Say What?

Amid the most random weather patterns ever, tornado warnings and snow within a week, that title encapsulates a lot of our recent time here at the Missionary Training Center here in Missouri.  The pictures below are of some of the classes we've taken recently.  The picture of the chart is the International Phonetic Alphabet.  Basically we took a class learning these different symbols that make certain sounds.  Some sounds we have in English but the purpose of this alphabet is so that when we enter a tribal group with an unwritten language we can write down the sounds we hear and learn their language.  We sounded like idiots most of the time but it was fun to actually practice skills that Lord willing we may one day use to learn an unreached people's language!

 Another class we took was Foundation Bible Teaching.  The way New Tribes Mission teaches the Bible to unreached people is chronologically, pouring foundations into people's lives about who God is and who they are so that the Cross of Christ makes sense in relation to their sin and their need for a Savior.  In this class we got to teach, along with two other classmates, a lesson from New Tribes' curriculum to our classmates and listened to others present lessons as well.  We got to teach on the children and the rich young ruler as well as the rich fool who ate, drank and was merry but was going to die that night.  The pictures below are of that, Felicia did great!!!  Again it was a blast to have to prepare lessons with other people and to teach a lesson that we may one day be able to teach those who have never heard of Jesus.  We were hearing from a speaker recently that since the Apostle John stopped his writing of Revelation there have been whole Bibles translated into 554 languages and 1,300 languages have the New Testament.  Sadly there are roughly 7,000 languages in the world leaving more than 5,000 languages without the Word of God in their language.  Please pray for us as we continue to be trained to maybe reduce that number by 1 if the Lord allows.  Please pray for Josh's health and our contentment no matter life's circumstances or where we may end up, that we would just desire to be used by God to give people what we take for granted everyday.