Remember Mongolia

Today is our final day at ICCT in Wheaton. The July 24th departure date is ever looming. We've spent all month learning about asphirated stops and retro-flexed affricates. Phonetics is more difficult that we imagined. On top of that, we really miss Jonathan and Cori! But today it ends, and after a month we will finally see them again this evening. Renee' and I are both excited about that.

I am very happy that the C&MA requires this Second Language Acquistion course for all outgoing missionaries. I think it will prove an invaluable tool as we proceed into the long and arduous task of learning a second language. Experts in the fields of second langauage acquisition, linguistics and phonetics just spent the last three weeks pouring everything they have into us. Teachers consisted of Wheaton profs as well as SIL staff. The first couple of weeks of our experience seemed a little pointless. We had to kind of go on faith that everything our instructors were teaching us would eventually make sense. We were learning sounds, not words. That became a bit wearisome. bid ... bid ... bod ... bod...

But it all changed the other night when we made a new friend. A native Mongolian speaker who lives here in Chicago came to teach us the Mongolian alphabet. As she began to go through the sounds, it all came together. We were able to reproduce the sounds and began to put them into real words that mean something (Thanks Chimee!). It was an exciting moment for both of us.

After a tough month, we leave encouraged and eager to see our kids.

Pray for us as we begin the more difficult task of saying meaningful goodbyes.