We have a Spanish evaluation coming up sometime in the next few weeks. We are hoping to test at a higher level than last time, but we know we are nowhere near being done. We’re studying, studying, studying, and we sure appreciate your prayers!
Many of you have asked us how much longer we will be studying Spanish before we go to the tribe. The short answer is "We don’t know for sure."
The better answer will take a couple of paragraphs to explain, but it’s important …so here we go. New Tribes Mission of Mexico requires their tribal missionaries to learn Spanish to a very high level. In the past, missionaries were allowed to move on to the tribal language after simply completing a basic book course in Spanish. For many good reasons, the standard has risen higher and higher over the years, and even within the past year the standard we have to reach in national language (Spanish) and culture learning has risen dramatically. By the time we graduate the Spanish program, we will be able to function at a high level in the language, even being able to clearly communicate Biblical truth in Spanish in a culturally appropriate manner. That is just not accomplished by what I call the "microwave version" (taking a quick course and filling out a few notebooks so that we can hurt people’s ears by butchering their language).
Kevin Gutwein, chairman of the field committee here in Mexico, told us that in all his years of consultant work among very difficult languages, he has never once been wrong in saying that an average language learner can learn any language in 4,000 hours of study, so long as those hours are spent the way that we have been trained to spend them. Thankfully, Spanish is much easier than many tribal languages, and we don’t have to reach quite as high of a level in Spanish as we will have to in the tribe, so we are hoping to accomplish our goals with fewer than 3,500 hours. Nevertheless, we use the 4,000 hour guideline as a rough picture of where we are at.
Aaron’s goal is to complete 50 hours of culture and language study each week (that’s rough, since we’ve heard that 4 hours of language and culture study while living in a foreign country takes the same toll on a person as 10 hours of manual labor). In a perfect world, putting in 50 hours a week would allow him to complete 4,000 hours in 80 intense weeks. We began our actual language study at the end of August after we got all moved in, etc. So that means that the perfect world version would have him finish 4,000 hours in March of 2009. Unfortunately, as you all know, we do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes trucks get stolen, people get sick, kids have extra-needy weeks, people need breaks, government papers have to be processed, friends need help putting their house back together after a robbery, things break, culture shock comes and goes, and bad things happen to good people. Good things happen, too, like holidays. And I am one of those picky wives who won’t let my husband work on Christmas.
So since we do not live in a perfect world, we have a VERY TENTATIVE goal of finishing by the end of the summer of 2009 (two years from our arrival to the field). This seems to line up with the timeline that we have seen in our fellow Spanish students who have now graduated. After graduating, we will work to get permission to live in a tribal village, where we get to start all over again! Yes, we have signed up for a long haul. We are SOOO glad you signed up, too, when you committed to praying for us for the long haul! Thank you for your prayer and support. We need you!
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