Doors Closing, God's Leading

We wrote a post on November 10th asking for prayer in regards to the Linguistics test we were to take the following morning. We want to thank you all for your prayers and provide you an update on how it went.

We took the two-part test in class and received our scores a few days later. They are similar to golf score in that the lower they are the better as the numbers reflect how many answers were incorrect. If one were to score in the range of 1-15, then they highly recommend you take the Linguistics course. Any higher, then they would recommend you do not. You are still welcomed to take the course but they will not slow down the class and the instructor said that there have been tears!

Since they have changed the program here at the Missionary Training Center from three semester to four, they have also modified the Linguistics program. Basically, those who are taking Ling will be pulled out of some of our normal classes toward the end of this semester in order to get started on their linguistic training. They would make up these classes later but this way they aren't in training for forever before they hit the field somewhere overseas. When our class graduates in May of 2016, their classes will continue into the beginning of the summer and then start up again in July in order that they may finish by December of 2016.

During the aptitude test, I worked my way through all the questions and earned a whopping -27. Cameron was unable to finish the test but, of those he did answer, he only missed five. This past month they have offered a Friday afternoon Grammar course that is mandatory if you desire to take Ling. Because we weren't sure, we signed up. After three weeks the Lord made it clear to us that this was not a strength of ours and I would certainly be in the "tear story" if I took the full course. It is because of Cameron's heart for Bible translation that he desired to take Linguistics. However, while it can be a tool, linguistics is not integral in order to translate. Linguistics is primarily concerned with how to learn a language and break it down to where you understand the sentence structure and such as well as creating an alphabet. Also, since you have to be fluent in the language in order to translate and because New Tribes teaches as well as translates, we feel that any possible misunderstandings or unclear translation on our part will be caught quickly as we will be doing regular translation checks with the people to check for clarity.

Therefore, since it's more concerned with how to learn a language and is not absolutely necessary for Bible translation, we both decided to drop the grammar course and thus close the door to Linguistics. We felt that this was for the best as we were both struggling and did not have a strong aptitude. In contrast to the picture at the beginning of this post, we do not see this as a failure but merely as a change in direction. The Lord made it clear to us through various individuals, classes and furthering our understanding of what linguistics is that this was not a direction He was leading us toward. We realize that we cannot do everything and must rely on the Lord and His provision through teammates! So we are now praying that the teammates the Lord has for us will have an aptitude for and will have taken Ling so we can partner with them to take the Gospel to a tribe in Papua New Guinea. Just because we are not taking Ling does not mean that we will fail at learning a language as the two are completely unrelated - what a relief!

We apologize for not updating you all sooner but thank you so much for your prayers!

United in Christ,

Caitlin and Cameron

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