So what did we learn at Field Prep?
We learned so much I forgot half of it by now. All the steps to leaving were included, including a checklist of things to do before we leave. We have started working on that. The first three days were focused on language acquisition. We learned phonetics and where all of our sounds come from. I was confused. Sarah did a lot better than me with that. So maybe she will catch up with me on learning Portuguese. We will see. On the second day, the whole afternoon Sarah and I spent with a tutor for German to show one way of learning a language. I never thought that I could ever learn German, but after a couple of hours I could recognize specific sentences and then even say some sentences. The exercise was very encouraging for us as we saw that we had the ability to learn.
After LANCE we started covering all kinds of topics. We learned about cultural differences, security issues, doctrine of hell, spiritual warfare, how to do group decision making work (if you are in a company that has bad meetings and want to invest in how to make meetings productive, I can recommend someone to you). Intermissionary conflict is a big reason for leaving the field and so we concentrated on how to avoid and/or work around problems. We ended with chronological Bible teaching taught by Mark Zook, who made the video Eetao. Mark went into a tribe in Papua New Guinea, studied the language and culture for 2 ½ years and then started teaching the Bible starting from Genesis 1:1. At the end of three months, he arrived at the crucifixion and resurrection. At that time he presented the gospel and almost the entire tribe was saved. Mark challenged us regarding the use of chronological Bible training to fight syncretism as well as form a true Biblical worldview. Amazing stuff. If you would like some resources on that, just let me know and I can talk to you about it. It is designed to teach someone what the story of the Bible and to be evangelistical, but I think it is just as good for those raised in church and who are already saved.
