Pioneer Mission Institute

Well, my suitcase is packed, my room is clean, and all that's left is to hop on the plane and fly to PNG! It's hard to believe that our two weeks in Dallas are over, and in about 40 hours I'll be settling down in PNG, trying to remember the Melanesian Pidgin I learned and forget what time I think it is.

This week, we participated in the Pioneer Mission Institute, an annual week-long convention sponsored by Pioneer Bible Translators. The week is designed for past, present, and future missionaries, and it offers many classes and meetings to educate us on the work of translation and the lifestyle of a missionary. Because this is my first time to work with PBT, I went through the student track, which introduced me to quite a few new fields of study that I had never encountered (but will encounter a lot more if I decide to become a translator!). We've dabbled in phonetics, phonology, linguistics, anthropology, and many other -ics and -ologies, and I really, really enjoyed discovering these new fields. Exploring the ways that people communicate is extremely interesting to me, and the work of translation is all about being able to communicate effectively across cultural lines. In phonetics, we discussed all of the sounds that the human mouth can produce (it's around 110, and the English language uses about 40). In phonology, we looked at the ways that humans combine those sounds to create words and meaning. Linguistics is all about how we communicate meaning to each other through the language we use, whether through our words or phrases or sentences or paragraphs. Finally, anthropology deals with the study of culture and how to interact with other cultures successfully.

It's incredible just how little you can assume is shared by all humans. There are some languages in which two different sounds that would be almost imperceptible to an English speaker represent entirely different letters—think, for example, of the way that some cultures have trouble using Rs and Ls when they speak English (to them, they sound the same). There are some languages in which sentence order is subject-verb-object (like English), but there are others in which that order is completely different. There are some languages that have no word that means "to be," and there are other languages with 23 different words that all mean "to carry." What I'm getting at is that the work of translation is much more complicated than simply plugging in one word for another—it involves committing to learn and fully know the ways a certain people group communicates in order to be able to give them the most accurate and understandable version of the word of God possible.

One of my favorite things about this week has been spending time with missionaries, getting to hear their stories and jotting down their advice (I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "If you only remember one thing, remember this..."). When you hear story after story of entire villages being saved and scriptures being translated and lives being transformed, you really gain an appreciation for how big God is and how much he really does care about every single person on the planet. When we worshiped this week, I sang certain lyrics like, "Savior, he can move the mountains! Our God is mighty to save," in a new light.

More than anything, I feel like this week has sown in me a greater appreciation for the word of God and a stronger belief in the power of prayer—and those are important lessons to learn whether or not I end up translating. I've been thinking a lot about how we have the very word of God at our fingertips—his love letter, as it's been called, written to humanity and full of truth. Through studying the word, we can come to know our holy and mighty God better, and that is such a blessing. Prayer, on the other hand, gives us the opportunity to communicate directly with that God; to cry out to him and to listen for his voice. There is power in prayer, and God does amazing things with people when they take the time to stop and genuinely pray.

As I think about arriving in PNG, I can tell that God has answered countless prayers to give me peace and assurance of his presence. I'm not nearly as nervous as I probably should be, and I'm looking forward to everything that is going to happen this summer. Regardless of what happens—whether our luggage gets lost, or I get laughed at (which, from what I've heard, is a certainty), or I get frustrated with language learning, or I get a tropical ulcer or malaria, or we have conflict on the team (haven't so far), or I start feeling homesick, or anything else—I know without a doubt that God will be with me, and he will be glorified. If things go well, that is his grace towards our mission; if things don't go well, that is his mercy towards my life, growing me more into the image of Jesus.

I know that the reason I have such a peace is because countless people have told me they will be in prayer over my summer, and I am so grateful for their service. Please pray for safety and patience in travel (it's about 30 hours total, including flights and layovers, and we've got four separate flights), as well as quick recovery from jetlag and changing time zones. Pray that our initial language and culture learning will go well. Pray for my willingness to put myself out there, to initiate people in conversation, and to develop relationships as well as I can. Finally, pray that God will give me the willingness to seize every opportunity I have this summer—to notice every chance I have to be Jesus and take it. Short-term missions like these give people an incredible opportunity to wholly dedicate themselves to God's work without being tied up in school, work, relationships, etc., so I want to make the most of this opportunity.

If all goes according to plan, my next post will be from PNG! To close, here are a few pictures I snapped today:

The teams of interns headed to Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, and Guinea, as well as our coordinators

From this angle on the map, the United States sure looks far away!