The above saying was a little phrase we all had to repeat in punctual unison when asked "Are we having fun yet?", which, according to Andy, might convince us that it was the best time we have ever had.
Me with Sung Ah, our Korean teacher
This morning, we woke up at about 6:35 a.m. and got ready for the day. By about 7:20 we were all ready to head down and went over in our little group f four. At about eight, Andy Ott came in and blew a loud whistle to get our attention, and then told us we must head to the classrooom. We learned a little bit about our group as we went around telling our names, our hometowns, countries we'd visited for more than two weeks, etc.
We opened with prayer and then the president of Wycliffe came and tlaked to us about the importance of translation and Vision 2025, which is a goal of the organization to have the last translation process started by 2025. There are still 2,400 languages worldwide that do not have the Scriptures, and most of them do not even have an alphabet yet.
We also had a worship service, which was neat becasue it was smaller and more heartfelt that I'm used to it being. Later, we had a monolingual demonstration performed by Christina and Jenny, two Wycliffe workers. Christina spoke only Spanish and Jenny English Pidgin for the purpose of education. Through it we learned that it is best not to use a common language as a crutch of communication. It is better to leanr by immersing yourself in it than easing yourself into the pool of confusion.
After that, we had phonetics...which is waayyy too hard for me! It's so hard I listened to the lesson, was lost there, and still get lost in the homework!
Lunch break followed, when we headed over to the Karibuni Cafe and ordered foo. While at the table, I met a young Thai man by the name of Peter and talked with him about Thailand and Buddhism versus Christianity. Following our meal, we actually got to meet our language helper and ask her a few things. Me and a couple others got assigned to a girl from Korea. We learned "Hangook miloh _____________ morah gungheiyo?" (how do you say?) "Anyong" (hello), etc.
After that came grammar, which was hard but slightly interesting, since we were learning the different structures of words and how we can deductively construct their meaning with self-discovered information.
Heading back to the building with the cafe, we then proceeded to receive a tour of the Word Springs museum and leanred about Wycliffe's history, it's core foundation (prayer*), how to get involved in prayer, and saw a copy of Martin Luther's German Bible. We also experienced how misinterpretations could have serious consequences that could lead to life or death...literally. I.e., one word in a language means life and another word which just added an i meant death.
We were blessed with a Chinese dinner tonight, and one of the students is a missionary kid in China and spoke fluent Chinese. He prayed for us in that tongue, and, upon being askedwhat the dining customs were, he proceeded to explain that elders went first (or rather, were served first- we were serving ourselves that night). Boy, I have never seen anyone so proud of his or her age as those elderly ones as they lined up for their food!
Oh, and i forgot and adventure we had going to dinner. On the way there it was pouring rain, but neither Katie, Jessica, Annie, nor I wanted to get dressed in rain garb for just five minutes of walking. Once we got out into the gale, we decided that we'd dash beneath the overhang of the roof for as long as we could and then wourld run quickly into the uilding which was across the parking lot. By the time we arrived, we were absolutely SOAKED and had to mop ourselves down with paper towels in the bathroom!
Well, that's it!
In Christ,
Brittany
*As a matter of fact, if ya'll could pray for Wycliffe, that would be great.Vision 2025 is a lofty goal- one that cannot be reached without the divine intervention of our God. Pray that the Gospel would be well received and missionaries' safety as well. Ask God that the devil would be bound, as he is out to destroy this work people are doing for the Lord. You see, an attempt such as this takes more than those out on the front lines- it takes the soldiers on the sidelines cheering them on. In fact, some have even come to Christ when shown how many people are praying for this effort. Thank you!
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