Summer Plans, Prayers and Goals

Coming soon to a U.S. State near you....Cameron and Caitlin and their trek to Florida!

Don't let the picture deceive you. We will be driving down there beginning in the wee hours of tomorrow morning and arriving Sunday evening. Please pray for safe travels! We'll be spending the summer with Caitlin's parents and her brother in Winter Park, Florida which is located in Central Florida about forty-five minutes away from Disney World.

Caitlin's previous job at a doctor's office with full-time hours has graciously offered her position back to her and I am pursuing two part-time jobs in the area. Please be praying that these two jobs will work out for me and, if not, that the Lord would provide a different job.

We realize that this could very well be our last opportunity we have to both work. With the Linguistics course only allowing a month off during the summer next year, and the Greek course being offered during that month, and then our completion of the training that December (2016), it's looking like this summer may be our last for working! Up to this point, we've been largely relying on our savings and wedding gifts but now, with this realization, we need to seriously begin raising our partnership team in order to complete our training.

Ministry Partnership Development (Or MPD)

Therefore, we are also going to be spending our summer working on our Ministry Partnership Development. We've ended these last two weeks of classes with a focus on MPD. We read the God Ask  and had previously read Funding Your Ministry and we found both of these books to complement each other well. In class, we've talked about how important it is to raise a partnership team of prayer warriors, financial supporters and advocates. We've been given recommendations so as to minimize anything that would hinder people from hearing our heart's vision for our ministry. They've also given us tools as to how to become effective communicators of what God has called us to. While this aspect of ministry may be the most intimidating for us, it's also the most rewarding as God builds a team that we know is standing behind us and that we're not in this alone. It's not all about money but, rather, it's all about relationships. By extending to people the opportunity to partner with us, we are giving them the opportunity to join in the Great Commission as the Body of Christ functions together in reaching the world for Christ! Caitlin and I have often said that we hope God uses our time of raising support to perhaps draw others to become overseas missionaries themselves!

Updated Support Levels 

While our "official" partnership development isn't until after graduation when we prepare to go overseas, we have need to begin now as stated above. In December we wrote a post about our financial support. In that posting we included our desire to raise $1,700 monthly to cover tuition, living expenses, and savings.

We apologize for never sending out a follow-up to that posting and we wish to do so now. At the time of our previous blog in December we were at 29% of our budget.

 

We are now at 33% for which we are so thankful for! 

Thank you to everyone who has joined our team financially and as prayer warriors! Thank you for your many hours of work to give and to pray in order that we as the Body of Christ may one day see an unreached tribe come to know our Lord Jesus!

 

It is our hope to be spending our summer meeting with people face-to-face. We have made it a goal to have four 30minute appointments a week so we are aiming to keep Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays clear in order that it may be achievable. Through these appointments, we desire to share our vision for our ministry and seek to build our partnership team consisting of: prayer warriors, advocates who can speak on our behalf and put us in contact with those who would be interested in hearing our vision, and financial supporters. Please be praying for us as we endeavor to see this goal achieved and reach 100% support by August! It's intimidating but possible with God and His Body! We promise to give you all an update on our support levels in August and to not make you wait months again like last time.

With that, if you are in the Central Florida area and would like to meet, contact us at cameron_neace@ntm.org

Please be praying for us! 

We've listed a lot of prayer requests in this update so we'll summarize them
all here:

• Safe travels during our two-day drive down to Florida
• The Lord would provide jobs for both Caitlin and I
• We would have courage and confidence as we meet with individuals, small groups and perhaps even churches during the summer
• That God would work through us and through others to raise up our partnership team so that we may reach 100% of our $1,700 budget
• Others may perhaps become overseas missionaries as well!

Thank you for all your prayers, financial support, and words of encouragement! You have know idea how much they mean to us!

United in Christ,

Cameron and Caitlin

If you are interested in partnering with us financially or would like to know more about our needed budget, please check out the Support tab at the top of the page. We also recommend you read our blog post from December!

A Practical Lesson in Flexibility!

In March, we wrote a post stating that Cameron and I were dropping out of the Linguistics course here at the Missionary Training Center. We felt that the Lord was leading us in that direction through conversation with staff and the five-week Friday afternoon Grammar course. However, during the normal Grammar course, Cameron and I discovered that we not only understood it once it was explained differently but that we really enjoyed it! Then, a little over a week later, one of the Ling teachers shared in chapel about just how crucial Ling really is to translation. He cited different examples of how one change in the grammar can make all the difference to the translation and the missionaries he went to help in Paraguay hadn't realized what was happening because they didn't take the Linguistics training. This pretty much sealed the deal for Cameron and on that very day, May 7th, Cameron asked the various teachers involved if it would be possible for him to jump back into Ling. They said it was. I took a little longer to decide but made the same decision three days later on that Sunday. Another couple also made the jump with us which means there are now twenty students in Ling and eleven on the standard track. I'm pretty sure this is the first time the ratio has worked out like this as the current Ling class has only eight students!

What does this mean? 

First, it means that we successfully managed to fail two classes in one weekend! Aren't you impressed? We did not take Field Health with the other Ling students and we dropped out of Grammar a week before it ended in order to join the Linguistic's track by taking Literacy. While we did cause the Academic Management Team a challenge, we didn't actually fail as they are allowing us to do make-up work in mid-August.

Secondly, while we will finish the standard MTC training in May of next year, Lingustics will run an additional seven months through the middle of June and then pick up again the middle of July in order to finish in December of 2016.

Thirdly, this means that Cameron and I will possibly be able to take the Greek course offered during
that month-long break between June and July of 2016 since we will still be at the MTC. This is something Cameron has especially been wanting to take!

Fourthly, we have a project to work on over the summer! In order to practice with the tools we'll be working with in Ling, we need to collect 250 words in a foreign language from a native speaker using a recorder and headset, split and label all the words, and phonetically transcribe 40 of the words. When we get back in the fall, we will be using our data for other projects. We're excited! Cameron and I decided to record German from one of the students here who is from Germany. We recorded the words on Sunday so step one is complete!

Fifthly, we covet your prayers as we take on this challenge together! We're not sure why the Lord led us to drop Ling and now to pick it up again. We have no doubt of His leading - perhaps it was just to teach us to trust Him more and to be flexible with our plans.

The semester is wrapping up and we have so much more to write about! But this was most exciting and urgent so we wanted to make sure to get this out even if that means our posts won't run in chronological order.

United in Christ,

Caitlin and Cameron

If you are interested in partnering with us financially, please check out the Support tab at the top of the page.

April's Classes at a Glance

We had three new classes during the month of April so I am going to attempt to summarize them below without making this update unbearably long. In order to encourage you to read to the end, I've saved one of our favorite classes for last! But you now have to resist the urge to skim down to the bottom of this page....

New Testament Church Principles

We just completed this class today. In this class we took a look at what a mature New Testament Church actually looks like. We went over the Mature Church Model in great detail as this is the document that New Tribes refers to when describing a mature church. We also discussed the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, spiritual warfare, and the offices of elders and deacons.We really enjoyed this class a lot and it gave us a new perspective on how we view these different areas.

Honor and Shame

We had the opportunity to listen to a week of lectures from Dr Tom Steffen from Biola University. He came to share with us about the Honor and Shame culture that is the heartbeat of the East and tribal societies. While America and the West tend to be characterized as an Innocence and Guilt culture, it is slowly being intermixed with Honor and Shame. Basically, the driver behind those who operate within an Honor and Shame strive to "save face" at all possible while those in an Innocence and Guilt culture are driven by "justice."  This was a deep and complex topic that is difficult to summarize but, if you would like to read more, we recommend you check out honorshame.com.

Grammar

Nerd moment: Cameron and I thought this class was so awesome! Seriously, who would've guessed that breaking down parts of speech into morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, and sentences could be so much fun! We even had the opportunity to practice on other languages. The purpose of the class was to help to one day break an unwritten tribal language down into all the different parts in order to learn their grammar. We cannot wait to apply this!
United in Christ,

Cameron and Caitlin

If you are interested in partnering with us financially, please check out the Support tab at the top of the page.

TPR = Toilet Paper Roll?

At least, that's what Cameron claims TPR means! However, I have learned that one should not always believe one's husband. Especially regarding acronyms. What TPR means is "Total Physical Response" and is a method of language learning used overseas. This is one of the primary tools that we,as New Tribes missionaries, will be implementing. Basically, it focuses on simply learning how to respond to the foreign language by pointing to the items or doing the commands. You don't write anything down as the goal is listening and comprehension. Our language was Portuguese which is hard for me just to say but Suzy made it really fun and TPR is now one of my favorite classes!

Our first day, focused on items found in the classroom. We began with three items: a piece of paper, a pencil and a book. We would point to one of the objects and Suzy would say its name in Portuguese. Once we felt comfortable with the items that were already on the table, we would add an additional item. Then, we would ask Suzy to tell us to point to something. The purpose of this exercise is to be able to respond without having to do a "translation" in your head but to associate the Portuguese words with the items themselves. We ended the day with about ten items total.

All the days that followed consisted of different types of TPR and we always ended with at least ten new words or phrases. The different types of TPR consisted of commands associate with a pencil such as: picking up the pencil, writing with the pencil, erasing with the pencil, shaking the pencil, dropping the pencil, and so on. Literal Total Physical Response with actions like: picking up the chair, knocking on the door, turning of the light, ect. Then learning adjectives concerning the number, size and colors of pencils. Prepositional phrases regarding the pencil in relationship with the book such as under, above, in front of, and inside the book. Then moving on to TPR with photos asking about the different people and objects and actions of the pictures.

On the last day, it was our turn to speak! We picked which TPR procedure we wanted to do and, after a brief review with Suzy, we would ask her to do something in Portuguese. And did I mention we only had NINE days of TPR in Portuguese! However, even though we had such a short amount of time in that language we were astounded by how much we could comprehend! Granted, our pronunciation was somewhat lacking, but we were able to communicate what we were trying to. It was such a great class and experience and we look forward to implementing this method on the field!

United in Christ,

Caitlin and Cameron

If you are interested in partnering with us financially, please click on the Support tab at the top of the page and don't forget to check out our Etsy store Created Concoctions for handmade items for you and your loved ones. 

Solar Panels

Several weeks ago on March 20th Cameron had the opportunity to help install a solar panel with two other students! Here at the Missionary Training Center there is a tech center that not only teaches students skills they will need overseas, but they also help current missionaries in a variety of ways including installation of: water filtration systems, refrigerators, solar panels, and more!

This particular afternoon, they asked for volunteers to come help install a solar panel. They were looking for individuals with no prior solar panel installation experience in order to see how clear their instruction booklet was as they intend to use it to help missionaries. Cameron fit that criteria and jumped at this opportunity!

It took the whole afternoon but, in the end, Cameron and the two other men successfully installed the solar panel! Cameron really enjoyed the experience and it gave him confidence that in just a couple years he will be able to install our own solar panels! We really enjoy being here at the MTC and the opportunities we have to learn skills and gain experiences outside of the classroom.

United in Christ,

Caitlin and Cameron

If you are interested in partnering with us financially, please click on the Support tab at the top of the page and don't forget to check out our Etsy store Created Concoctions for handmade items for you and your loved ones.