A quick check-up

How can someone who currently lives in Colorado, come here to Alberta and check our language learning ability when they have never heard the language spoken before? We are so thankful to glean from the consultant guided program New Tribes Mission has set in place all over the world. George and Harriet Walker came to our home last week to check progress in both our language use and the daily use of our time. We had done some ground work ahead of time by filling out questionnaires etc. Our first day we spent a lot of time just sharing what we do each day, how things are progressing and where we sense problems. The second day we had a native speaker in our home and we would simply say words after him, which allowed George to hear if our pronunciation is accurate. There are a couple sounds in the language that we don’t make as English speakers, so we need to step up our practice of these particular sounds. There are also about three nasalized vowel sounds, which means you need to push air through your nose as you say them, this can often sound like a “n” sound to our ears, but it’s not, and needs to be said correctly. As a wrap up George and Harriet were full of practical ideas to keep us on track in our culture and language acquisition, (aka, CLA). Our main focus is language at this point, since culture is best understood in the Native tongue. One of the big area’s we are tweaking after this consult is our planning, we need to be much more intentional about what areas of language we are going to try to learn. We will be isolating simple parts of speech to keep things at a basic level. For example we will learn how to take a simple statement like “I am picking up the cup” and from there learn how to say “ pick up the cup” and “do not pick up the cup.” To make sure we are covering all the bases we need to cover at this first stage we need to really plan each time we visit the reserve. Of course as we seek to gain understanding of language, we will also continue to cultivate our current relationships, seek new ones, and stay aware of the unique culture as well. We will be making some other adjustments to our days as well. We also discussed

that in order to keep making strong progress in CLA we need consistency and fewer “interruptions”. This is an area we covet your prayers in as many “good” opportunities come our way, but these at times keep us from the work. It’s hard to explain all that took place in the intense 2 and 1/2 day consult, but we come away from the time feeling much more equipped for the task at hand. One thought I’m chewing on is that, as the organizer of our home I need to find more ways to bring the language learning into our home, since my amount of time with people is limited. Abigail and Ruth need to be more a part of this process as well, since this is the life God has called our family to, not just Joel and I, but all of us. This consultant check is usually done at about six weeks after the type of consult we had in February. Due to scheduling and other time commitments it was put of till now. The next months will be full of hard work and faithful study and we hope to pass our basic or level one check sometime early next spring. One final thought that keep us pressing on toward our goals in our situation, loving people means learning their language, it might not always feel like “love” but thats what it is love. In God’s grace we labor on, thanks for walking with us!