What are we doing here?

No, I'm not questioning our decision to come here :) 

I thought I would just explain what we are actually doing here on a day to day basis. 

We are at New Tribes Bible Institute, and we will be here for the next two years. In those two years, we will take classes that cover the books of the Bible from cover to cover. This comprehensive foundation of the Word of God will not only to help us in our walk with the Lord and help us know Him better, but it will prepare us for the chronological Bible teaching we will--Lord willing--someday use in an unreached tribe. We will be ministering to a tribe that has never heard of the Bible, God, Jesus, or even reading and writing. So to have training in God's Word will be invaluable to us on the field.

We began here at NTBI about a month ago. When we began, the first classes we took were:

Biblical Foundations, where we read this book--By This Name by John Cross.

This is an awesome book that I would recommend to everyone. It is not a textbook at all...it is an overview of the entire Bible as one cohesive story of God's plan of redemption for mankind.

Next is Evangelism, which is a longer class, so we are still in it now. In this class, we have examined many different types of worldviews and different religious beliefs that many people have. We are learning tools for evangelizing people from all different backgrounds. We have studied a couple different books in this class to help us understand the post-modern worldview, which many people hold in the world today.

Bibliology, or the study of how we got the Bible, is another class that Aaron took (I don't take quite as many classes as he does, since we have kids).

Aaron said this book is an absolute must read for me, so I am planning on reading it over Christmas break (when I am not buried in a lot of other stuff to read for my other classes!).

We also just started Pentateuch, which is the study of the first five books of the Bible.

We began in Genesis last week, and I can honestly say that I had no idea there was so much to learn in the first few chapters on Genesis. It is SO interesting and just so refreshing to really study God's Word for the first time.

Aaron is also in three other classes right now. One is Hermeneutics, or the study of how to interpret and apply the scriptures (basically attempting to gain the full context of the Scripture so as to gain the correct meaning).

This is another fascinating one that I hate to miss, but I can't possibly take all of the classes that Aaron is taking and give our kids the attention they need!

He is also taking one called Acts and the Roman World, which gives a lot of the context of the New Testament--explaining in great detail the Roman world (and world, in general) as it relates to Jesus' and Paul's day. This class really exposes the events surrounding the book of Acts. Aaron says it is intriguing, so far.

The last one he is taking right now is Islam. 

Depending on what country we go to eventually, we may need to know a lot about this religion, since many of the unreached people groups live in predominately Muslim countries.

And of course, the book that is required in ALL of our classes is the Bible. 

This is the book that we are predominately here to study, and we are so grateful and feel so blessed that many people gave their lives many years ago so that we can have God's Word in our language.

So that's what we're doing here :) Our classes change quite often, as some of them are pretty short, so I will continue to post updates about the aspects of God's Word that we are studying. It is a blessing and we couldn't be any happier that we are here.