At least we are progressing! When you begin to learn another language you will always learn “words” in isolation first, then you move to sentences, eventually to full paragraphs. From there, you move on up to discourse level with hopes of one day being proficient (meaning you sound exactly as a national, not just with words and intonations, but also with culturally relevant topics and how you present the information in which you desire to communicate). There are 4 levels in which you can gauge a person’s language ability: basic, progressing, capable, and proficient. Within each of those levels (except proficient) there is a range of: low, mid, and high. Giving you a total of 10 language levels. At the beginning of this week, we had our first language evaluation. We were able to get in 30 days of actual language study, and after those 30 days Seth was marked at “progressing low” and Nicole was marked at “progressing mid”. This is awesome and encouraging! Our consultants told us we are marked in a place where we function at ALL times, but are able to communicate at higher levels some of the time. So that means at some point throughout the testing we were reaching other levels of language learning. So at this pace we might become “capable high” in the next 4-6 weeks. Once we can achieve this level we can then start ministering at a more full capacity and then start proactively seeking direction of which people group (tribe) to move into.
Speaking of consultants, we had a wonderful time with all of our consultants. We hosted 2 of the 6 men in our house, one consultant went to bed close to midnight and the other woke up around 5am. Seth loved this time so much; he was up after they went to bed and woke up before/at the same time with them so that he could glean as much as he could from these Godly men. We want to give a special Thank You to Aaron L. and his family who organized the weekend and gave us invaluable tools to learn language and to be able to plant a church that worships our Lord. We want to also thank; Tim, Aaron W., Eric, Brian, Greg, Jason, and Bill for giving us some much needed insight, thank you for sharing and giving us some helpful tools, thank you for your fellowship.
We learned so much this past week and were also given a lot of information about possible works/tribes with which God might lead us to. We are compiling a bunch of data and survey information on many of these tribes. Once we feel like we have enough information and a better understanding of what God is doing and how He is leading us, we will then share that information with you all and then ask you to partner with us in prayer. YOUR insight is valuable to us; please feel free to contact us and ask us questions to help us think through the information we have been given. We will not make this decision without YOUR help in prayer, guidance, and communication. This is far too big of a decision for one person to ever make. We will strive to progress further and further until we learn the national language, and then we will need your specific partnership in making this BIG decision.
Your feet to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes
Language Check & Consultants
Stoking The Fires 