Sunday, December 16, 2007

First Semester- it's already over!


Our first semester here in training is finished! Our last class was yesterday. The past four months here have been a wonderful time of growing and learning.

In our Church Planting class, we had modules on various topics, including animism, which I discussed in detail in the previous entry, church planting essentials, pre-field and arrival, cross-cultural communication, culture investigation, and pre-evangelism.

Church Planting Essentials
Let me just give the overview of this module. We looked at the things that are essential for a missionary who intends to plant a church among tribal people. The nine we looked at in more detail were:

1. A reliance on the Holy Spirit

2. A commitment to teamwork

3. A team strategy statement- the job description that provides direction

4. Fluency in the tribal language

5. A grasp of the tribal culture

6. A literacy program

7. A vernacular Scripture translation

8. A chronological Bible cirriculum

9. Relationships


We finished off our year with a few Christmas celebrations. One was a gift exchange for all the students and staff, and the other was a little pizza party that included the kids. Here's a picture of our whole class right before we headed our separate ways for Christmas. We plan to take our family down to Nebraska to visit my parents for part of the Christmas holidays, and then we'd like to go on up to Dennis' parents for the rest of the time, with a few stops here and there (like Peterborough). Merry Christmas!

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