What Are We Doing Here? (Part 8)

This is my eighth in a series of posts I have been writing about the courses we are taking during our time in training with New Tribes Mission. The first six posts covered our classes at the Bible School (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6), and last semester I wrote one about the courses we had taken so far here at the Missionary Training Center.

Since that last post, we have taken eleven more classes! That brings our grand total to 74 classes so far with New Tribes Mission. We are learning so much. But the crazy thing is that every class we take also just makes us see how much we still don't know... I think we could take 500 more and still have much to learn about the Word and about missions. But honestly, we are learning a ton, and we are incredibly grateful for the thorough job NTM does in training their missionaries. Since our stay overseas will probably cover decades of our life, these few short years of training now will be so worth it, I am sure.

So first here are the classes we took during the second half of our fall semester here at the Missionary Training Center: 

Stewardship
In this class, we studied and discussed ways of using both our time and our money wisely. These are such important topics just for life in general, but even more vital for us as we are thinking about being tribal missionaries. We will have to be good stewards of our time and money in order to merely be able to stay on the field as well as have an effective ministry. We did some really great exercises in this class like keeping a detailed account of our time for two weeks to see how we spent (or wasted) it and also making some long-range, specific goals for ourselves.


Teamwork
This class dealt with the subject of teamwork as it pertains to us being part of a church planting team in a tribe someday very soon. We are planning (Lord willing) to be on a church planting team with Nathan and Rachel and one other family. We will need to know how to work together well, be open and honest with one another, confront one another in godly ways, and appreciate each other's differences. The number one reason that missionaries leave the field is because they cannot get along with their coworkers. We do not want that to happen to us, so we were so thankful for this class and the godly advice we received about teamwork.


Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of the sounds of human speech. Aaron and I absolutely loved this class...it was fascinating, and we learned so much. We learned skills that will be very vital to us in learning an unwritten language that no outsider has ever learned before! I actually wrote an entire post about it here.


Ministry Partnership 1 & 2
We began this class last semester, and we continued the second part of it this semester. This course is designed to show the biblical basis for ministry partnership development (developing a team of supporters to join us in our mission to go to the unreached) and just help us to be able to articulate our vision with people whom God might want to use to support us financially and in other ways over the next years. This course is extremely practical, since we will be raising support for our ministry in the next couple of years before we head overseas.


Child Protection
This was a very serious and heavy class that opened our eyes to many things dealing with child abuse. We are very thankful for this class and the information that we received from it. And even though the content of this class was difficult to hear, we trust God and know that He has our precious children in His hands.



These are the classes that we have taken so far this semester:

Biblical Parenting
The title of this class pretty much sums up the content of the class. We read, watched, and discussed information on how to parent our children in a biblical way. As missionaries, there is just no way we will be able to be effective in ministry if our own home is not "in order," so we really desire to parent in the way that God lays out for us in Scripture. There were a lot of good reminders for us in this class from things we had previously read about parenting.


Families and Education
This class was super helpful. We learned what education options we have for our children when we go overseas (we are choosing to home school our kids, as do most NTM missionaries), and how that can be done effectively in a tribal setting. We got to look through different homeschooling curricula and talk to veteran missionary moms who home schooled on the field. In addition, this class dealt a lot with the subject of third culture kids (TCK's). Our kids will be TCK's--they won't ever "fit in" totally with our culture here in America, and they won't ever "fit in" totally with the culture we live in overseas. They will be part of an in-between "third culture." This isn't a negative thing--in fact, there are TONS of amazing things about being a TCK. However, since Aaron and I are not TCK's ourselves, we have a lot to learn in order to raise our children with wisdom as TCK's--how to relate to them, guide them through different issues, and help them embrace where God has placed each of them in life. Again, we are just overwhelmed with thankfulness for the way we are being educated about these things now, before we are on the field.


Field Health
This class deals with ways to keep us and our family safe and healthy overseas. We are learning things like how to prevent, diagnose, and treat various common illnesses and increase our level of confidence and ability to manage health care decisions in a remote setting where health care will be scarce. We will be learning some hands-on things like how to use a stethoscope and odoscope, how to give injections, how to take someone's blood pressure, and how to administer medication safely. This is another of those classes that we just have to trust the Lord, since it can be scary to think about being so far away from the amazing health care we are so used to here in America. God is in control, and He gives us every breath we take. We are so grateful that we can learn some things in this class, though, that Lord-willing will keep our family a little healthier overseas.

Missionary Technology
Never before have I been in a class like this where I knew nothing about the subject matter when the class began. In this very hands-on class, we are basically learning how to set up, maintain, and utilize a solar-powered electric system in a remote tribal location. My sister wrote a post about it here. It really is a fascinating class...I never knew there was so much to learn about batteries and electricity and appliances and power and inverters and transformers and water pumps and sine waves and solar panels and surge protectors and soldering and circuits and watts and volts and amps...the list goes on and on. I'm glad Aaron will be good at this kind of stuff!! :) And I am happy to say that my knowledge level of this subject matter has gone up exponentially in the past few weeks! Also in this class, we are making some of the first steps in thinking through our plans for the house we will build in the tribe! It has been really exciting to be able to start picturing what our future tribal "hut" might look like!

Aaron during one of our labs

Aaron and I practicing using a multimeter to test volts

Romans 5-8
This class was an overview of the truths of sanctification found in Romans chapters five through eight. This was an amazing class. It was sort of student-led...meaning, small groups of students would get together to discuss a certain aspect of the discussion for that day (for example, "walking in the Spirit") and then present an illustration to the rest of the class about it. It was so refreshing to be reminded of the truths that we learned and studied at NTBI...just our completeness in Christ and our amazing resources found in the Spirit. These are truths that we need to cling to not only now, but also during our difficult times ahead on the field. We left this class each day just reminded of how amazing God is and how amazing it is that we get to have a relationship with Him.


Student Teaching
Finally, student teaching is a class that we will have one day per week all semester long. This is a class to give us practice with public speaking. As missionaries, we are going to be up in front of people talking...there's just no way to get around that. We are thankful to have some practice in this area with our classmates!


So that's an overview of what we are doing right now. We are trying to soak in every piece of wisdom from every one of our teachers!