Language Learning is not Competition, but Communication.
Not a Competition
Sometimes missionaries are a strange bunch. They can actually get excited about an upcoming culture and language evaluation.
At least everyone on the Wantakian team felt that way. They all wanted to see what sort of progress they’d made over the past year.
But it wasn’t a competition.
Teamwork at its Best
“Our team is committed to seeing our team learn this culture and language, so we’ve been trying to help each other every chance we get,” wrote Jack and Lael Crabtree. “When one of us learns some new vocabulary or conjugation, we pass it on to everyone else.
“Lately, we’ve been giving each other practice language evaluations, where we sit down together with a Wantakian and take turns giving each other off-the-cuff communication tasks like: ‘try to convince this language helper why he needs to send his child to school,’ or ‘explain the process we will go through to translate the Bible into the Wantakia language.’
“After trying our best to tell our Wantakian friend [our task] in the tribal language, the Wantakian translates the story back to the trade language, and we hear how much we actually communicated. These evaluations have pushed our team to grow together and learn from each other (and provide stress inoculation).”
Embracing a God-Given Vision
That’s what you do when you embrace a God-given vision to reach the unreached. You bring your varying strengths and weaknesses to the table and work together as the body of Christ to see it happen.
Pray that the team to the Wantakian people will be able to do just that.