Our language helper is the pastor of a local church, which on a good day boasts a dozen attendees. But as we have attended there and listened to our friend, I have noticed some misunderstanding of the truths of the Bible. One Sunday, I noticed him talking about the law as if the distinction between a believer and an unbeliever was how well they tried to keep the law. One evening, I scheduled an extra language session to record him saying some Cherokee words. Since I had some time to spare, I asked him my theological question: what is the purpose of the law?
He seemed to think it was a standard that God set because people would be too evil otherwise. There is an aspect of the law keeping things somewhat under control (at least externally), but "...the law entered that sin might abound." But I asked him if someone could keep the law well enough to be accepted by God. "Yeah, I think someone could." So we looked at some scriptures together, which clearly state that the law merely reveals sin and cannot cleanse us. At the end of our talk about the law and being declared righteous through faith in Christ alone, he said, "You know, I've never thought about it like that before. What were those verses? I'm gonna read them." I told him and he wrote them down. This Saturday I hope to visit him and would love to see if he has thought any more about it. Speaking of the law, we found some people on the wrong side of it the other day. We noticed some shady dealing by a van in a Walmart parking lot, when they quickly loaded some brand new boxes of electronics (with security tags still attached) into their van and drove away. We took down the license plate and told the store.
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The first week we spent getting used to the sounds of the language. Initially, it sounded like a jumble of strange sounds, but as time goes on, it sounds more like a jumble of words that I don't yet understand. Once in a while I hear a word or part of a word that I recognize, and we spent some time getting the words for various nouns, which I now recognize. The most difficult part for all 3 of us, I think, is the tone. In English, we use different pitches of voice to cause expression or to ask a question. Say, "Does this make sense?" out loud and notice the rising pitch at the end. Cherokee functions differently. Each syllable has a correct tone, and if you say it without the correct tones, it might not make sense to them or you might be saying something you didn't intend to say.
This week, we moved from our original building, due to the impending death of the air conditioning system. My two partners and their families moved into the building next door and I moved into the main building next door, where the rest of the students are staying. Now I share a large room with my instructor, whose family is still in Missouri. There are many bunk beds, which we rearranged to partition off a sleeping area for ourselves. We have enough sinks, toilets, and showers to have 2 or 3 apiece. Another source for entertainment is the array of insects and such, which I thought were mostly native to South America. One day, Jordan exclaimed loudly and pointed toward the edge of the porch. I looked over and saw a large, brown tarantula hanging out next to the porch's support post. There are also many scorpions, evidenced by the fact that one of the students put up a tally for the number of scorpions killed, and today's number was 23. I've seen large beetles and other bugs that remind me of bugs in Brazil. I haven't seen any 4 inch long flying cockroaches yet. Maybe I'll have to wait until we get to Brazil... |
AuthorWe are normal people who believe that God would have us serve Him in Brazil. We are saddened by the existence of people who do not have access to the gospel due to their location and language. We want to live among such a people group and plant a church among them, shepherding the believers as they grow to maturity. Archives
November 2019
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