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<\/a>Dear praying friends,<\/p>\nWe hope you\u2019ll be encouraged reading about God\u2019s working in two tribal groups and a little personal update.<\/p>\n
Unconditional love<\/strong><\/p>\n The verbs for the Hdi language in Cameroon consistently end in one of three vowels. Almost every verb ends in i, a, and u. But the word for love was only found with i and a. Why no u? \u00a0The missionary asked the Hdi translation team which included the most influential leaders in the community \u201cCould you \u2018dvi\u2019 your wife?\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cYes,\u201d they said. \u201cThat would mean that the wife had been loved but the love was gone.\u201d \u00a0\u201cCould you \u2018dva\u2019 your wife?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d they said. \u201cThat kind of love depended on the wife\u2019s actions. She would be loved as long as she remained faithful and cared for her husband well.\u201d \u00a0\u201cCould you \u2018dvu\u2019 your wife?\u201d\u00a0 Everyone laughed. \u201cOf course not!\u00a0 If you said that, you would have to keep loving your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got you water, never made you meals. Even if she committed adultery, you would be compelled to just keep on loving her. No, we would never say \u2018dvu.\u2019 It just\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0exist.\u201dThe missionary sat quietly for a while, thinking about John 3:16, and then he asked, \u201cCould God \u2018dvu\u2019 people?\u201d There was complete silence for three or four minutes; then tears started to trickle down the weathered faces of these elderly men. Finally they responded. \u201cDo you know what this would mean?\u00a0 This would mean that God kept loving us over and over, millennia after millennia, while all that time we rejected His great love. He is compelled to love us, even though we have sinned more than any people.\u201d \u00a0One simple vowel and the meaning was changed from \u201cI love you based on what you do and who you are,\u201d to \u201cI love you, based on who I am. I love you because of me and not because of you.\u201d<\/p>\n God had encoded the story of His unconditional love right into their language. For centuries, the little word was there\u2014unused but available, grammatically correct and quite understandable.<\/p>\n Adapted from a letter titled One Little Vowel, published to staff of Wycliffe USA on 30 July 2012<\/em><\/p>\n This is why we minister here at\u00a0 the MTC.\u00a0 This is why we teach grammar to the missionary candidates.\u00a0 So that:<\/p>\n All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the\u00a0LORD, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship<\/p>\n before thee. \u00a0Psalm 22:27<\/p>\n About us<\/strong><\/p>\n Lukas<\/strong> is back in public school after being homeschooled during our travels.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was difficult to let him go again. Niklas<\/strong> spends his days at home working on many building projects and playing with Anna<\/strong>. She is becoming a very active 9 month old.\u00a0 She is crawling and cruising and loves to laugh.\u00a0 Our desire is to teach our kids godly ways and attitudes and to help them learn to walk closely with him.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a busy semester even though Dennis<\/strong> doesn\u2019t have his usual class.\u00a0 He will be teaching a basic grammar course soon and is working on many aspects of the linguistics course.\u00a0 Monika<\/strong> doesn\u2019t get bored with 3 kids and also helps out a little here at the Missionary Training Center, specifically in the Linguistics department.<\/p>\n Please don’t stop praying for us. Pray for us to grow in our awe of the Lord and in our walk with him. Please pray that we would follow the leading of the Holy Spirit so we can be fruitful for him in any way he desires. This is what we are praying for you as well.<\/p>\n The Biem people<\/strong><\/p>\n “I am so free!\u00a0 I used to think all the good things I do would get me to heaven.\u00a0 But every night when I go to sleep, I knew I had not the slightest clue where I’d go if I die.\u00a0 So I’d get up the next morning, trying to do more ‘works’ so I can go to heaven.\u00a0 Now I know that Jesus paid for my sin debt and He said \u2018It is ‘finished\u2019.\u00a0 I am so free.”<\/p>\n This is a testimony from one of the new believers. The missionaries in the Biem tribe in Papua New Guinea, who were students here not that long ago, just finished the chronological Bible teaching and many got saved.<\/p>\n Because of his unconditional love for us,<\/p>\n Have a joyful day,<\/p>\n Dennis & Monika with Lukas, Niklas and Anna<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear praying friends, We hope you\u2019ll be encouraged reading about God\u2019s working in two tribal groups and a little personal update. Unconditional love The verbs for the Hdi language in Cameroon consistently end in one of three vowels. Almost every verb ends in i, a, and u. But the word for love was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-family","7":"category-ministry","8":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dennis-farthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dennis-farthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dennis-farthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dennis-farthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dennis-farthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dennis-farthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dennis-farthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dennis-farthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dennis-farthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n