Looking down the road

The past few months have involved prayer and discussion about our future ministry. Our stated goal is seeing churches planted among the Maba people. This is the lens through which we evaluate all of our decisions and activities. Will it further this work? We must say “No” to many good things in order to pursue this one thing well.
The most important activity right now, the one that lays the foundation for all others in the pursuit of this goal is learning the Arabic and Maba languages. God in his infinite wisdom has chosen to save people through the sharing of a message, one that involves sounds, words, sentences, etc. Our God is a communicator, and in representing him to the nations to which we have been sent we must also seek to be skilled communicators. Communication of a message necessarily involves language, and language cannot be separated from the culture in which it exists and from which it evolved. So to communicate this critical message, the first and foremost activity for the cross-cultural (e.g. cross language-barrier) worker must be language/culture learning. “Well, duh,” you may say. And indeed, this was widely assumed by earlier generations of missionaries. The William Careys and Adoniram Judsons spent years getting fluent in the languages of their people. But it is no longer assumed today. Most workers it seems commit to a year or two of half-hearted language learning with many other activities serving as distractions. Methodologies promising rapid multiplication that don’t rely on the communication ability of the missionary abound. And indeed it is a great temptation, one we feel, but one which must be overcome if we are to communicate the gospel clearly, disciple new converts thoroughly, and defend the young church from error and heresy.

This is why we continue with formal language learning long after many of our colleagues have moved on to bigger and better things. And this is why, as we’ve considered the next several years of Maba language learning, we’re now considering moving out of our large town to a smaller town or village that will enable us to have more concentrated language practice. We’ve realized that in our current town we will have to work hard to find Maba people to talk to because there are so many other groups here as well. But, to learn Maba well, wouldn’t it be much easier being in a place with a higher concentration of Maba people, where we could use Maba in the market and on the street and not just in our lessons? That is the question we’re asking ourselves.

It’s with that question in mind that Josh recently took a trip to a smaller town with a much higher concentration of Maba people. This is a town we’ve visited many times before, but this trip was for the specific purpose of gathering information about a potential move there. Josh traveled with some friends from another org, one of which is considering a move to the same town for many of the same reasons.

The trip was just an overnight trip, four hours from our current town, but it was very productive. We searched the market and made notes of what things are available daily, what things only once a week (on “market day”) and what things are not available at all. We observed materials available for building (fired bricks, sheets of tin, concrete, etc.). We asked about water availability, travel to and from the town during rainy season, security issues, and more. We found out there is an old airstrip that has been abandoned for years. We drove to the edge of town and looked at it and it seems it could be made usable for MAFs Cessna Caravan 208 without too much effort or expense. We also spent time with the small church (made up of southern Chadians working as teachers or nurses in this town far from home). It seems like this town might be just the right size to allow us to live relatively comfortably while still being in the middle of Maba-speaking people.

Would you pray for us that we would have wisdom in this decision? We wouldn’t plan to move anywhere until after our next home assignment, which will start sometime next May. But there will be much planning and preparation to be done between now and then if we decide to make the move.