Climbing the language ladder
For Jamie and Char Hunt, progress recently has had its own soundtrack, with crashes, clanks and clunks and beepity beeps.
A bulldozer is cutting a path through the jungle, clearing the way for electric poles and lines all the way to the Nivacle village where Jamie and Char live.
Already, cell phone service is available, as evidenced by the 6 a.m. text message they recently received.
“Is ti lhamô?” the message read.
“Our Nivacle friends from across the village wanted to know if we had slept well,” Jamie and Char wrote. “After 13 years of living off generators, solar panels and beyond the reaches of communication, these advancements seem almost surreal.”
But those are not the only advancements in the Nivacle village.
An experienced missionary visited them to evaluate the Hunts’ progress in understanding the culture and learning the language of the Nivacle people. She rated them as “capable low” – which is better than it may sound at first.
After a year and a half of study, Jamie and Char are now at the bottom of the capable level. Before they can begin translating Bible passages and preparing lessons for Firm Foundations Bible teaching, they must reach the top of the capable level. “One key ... will be figuring out the complicated verb structure," they wrote. "With an estimated 80 different ways to conjugate each verb, this will be no easy task.”
“We still have much to learn, but we are so thankful to God for enabling us to progress this far,” they wrote.