Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Off to School!

Sonya and I off to school on our first day of learning how to ** read. (Make that, learning how to teach people how to read.)

We began Literacy class on Monday, and it has been amazing how far our class has come in three days. We've made sample primers for in the trade language of Papua New Guinea, Pisin. This at times has been a challenge, but, again, technology has proved helpful!

Our software we used in our language learning practicum last semester has a setting which searches for certain letters when I enter them. For example, the first letters in my primer are "k", "a", "m", and "i". When I type those into the program, it produces all the words in Pisin containing those letters. This helps me when it comes time to write sentences using only four letters.

Literacy is vital to a thriving church. It is important for each believer to have the Word of God in his own heart language--that which he first spoke. We know it is important to be able to have Scripture for our own studying. BUT...what happens if we don't teach them how to read the Bible? Sadly, the result of an illiterate church plant is that it will not be able to successfully reproduce itself in future generations. As time passes, the Message will be warped by humanity if it is not written down. Without literacy as a complement to evangelism in a tribal setting, our efforts as missionaries will not be continued successfully by the tribal believers after we leave the village.

It is so exciting to see how God is putting everything together here at the MTC as I am able to see it worked out among missionaries right now! The Dao people in PNG are in literacy RIGHT NOW, learning how to read, understand, and write there own language. In a few years, they will be hearing the Gospel, and they will be able to share it with other villages and future generations, because they have the written Word and are able to read it! Praise God!!

In Him,
Carrie

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Happy Birthday!!


Happy First Birthday, Elijah!

Today I got to spend the day with Elijah and Geoff and Melissa, quite a surprise! It was so refreshing to get to see them one year after Elijah was born. He's so big now, walking and "talking". And he got to color for the first time, too:
Thanks so much for coming to visit us, have a safe trip home!

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The Idiomatic Story

Just when you think you know the English language...

The Idiomatic Story
Egbert is really beside himself, fit to be tied, hardly with it, practically off his rocker. If he doesn't get a hold of himself, he could lose his marbles or even kick the bucket.

Dig this: He'd been in the clouds hanging aroundt his wall flower but got himself in a stew when he stood her up and left her up in the air holding the bag. Besides having his bubble burst, he's in the dog house cuz she lost her cool, blew her stack and lowered the boom and told him he was a pain in the neck. Shre really let it fly and gave it to him with both barrells, no holds barred. She not only got his goat by spouting off at the mouth; it ground him to powder and he's lost heart, ready to throw in the towel.

But so what! No big deal! He's in no real pickle, just a little hot water. He should pull down the white flag and just hang in there, take it with a grain of salt, and not get all shook up over a little spilt milk. When she cools off he could even raise the roof himself, fly off the handle and tell her where to get off and set her straight. If he flew the coupe and really lived it up, put on the dog a bit and lived high on the hog, and showered her where it's at, then the light would down and she'd see she missed the boat and was up a creek without a paddle.

But no, he's all washed up, finished; he's shot, he's had it up to his ears. He reckons its water under the bridge. Athough he's not aiming to be a sitting duck for another slick chick, he's really not seen the light. He couldn't swallow the pill I gave him, just water off a duck's back. Instead of looking the bull straight in the eye, he'd rather crawl into his shell cuz he can't cut the mustard.

No skin off my back but I think that's for the birds.
Author Unknown (to me!)

Hope you enjoyed this, and if you understood it, it was worth it! Have a great day. :-)

Carrie

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Grammar=Joy...?!

Anyone that new me well in high school is laughing right now! But I've discovered how much I love grammar. This is what our homework looks like. We take a sentence and tear the Structural form apart. This means I now know really well what Direct Object, Bi-Intransitive, Passive, and Relative Pronoun all mean. All the things that were frustrating in high school seem to come easier now. Could this be answers to our prayers? Just when I got comfortable with grammar like this, we were presented with this sentence:

COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY.

Now, grammatically, this sentence is perfect, it has a noun, a verb, and a few adjectives. But what on earth does it mean?! Absolutely nothing! Now we are getting into Meaning rather than the Structure of grammar. Both are important when translating the Bible into a tribal language. Can you imagine if we had to read the following passage, because the translators didn't recognize the importance of the structure of our language?

God is the Lord Himself Know that
He who us has made it is
ourselves not
His people we are
His pasture the sheep of

We obviously rely on structure within our language! What if we forget meaning?

Apperceive that the Lord Himself is God
It is He who actualized us
and not we ourselves
We are His kinsmen
and the animals of His area.

Yea, meaning is definitely important, too! Thankfully, those who translated our English Bible took care to utilize their resources when it came to Meaning AND Structure:

Know that the Lord Himself is GOd
It is He who made us
And not we ourselves
We are His people
And the sheep of His pasture.
Psalm 100:3

Please pray for our class as grammar is the Achilles heel for many. Pray specifically that we would appreciate the struggles we have to go through--just think, in one moment at the Tower of Babel, God created over 6,000 languages with Structure and Meaning built into each one. Praise Him for His magnificence!

In Him,
Carrie