After several postponements, our first CLA (Culture/Language Acquisition) evaluation finally happened this past weekend! We are thankful that the weather was good on Friday, the flight didn’t get cancelled and our consultant was able to come into Amdu. There are so many factors that have to line up in order to see a successful flight to the village happen. We praise God for His perfect knowledge and direction in our lives and on our team.
Okay, we’ll get right to the news. We are encouraged and pleased with how our evaluations went. There are three levels on the language learning scale we use – Basic, Progressing and Capable. Within each of those three levels there are three more levels – Low, Mid and High. Our consultant Brian pegged both of us right between Basic High and Progressing Low! Up until now we have been focusing mainly on the word level – getting a broad spectrum of vocabulary, while also learning and using basic practical expressions (everyday phrases). Now we will move more into verbs and working on the sentence level.
Strictly according to the levels, what this means is that we are almost 1/3 done. BUT, it will take much longer and be a lot more work to move through the next level because of the complexity of what we will be studying. And based on what he was hearing and seeing, and compared to other languages he has worked with, our consultant shared with us that we are working in a difficult language! It will most likely take at least 2 years of full-time language study to learn the Amdu language. So, praise the Lord with us for the results of this evaluation but please keep praying too as we have a huge task still ahead of us.
When days get tough and it feels like we are not making much progress, we remind ourselves that we are not here learning this language just for kicks. There is a whole huge group of people (maybe 300+ in our village and in a few neighboring hamlets and then several thousand in the wider area of this language group) that do not understand the Gospel and are headed to an eternity separated from God. That is a big motivator! But there are still discouraging days and we are reminded in various ways that Satan does not want us in here! We need the Lord’s strength and wisdom for each step of the way.
Thank you for supporting and encouraging us as we continue on in this task of learning the Amdu language!