Christmas Parties Abound!

As we're coming to the end of the semester (only one week left!), it's also the time of Christmas parties. It's been great to get together with friends that I haven't seen since we've been studying our separate languages for the past 6 weeks. All I have left in my Spanish course here at the MTC is two tests on Tuesday. Please be in prayer as I have one in the morning (written) and one in the afternoon (verbal). Here's a picture from our dorm party and another of some of my girls from the youth group:

Please be in prayer as we're finishing up the semester and traveling out to our homes and families. Thanks so much for your prayers and support! God bless, and Merry Christmas!

SNOW!!

We're in the worst snow storm in 11 years! Yesterday we had 2 inches of ice covering our cars--most people couldn't even get into them. (You're probably thinking this is a good thing, and you're right!) Last night after about an hour of sledding, we hunkered down in our house to hide for the evening. And we woke up to this--over a foot of snow! Looking forward to more sledding on it!

Love, Carrie

Thanksgiving Break

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This year I got a special treat for Thanksgiving--my friend Melissa and her family came to visit us in Missouri! They drove over 24 hours to get here from Florida, and spent most of their week here entertaining us! What a treat to have them back with us for a short while. Thanks for visiting, and see you at Christmas!



I also got to go home and visit with my church family and friends. Thank you for all your prayers while I was travelling and ill. They meant so much, and I am officially back safely. It was great to see you all again!

Please pray for me these next three weeks before the end of the semester that I would finish well and persevere. I'm excited to be heading to North Carolina after classes end, but I need to be here mentally and physically until then! :-)

Love,
Carrie

Youth Retreat 2006

We had a great time this weekend at retreat with the youth. Justin Franchino (in yellow) spoke on evangelism and methods for understanding what a person is thinking before giving them the gospel. This enables the person doing the evangelism to know what the listener is thinking when they hear words like "God", "grace", and "sin".



The youth worked hard to raise money to go on this trip. Here they are at the end of a carwash. It couldn't have been over 50 degrees this day, so two hours of being water-soaked was enough! All the students that wanted to go were able to go. Praise God for the finances that came in for this trip.

In February, these youth will have the opportunity to go to Dare 2 Share in St. Louis. Please be praying for them to receive the finances to go on this trip also.

Thank you for your prayers for this past weekend. This weekend I will be travelling to Louisiana for Thanksgiving Break and to visit my home church. I look forward to seeing you all--maybe even tomorrow night!

Love Carrie

espɑnol

Our first week of Spanish is nearly finished. I've learned so much this week, and it's exciting to see how much I can retain. We aren't allowed to speak most of what we learn for 2 more weeks, so right now I'm only comprehending Spanish. This seems to be a good way to learn a language, as I can now understand 108 nouns and 26 verbs--I'm shocked! This is Alexa, the Spanish guru!


I'm praising God this week for a software program created specifically for this method of language learning. Praise Him with me for the program and a great computer to run it on! Thank you for your prayers and support.

Love, Carrie

And so it begins...

This week was busy for our class. We had a few long days of classes (we usually go from 9-12, 1-2) and we were in the process of preparing for our first language session on Friday.
...
What's a language session?
...
Good point!

First of all, the "why". For the next six weeks, I will be in "Live Language Practicum" learning Spanish. This is a time for me to learn the process of learning a language. I also am already being encouraged by how much can be learned with the process of learning I am being taught.

Second, the "who". I'm paired up with my classmate Elisabeth Poarch. You may recognize her name from teaching CEF last year. It's nice to be with someone I have worked with in the past. Together we go to Alexa's house each day. Alexa is an MK (Missionary Kid) from Mexico. She moved there when she was 6, so Spanish comes easily to her as a second language.

Thirdly, the "how". Each day we spend two hours with Alexa. Friday we worked on nouns. One of the ways we learned to acquire the language is by pointing--in fact, that is all we are allowed to do for 3 weeks! We took 12 items with us and laid them out on the table. We would learn them one at a time, then have her quiz us. Believe it or not, we were comprehending by the end of our session 30 nouns and a handful of daily expressions.

Our days have been incredibly switched around, as we are in a new phase for these six weeks. A day for me starts early, and by 8:00 I am at chapel. At 9, Elisabeth and I spend one hour planning for the next day's session. I review from 10-12. After lunch, I prepare for going to the language sessions from 1:30-3:30. When I get back, it takes about an hour to put our information we learned and recorded into the software created just for this purpose. After that I'm "free" to go to meetings, youth group, or to spend time with friends.

Please pray for me during these six weeks that I would spend my time wisely and grow in the Lord. Pray also for our interactions with Alexa as we are coming into her life during a busy time for her.

Thank you so much for your prayers!

Love,
Carrie

PS--A picture from the Fall Festival with the youth group on campus...

Ha Ha Tonka

Here are some pictures from a nearby state park. We got there right at sunset last night! The ruins are of a castle from the early 1900s...enjoy!

Field Fair

WELCOME TO THE FIELD FAIR!
This morning began our two day field fair. For the first time, the Missionary Training Center (MTC) is hosting an opportunity for fields to send their representatives back to the United States to recruit trainees for their fields. They have been such an encouragement as they tell us where we are needed on the field. The only problem is that one person can't go everywhere! Here are a few pictures from the countries we heard from this morning:

BRAZIL




PARAGUAY





INDONESIA




GREENLAND





Please be in prayer with us here at the MTC as we consider where God would have us serve Him around the world. If you'd like more information about these countries, you can go to www.ntm.org.

Love,
Carrie

Done any sewing lately?

Last year, we were encouraged to learn how to sew if we did not already know. You may be wondering why? Imagine that you have a dirt bike on the field, or furniture in the tribe. What happens when, say, your dirt bike seat has a tear in it? Are you going to run to the store to buy a new Yamaha seat? That store could be days away. Next best solution: fix it yourself!

So this summer, I undertook the sewing. Or, rather, it undertook me. With the assistance of Ellen (Thanks!) I made two skirts and four pillows. And it WORKED! Since my sewing confidence had grown (believe me, I'd tried to sew in the past, only to fail) when I got here to Missouri I decided to sew a pillow for my mom:


Since I've mastered the art of pillows, they said I could move on to people. Or at least chicken leg--we had a suturing lab today! Our teacher demonstrated the steps for us, then led us through the steps. Here's a few pictures from today's lab:






We learned how to do two different stitches on our poor little chickie. A "deep stitch" is to be used when the muscle is cut, and a "skin stitch" is for surface lacerations. It was very informative, and I'm glad I had the experience!

Thanks for praying
Carrie

What did you do on Thursday?

Consider your Thursday...you may have gotten up to breakfast, gone to work or school, come home to dinner, watch a little TV, and go back to bed. My day started off similarly, too. Breakfast, class, lunch...then, wait...INJECTION LAB?



This week we have begun Health and Wellness class. During this class we've been learning basic nutritional values, "Vector Control" (keeping away the raccoons, bats, and mosquitoes which carry diseases), various diseases around the world, and immunizations. This has been a very educational course so far. Especially our lab yesterday when we were taught how to administer an injection. If there is time over the next week, we'll also be taught how to suture a wound. Don't fear--we won't be creating the wound on another human...just a piece of chicken! :-)

Here are more pictures from yesterday:





My victim is my roommate and classmate, Sonya. I think I had previously told you about her hip surgery early in August. She is still recovering, but has had a rough week this week. Please pray that she will continue to be encouraged in the Lord and to see Him as her strength. It's hard for us to see her in pain!

Thank you for your prayers.

How do you get your energy?

When you walked into the room this morning, did you turn on the light switch? Is your computer plugged into the wall right now? Did you wonder if the light would come on, or if your computer would come on? Where does your electricity come from?
More likely than not, it comes from SWEPCO (in Shreveport) or your local electric company. It travels through miles of wires, transformers, and substations before making it to your neighborhood. We assume it will always work, and we are shocked when it fails us.

When I am in the jungle overseas, it is unlikely that I will have electricity running to my house from the closest "city." [Side note, this "city" will probably not have a ground to their electricity, it will be sporadic in its availablity, and it will be too far away from my house to run wires from town.] So how will I get electricity?

For years, missionaries drove or flew in gasoline, kerosene, or other fuels to run their generators and refridgerators. As you know, this would be very heavy to fly in a small Cessna airplane and would need to be flown in regularly. It takes time to maintain a generator, and when something goes wrong, it could take days to work on the generator. Missionaries started wondering, is there a better way?

God has blessed New Tribes Mission with Tim See. We just finished a class called Tech Tips with Tim as our teacher. During this class we learned about solar energy and storing the energy in batteries to run lights, computers, and even fans. The average hours around the world in which there is direct sunlight on one location is 4 hours. This varies of course from Greenland (months without the sun) to equatorial countries with 6 hours of direct sunlight. God has enable us to harness this energy He has created and use it for electricity. Wednesday night the Sees had an open house and allowed us to come see a functioning solar system. This is their house:

As you can see, the house isn't plumb. This isn't typical, eh? :-) On the south side of his house (the left) he has a solar water heater built into the roof. This heats the house in the winter, and provides hot water year round. Over to the left are solar panels which provide most of the electrity to the Sees' home. On the right side of the house, are batteries to store the energy. Tim See has been blessed with the desire and ability to test different products to find out what works best, so that we can get the most for our money when we go to the field.

This picture is only of our little cove of the 50 mile Lake of the Ozarks. We've been blessed with beautiful land here to have our training.

Praise God with me for solar energy, and the ability to capture it to run our electricity on the field. As we've finished Tech Tips and will finish Phonetics this week, we are beginning two new classes--Missionary Kid Education (MK ED) and Health and Wellness. During MK ED we will learn about the different options and importance of those options for the education of missionaries' children. During Health and Wellness, a nurse will come in to teach us about stay healthy in a developing country and how to give a shot and stitches. I'm looking forward to it! :-)

Love,
Carrie

We've had visitors!!!

This week has been phonetic-ful. There are a few sounds that I'm not familiar with that are harder to form.
But what you'll be really excited to hear about are our visitors this past week. Thursday night we were sitting in our living room and kept hearing something hit the picture window. Each time we would get up and go outside, we couldn't see anything. I finally went out with the light off, and who did I find?
This huge thing was quite stunned and laid outside until the next day when our 2 year old neighbor boy found it in his bucket. I'm not sure which was more scared, but it brought quite a crowd!
Friday I went to WalMart with Noah, my 18 month old jungle camp neighbor. He was very amused in the fish aisle (more so with the lobsters in the sea food, but he's not old enough to understand that's food!) While we were there we bought a red beta fish. This is Mr. Wilson:

Saturday evening Sammy came over to visit with his mom. They made smoothies, and he got to watch The Polar Express. This is a picture of my roommate Sonya and Sammy eating their smoothies.

Please continue to pray for my classes in phonetics. My afternoon work detail this week is painting the trim in the lobby of the main office building. Yesterday we spackled, so today we're going to try to paint it all so it doesn't look like Dalmatian spots!

Love, Carrie

Why Phonetics?

I was asked many questions about this year of training, and I told many of you that I would study phonetics. I made attempts to explain this, but since I wasn't sure myself, how could I explain it to you?!
Well, a Biblical example of phonetics can be seen in Judges 12:6. Here the Gileadites would test the neighboring Ephramites to see if they were from Gilead or Ephraim. When the Ephraimites failed the test of "Shibboleth vs. Sibboleth", they were thrown into the Jordan River to drown. Just as one sound difference meant life or death for an Ephraimite, so will the importance be of learning the national and tribal languages of the country in which I will serve. My purpose for learning these two languages (seeing nationals and/or tribal people to come to a saving knowledge of Christ)is a matter of life and death.
Phonetics will assist me in learning to write an unwritten language. It will also assist me if I learn a written language. Once I learn the sounds and symbols on this chart, I will be able to reproduce them as needed.
As I study through this chart over the next few weeks, I will become familiar with sounds not found in the English language. I will also learn how to become more native in a language as I force my mouth to make these new strange sounds.
Amazingly enough, our curriculum takes us through that which we know first--sounds which are found in the English language. We have begun with the most simple sounds 'th','s', 'z', 'sh', and 'zh'. God saw fit for me to have take three years of speech therapy with these sounds as an elementary student. While these are actually some of my harder sounds to produce, God knew what was ahead of me and trained me ahead of time! Please pray for my patience during this class that I would heed the intructions of our teachers and absorb all that I can!

[This picture is NOT a copy of the Lake of the Ozarks, but of the "speech apparatus" or the areas of your throat, nose, and mouth that are used when making sounds.]

I thank you ahead of time for your prayers as I go through this class. Also this morning we took our Linguistics test to see if we qualify for the third semester of extensive linguistics training.

Praise: My friend Kimmie is home from the hospital from a staph infection. She is on bedrest for ten days, but she is not able to hold her new baby Esther for very long.

Love,
Carrie

My New Apartment

Welcome to my new apartment!
Don't worry, the open door is our apartment in the four-plex. Five girls live here, Carrie (that's me!), Sonya, Ginger, Amy, and Rachel. We're getting along well, and just finished our first meal together in our wonderful kitchen.

(Don't look now, but we actually have a DISHWASHER! What a blessing that is!)
We've spent quite a bit of time already in our living room that is attached to our kitchen.

Upstairs we have two bedrooms and a full bathroom for the five of us. My little corner of the room is mostly finished, except for a few piles of items searching for a home.


I hope you've enjoyed the tour of my new house.
Classes began today, and it proves to be an exciting year. We have around 35 students in our class and four main teachers for Culture/Language Acquisition training. When we practice training our tongues new tricks, we will be split up into groups with our teacher. I am in Verne Johnson's group along with 8 other classmates. Please pray for us as we begin this stage in the process.
Thanks!
Love,
Carrie

Summer is Over...

I'm "home" in Roach, MO at New Tribes Missionary Training Center. I'll put up pictures of my new apartment and roommates soon (we have to unpack first!) Here's a few pictures from this summer, since I couldn't put them up before. Enjoy!

Camp Bethany's pond in the morning

The tree house in my VBS room.

VBS Tribal Council Family Night

Always teaching! :-)

Thanks for praying as I get situated here at the MTC.

Soon and Very Soon

I've come to the end of my summer partnership with Shreve City. I'm nearly finished with the last project I'm responsible for this summer. This weekend I'm singing at Montclair Nursing Home, and twice during Sunday morning service. Tuesday I'll begin packing all my things up and filling up the car. Wednesday night will be my last service here in Louisiana. I'll be leaving early Friday morning for the 8 hour drive through Arkansas to Missouri. It's a beautiful drive, partially on local roads and part on the highway.

I'll have three roommates at the Missionary Training Center. Ginger and Sonya were in my class in Jersey Shore, and Amy is in her third semester of linguistics training. I'm looking forward to seeing all my classmates again, and even some of our teachers who followed us!

Love,
Carrie

Camp Fuego

Youth camp was great. I was a little nervous about going as a counselor for the first time, especially with students who were in the youth group with me only four years ago. But God provided and was sufficient for me. The sixteen of us (four counselors and 12 kids) had a great week. The pastor took us through the Bible in four sessions, establishing God as Creator, teaching the kids the Old Testament in the summation of people running away from God and a broken-hearted God chasing after them, an evangelistic message, and the last night shared from Revelation 20 and 21 about the Great White Throne Judgment and the new heaven and new earth. He did a wonderful job, and all of our youth were challenged. Five decided to stop running from God, and they have made committments to hold each other accountable. Thank you so much for praying with me for the youth of Shreve City Baptist Church. Now the true challenge begins as they come back to their normal lifestyles and school begins in only two and a half weeks! Pray that they will continue to walk with the Lord after this awesome week of dwelling with Him.

Love, Carrie

Mid-summer in Louisiana

It's been a while since I've updated this, so here goes!...

June was a great month. I've been spending my weekdays at the church working. I've been able to fit into many different areas, such as speaking in meetings, deep cleaning areas of the church, and even a little gardening! I have begun working on a template for a booklet for the church that my pastor asked me to do.

This next week (July 17-21) I will be at Camp Bethany with our youth group. It's going to be a great time to get to know our youth, and hopefully to share with them my heart for missions.

The week after camp (July 24-28) is VBS. I'm so excited about VBS, and I am just about ready to teach about the Flood.

After VBS I'll be around Shreveport for another week and a half before heading to Missouri on August 11. Thankfully it's only a one day drive this time, so I'll be "home" only 8 hours after leaving Shreveport.

Thanks for your prayers this summer!

Love,
Carrie

Back in the South

Hi everyone!

I made it back to Louisiana uneventfully. Mom was able to travel with me from North Carolina over to Louisiana, so the trip went quicker with two drivers. She flew back Thursday morning. I have begun my summer partnership with the church. I'm looking forward to the summer here. Tonight (Friday) I will be sharing a few minutes during the Missions Jamboree about my year at NTMI. Next Tuesday I have a 30 minute meeting with the PrimeTimers (the retired people from our church) during their monthly luncheon. I am planning on sharing about the process of tribal church planting. I am looking forward to this opportunity to educate the members from my home church about what my future looks like within New Tribes Mission. I would appreciate your prayers as I prepare and share with the church. This is my first meeting to share this information, and I could have more opportunities this summer to share with other churches about my future ministry.

Love,
Carrie

Graduation

Tonight was our graduation from New Tribes Missions Institute. Our class graduated with 32 future missionaries. We are now spreading out across the nation to serve with our home churches this summer. How exciting to get to go back to where many of us were raised and shaped into the people we are today! Here is a picture of our entire class:

"Home" from Jungle Camp

Jungle camp was a great two weeks. It was very rainy and cold for us for the first week, and the second dried up and got warm. Here are a few pictures from Jungle Camp.

This is my bedroom at jungle camp. I spent most of my nights in the hammock rather than the bed. :-)

We made "skillet pizza" in a cast iron over the campfire. We burnt the outside 1/4" of crust...and the inside was like soup! But we loved it, and the experience was worth it. :-)

We had three days of 8 hour study days...as you can see, it drove me to the rafters of the house!

I got to kill a chicken and skin it one day. I made her into sweet and sour chicken! Cooking can even be fun at jungle camp.

After two weeks of many campfires, "mallows" were still a treat!

Thanks so much for your prayers during my two weeks there! Now on to packing to drive to Louisiana!

Love,
Carrie