Friday, July 22, 2011

O Me of Little Faith

Recently a title of a book caught my attention: O Me of Little Faith: True Confessions of a Spiritual Weakling. I had to chuckle because at times that epitaph fits me like a tee.

In May 2011 a former acquaintance of mine began supporting my ministry. Josie and I were students together at New Tribes Language Institute nearly 30 years ago. I thanked her with a very grateful heart. What Josie did not know at the time is that I had lost a few supporters over the last few years because of the depressed economy.

Josie said that she would begin praying that my support would increase. However, "me of little faith" had my doubts. Honestly, the economic future of this country at this point in time does not look very rosy. And it's not like I have been traveling throughout the highways and byways of the United States lately trying to raise my support level.

While I was thankful that Josie decided to pray that my support would increase, I myself certainly lacked the faith of David's good friend Jonathan who in boldness of faith said, "It may be that the LORD will work for us. For nothing restrains the Lord from saving by many or by few." And it is just as true that nothing restrains the Lord from providing for His children in a good economy or in tough economic times. But, O me of little faith, was a bit skeptical that the Lord would answer Josie's prayer request without me at least going on the road and doing some support raising. After all some wise sage once said, "God helps those who help themselves." Hmmmm, where is that verse found in the Bible? I don't seem to recall right off hand!

Well you could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened an email the other day that had the title "Support" in the subject line. It was from David, an on-line friend who I have never actually met in person. We have exchanged email messages over the last few years discussing topics such as doctrine and language learning. David and his wife decided that they also would like to begin supporting my ministry.

Within the last two months the Lord has raised up two new financial supporters on my behalf. And He did it in spite of tough economic times without me having to follow the advice of the wise sage who encourages us to "help ourselves because that is supposedly how God helps us."

Abraham sure had it right when he said, "Jehovah Jireh — the Lord will provide!"

Praising Him for His faithfulness,

Bob

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Comprehension-Based Language Learning – A Student’s Perspective

Years ago I took a Spanish class in High School. We did a lot of memorization and studied Spanish grammar. But most of us never really learned Spanish.

When I came on staff at New Tribes Language Institute, I found out that there are better ways to learn a second language than the methods that were used in our High School Spanish class. Over the years we have improved our language acquisition course as we have implemented comprehension-based methods in the classes that we teach.

A student couple in second semester recently wrote a newsletter describing the language acquisition class that we teach here. It provides a bit of a glimpse into our comprehension-based language learning methods.

Have you ever studied a foreign language in school? Did it involve endless hours of textbook reading, memorization, and, might we say, beating your head against the wall?!

That's how we studied French in school, and, not surprisingly, we are not fluent today. But in our last few weeks at the training center, we have been learning Portuguese using a whole new approach: TPR - Total Physical Response.

This method involves learning language the way little kids do: listening, comprehending, and then speaking. Instead of reading and memorizing, we've gotten both our minds and bodies involved. In some exercises, we point at objects on the table, pictures, and things around the room. In other activities, we jump up and down, kick the wall, and spin around in circles. Our Brazilian language helper describes the object or our action in a Portuguese phrase. He also gives us directions in Portuguese, and has us point at the objects or perform certain actions. After listening and comprehending for a few days, we even got to attempt speaking Portuguese ourselves! From trying out TPR, we are excited to learn another language, and convinced that it is possible!

Comprehension-based language learning is a great improvement upon the methods that were traditionally used in the past. Our missionaries have found this approach to language learning to be very effective. Here at the Missionary Training Center, we are continually developing our classes so that our students might have the best tools to use when they arrive on the mission field.