’s one thing to be convinced of the need for people to be literate to have access to Bible, but its another thing to actually see them become literate.  Picture yourself standing in front of a group of about 30 people, in the rainforest somewhere, with bugs biting, trying to decide what to write on the blackboard.  These people have never heard of reading and writing.  What are you going to teach lesson one?  You look back at the crowd of people staring at you.  A dog chases a cat through the middle of the classroom.  This is not going well…

I wouldn’t have had a clue where to begin unless I had experienced the week that I just experienced here at the Missionary Training Center.  Our class for literacy has been showing us where to start with teaching, how to develop literacy materials, and all the other things that go along with that.  I have to admit its been quite a challanging class for me, but fortunately thats why God gives us a helpmeet, for Jen excels exceptionally well at this subject.

Praise God for the education system that we have in our country where a large number of our people are literate.  And praise God for a faithful translation of the Bible in english.  We are so blessed with access to these precious scriptures.  Let’s turn a dream of an unreached people group reading God’s Word into reality as we expand the reach of the gospel (and literacy!).

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