A Word on Motivation
9:40 am, Thursday. Culture and Language Aquisition Methodology Class. Our instructor was running us through our upcoming homework assignments. “Oh,” he added, “and there’s a checksheet to mark off your reading assignments when you finish them. So,” he said wryly, “if you don’t care if people hear the gospel, you can be motivated instead by marking that you did the assignment and you can feel good about yourself.”
He tends to have a dry sense of humor, so we snickered and let it go. But I thought about it later. It’s good for us, to revisit our motivation for studying here. Why do we apply ourselves to our homework? Is it so we can get good grades or feel good about ourselves? No, we apply ourselves to our homework because we believe our instructors when they tell us that these lessons are crucial to communincating Christ cross-culturally. What’s more, we apply ourselves to our homework because we believe that Christ means to communicate Himself to all people of all cultures everywhere.
God is on a mission, drawing people to Himself, and we get the way-awesome privilege of joining Him in His mission. Generations have gone before us in this task, and have learned a lot by trial and error. We have the blessing of sitting at those people’s feet – the people who have gone before us learning by trial and error. So we can glean from their experience and hopefully be better communicators than we would otherwise have been. Wow.
A Prayer Request
Pray that we will stay focused and engaged for these last four weeks of the semester. We are tired but still eager to learn.
Current Classes
Our current classes are Culture and Language Aquisition Methodology, Understanding Folk Catholocism, and Student Teaching.
Summer Plans
This summer break we hope to visit the West Coast and spend time in Wisconsin with our home church. Right now the plan is to go to Oregon first, and get there in time for Amos’s graduation May 22nd. We’ll spend a few weeks connecting with people in Long Creek, Portland, and Seattle area. June 16th-ish we’ll turn the trusty Toyota Camry back mid-westward and hopefully be in Wisconsin from June 19th through August 20th. Our next semester at MTC begins August 23rd. (note: all of these dates are subject to change if necessary).
We can’t wait to see you!
Love,
Danica for the Rich family
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