Proverbs 16:9

The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps.

It has been our endeavor to be honest and open concerning our journey with the Lord. We are certainly not perfect people but are imperfect and broken people desiring to serve a perfect God. As we figure out this thing called missions and figure out how to get from Point A (America) to Point B (Asia Pacific), things may get a little messy. This is one of those moments.

As you may recall, we took a linguistics aptitude test during our very first semester here at the Missionary Training Center. While we had originally always intended on taking linguistics, our test scores indicated that our strengths may lie elsewhere thus we decided to drop our pursuit of linguistics. Two months after we posted about our decision to drop linguistics in "Doors Closing, God's Leading," we then wrote stating that we had decided to take it again in "A Practical Lesson in Flexibility." You've probably guessed where this is going.... After participating in the preliminary Linguistics class from May until December, we began to question just how integral Linguistics is to Bible translation. After talking with our churches and asking a few on staff here, we've come to learn that Linguistics has really no direct correlation to translation. The primary purpose for Linguistics is for doing the orthography (creating an alphabet) of a completely oral language. Thus, since it's unnecessary for Bible translation, we have withdrawn from the Linguistics course. We'll leave the lucky job of creating an alphabet to our future teammates!

What does that mean as far as our graduation date? We'll still be graduating April 22nd but instead of beginning Linguistics on April 4th, we will be taking Grammar with the class behind ours since we originally jumped out of it to take Linguistics. We've already taken Literacy and Field Health which occurs at the same time as Grammar so nothing will be missed. This also means that we'll be ending with Phonemics - a class we've been very much looking forward to taking! Thank you for sticking with us as we navigate this journey to Asia Pacific.

United in Christ,

Caitlin and Cameron

We invite you to prayerfully consider partnering with us through regular monthly support or a special gift, as we prepare and train to go and share the Gospel with those who have never heard. When designating which missionary you are supporting, indicate: Cameron Neace Account #900458