Brandon and Grace Gloor Cross-cultural Are you a Mosukabukabu?
Who ever thought a dumb bird could bring so much conviction?
George Walker recently recounted a story for us in one of our church planting classes here at MTC. Years ago he was firmly entrenched in the hard work of raising a young church in the jungles of Papua New Guinea—preparing Bible lessons, translating portions of Scripture, teaching the Bible throughout the week, and even consulting for other mission teams in the region. Of course he was also trying to balance that work with raising a family, communicating with supporters back home, reporting to the mission leadership, and making arrangements for supply deliveries—that much goes without saying for a full-time missionary in his shoes. His neighbors in the village, the Bisorio people, had recently put their faith in Christ and we hungry for growth. And George was dedicated to the work of growing them. Too much, in fact.
George Walker teaching at New Tribes training center
One day a Bisorio brother stopped George in his tracks as he passed by on his way to another important ministry task, and said “George, where are you going? Why don’t you ever stop and talk to us anymore? You are being a Mosukabukabu.” Ouch! On top of the rebuke, this brother observed that George was looking like the Papua New Guinean bird that flitters from one branch to the next to the next, constantly moving and never resting or chattering with the other birds. The Bisorio shake their heads at the Mosukabukabu for being a such a pitiable creature that can’t stay still. Their comparison was no compliment to George; as brothers in Christ, they were admonishing him for his approach to ministry. This conversation has stuck in his mind ever since.
This story immediately made me think of my own life and ministry. In the mornings I rise before dawn to get in some exercise, run to class at 8 AM, get out at noon and grab lunch, followed by a meeting with our advisor missionaries and then 2 1/2 hours of fixing missionary cars. After that, shower, grab dinner, and we jump in the car for our church small group. Suddenly a whole day is gone! When I’m not at an outreach or church, I’m doing homework, writing emails and thank-you cards, or maybe updating this blog. Which leads us to that hideous time-sucker called the World Wide Web. “The internet will fragment into a thousand pieces your relationships and time you should be spending with people,” George cautioned me. Could it be that I’m a Mosukabukabu?
When it comes down to it, a missionary has no ministry if he has no time for people. If I fill up my schedule so much that I can’t stop and talk to someone who could use a listening ear, then I’m too busy. If I spend more time on projects and homework than I do with my wife, then I have a problem. If my urgency to run from one outreach or ministry to the next outweighs my urgency to stop and pray for people or just become closer friends with them, then I’m nothing but a taskmaster for myself. People are important, not tasks.
Does God look at me as a mere project manager or some kind of nameless bee in the divine beehive of Christian work? Of course not. God knows me intimately as a person and He wants close daily fellowship that transcends me so much that Christ’s love overflows into people in my life. Does my daily life reflect sincere love for people based on my relationship with the Lord, or perhaps a love for getting things done? George later disclosed to me, “The way that you treat people on the mission field will reflect the way that you feel God looks at you.” No, God is not a little man on my shoulder checking on my performance…but He does want to walk with me day by day and help me find my identity in Him. If perchance I live according to His Word, I might even bring other people to understanding of the salvation He offers. But when standing before the throne of God, how could I really expect the Father to grab my day planner ooh and ahh over my checklists?
I’m not writing this because I want to challenge a bunch of other people I know… this is a challenge to me.
The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. (Psa 90:10 ESV)
Am I going to spend the few precious days and years I have filling up my schedule book so that I can get things done? Ted Cunningham, my parents’ pastor would laugh at that. If anything schedule “nothing time,” he would say. Allow time for the Lord to work in me and perhaps invest in people. A life lived by the stopwatch makes no room for the work of God’s Holy Spirit, and I don’t want that to be true of me.
One final story. In his many world travels, George Walker once went to Romania, a place where the people have encountered many westerners but not been quite so swayed by their culture as the rest of Europe. After observing George’s compadres from the United States, one local turned to him and said, “George, you Americans have watches, we Romanians have time.”
Tags: Missions, MTC, New Tribes Mission, Ponderings, Training
A greasy victory
Tyler and I work underneath the car
When a young guy who has never worked on cars suddenly has his own car break down badly, it’s usually time to call in the professionals. When our little green car “Cinco” began showing signs of a bad clutch, it was an overwhelming feeling for me (Brandon) because I have neither the budget for car repair nor the experience and know-how to fix something deep within the oh-so-important drive train, yet it needed to get done. Thank the Lord, we have our van available to drive when the car is out of commission, but the van is not economical and we don’t plan on taking it on any of our upcoming roadtrips. The car has to be fixed! That is what was rolling through my mind, and the prospect of fixing it on my own definitely intimidated me.
After buying a clutch kit, watching a plethora of instructional videos online, and consulting some more experienced mechanics, I started tearing into Cinco last Thursday, and much to my joy and relief, I wasn’t alone. My friend Jaco Coetzee showed up with tools and ideas and motivation that got me really going. On top of that, another MTC student, Tyler Gleaves came and volunteered many hours of his time working alongside me and getting bolt after bolt off of the front axles, engine, and transmission. We all got black greasy hands together and it made the arduous process more bearable. I thank God for their invaluable help! I would have been stuck there so much longer and in so much frustration without the Lord working through them.
We had to support the transmission with a railroad tie across the top
Finally, two days later, we finished bolting everything back together and started the engine. To our great dismay, the axles only turned weakly… we were sure that we had failed. We went home frustrated and unhappy with the results of our work. Now what!? We’re going to have to go back and do this all over again, that’s what! Arghhh!
It wasn’t until several days later that our friends Neil Hess and Jason Mellinger persuaded me to put the car in gear and try driving it to make sure of the problem. And, Praise the LORD, Cinco could drive! We were successful after all!!! Thank you Father! It was totally unexpected. After tightening everything up, our Kia is back on the road and running as good as ever. Thanks for your prayers, my friends. We greatly appreciate them. And thank you for reading… this may seem like a dumb little story to you, but it was a real God moment in my life that I had to share.
-Brandon
Tags: Cinco, Prayer, Thanks, Transportation, Travel
Rooting out the meaning
As a team exercise, we classmates are breaking down texts into smaller semantic units of meaning
“Being unable to get to Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above Him; and when they had dug an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic was lying.” - Mark 2:4 (NASB)
Looking at the above sentence, can you tell how many events are listed? How many individual propositions are stated, and what are the relations between them? (Answers later if you’re interested). Why should you care? In the world of Semantics in Translation, a missionary’s objective is to take scripture like the verse above and translate it into the heart language of the people among whom he or she is working (a.k.a, the “receptor language”). It is important to be able to see past the grammatical traditions of the way we understand the Bible in English and see the original meaning in a Bible text, so that as a missionary works, he is translating meaning-for-meaning, rather than strictly word-for-word and sentence-for-sentence. If a missionary took the Bible’s original languages and simply exchanged all the words for the local language equivalents, then the meaning would be lost and the Bible would be nothing better than a book of riddles to them (my own summary).
This is just a sample of what we have been learning about lately in class here at the Missionary Training Center. It can be a real brain-twister to start setting the English grammatical forms of the Bible aside and un-skewing sentences so that they can more easily be translated into another language. For instance, in translating the verse above, you would want to communicate the facts that 1) There was a crowd in the way, 2) the men were unable to get to Jesus, 3) the men removed the roof, 4) the men dug an opening (is this an unnecessary redundant statement? Something to decide), 5) a paralytic was lying on a pallet (or stretcher), and 6) the men lowered the paralyzed man down to Jesus. In the “receptor language” these propositions may each be their own sentence, or they may be lumped together to some degree, depending on how that language flows. On top of that, the translator must also determine the semantic relations between propositions and between larger clusters of propositions, so that when they are re-written in the other language, they preserve their meaning to each other; simply restating them all in the exact same order may not be acceptable and it may not make any sense in the receptor language. So the translator must also identify all the semantic relations involved and carefully recreate these same connections of meaning on “the other side”
Whew, that’s a lot of work! We have had the enjoyable exercise of practicing a semantic breakdown and translation of a short passage of the Bible in the past two weeks, and it has been quite the experience… dealing with disagreement amongst the team, moments of amazing revelation as we get to the bottom line of what Jesus is saying in the passages, and all throughout growing to appreciate the massive amount of work that Bible translators do.
Glory to God for His Word, and thanks be to Him for equipping some people to be translators… Even if I’m never one of them!
-Brandon
Tags: Bible, Missions, MTC, New Tribes Mission, Training
Video: Something beautiful
Watch and praise God
Grace and I are happy to announce that a little Gloor is on the way! We are excited, giddy, joyous, and a little bit morning sick, but praising God for His goodness. Thank you for your prayers and your encouragement up til now… we will need it all the more in this new season of our lives!
-Brandon and Grace
Does God heal cars?
Pray for Cinco!
vrrrrrrooooOOOOOM! Over a month ago, Grace and I noticed that our beloved Kia Rio was revving way too high to accelerate up hills, and taking too long to speed up on the highway. Not knowing much about cars, I thought maybe it was something having to do with the air intake. Later our friend Jaco told us that perhaps it was a clutch issue. Other friends confirmed this and told me that I should replace the clutch. I wasn’t aware of how bad the problem was until last weekend in Branson.
Wanting to take the opportunity to connect with my parent’s church in Branson, we decided to drive the 2 hours down and visit before dropping off Grace at the airport for her trip to Wisconsin. But the steep up-and-down highways of the Branson area wreaked havoc on our poor car with a slipping clutch, and got to the point where we weren’t sure we would make it. When we finally got to the church parking lot, we prayed over the car and asked the Lord to be merciful and allow us to get through the day without having to be towed. After church we got in the car and carefully drove back onto the highway…and God gave the car the push that it needed. The symptoms lessened and the car performed much better the rest of the day, allowing me to drop off Grace as scheduled and make it the rest of the way home.Praise be to the Lord! He didn’t have to do that for us, but He did.
The parts that need replacing in our car
So now what? Well, I get the challenge of my life trying to replace the clutch. I’ve never done anything like that, so I’m trying to find help online. Even with all the how-to videos available, I still feel totally inadequate to do the job. Please pray for some wisdom and help in whatever form the Lord makes available.
In the mean time, we are not without transportation. Grace’s van, a family vehicle passed from her grandmother to her mother and now to us, is in good driving condition and we are so grateful to have it with us now. Sometimes God’s provision comes before the need!
Thanks for praying for us and our car!
-Brandon
Tags: Prayer, Transportation
Simple Living and Practical Skills
Part of the comprehensive training we get here at the Missionary Training Center is in learning to use common tools, survive typical missionary scenarios, becoming ready to take on difficult situations far from help. For the next two weeks, we will be doing just that, and it has ramifications on our staying connected with you!
A large portion of the Practical Skills course is the Simple Living section, wherein we will be simulating a situation where we are living in a remote location. We will have no long-distance telephone access, no electricity after 9 PM, will not be able to use modern technology such as microwaves and DVD players, will not be able to run into town to buy groceries, and worst of all, have only one hour of internet use per week, and that only for checking email! Oh the Humanity!!!
Haha, no actually we are really looking forward to it. During this time we will no doubt be finding much more time to spend away from our computers and stuff. Plus we will be cooking from scratch, and even Brandon will get in on the act, learning to cook a couple of things : )
We will also be learning a variety of other things during class time, including:
- Chainsaws
- Knot-tying
- GPS and orienteering
- Sewing
- Butchering
- Making shelters
- Bush survival
- Plumbing
- Meal planning
- Pressure cooking and canning
… and much more.
Having said all of that, we must say goodbye to the outside world for the most part until Sunday April 1st. If you don’t hear from us or we are not replying to your emails, don’t be alarmed! Pray that we absorb everything well and come out on the other side more prepared for life on the mission field.
Haiti Q and A Part 2
In January and February, we began the process of pursuing cross-cultural discipleship-based Bible teaching in Haiti as our career ministry. In order to answer the many questions popping up, we are posting some of these questions and answers.
Q: What kind of ministry will you be doing in Haiti?
A: We feel that the greatest need that the people in Haiti have is one of spiritual starvation. While there have been many external improvements in the availability of Christian or Christian-esque facilities, the vast majority of the people remain lost and feeling no impact from the Word of God. The Bible has now been translated into the common tongue, Creole, and praise the Lord for that! The problem is that most folks don’t know where to start or what to do with their Bibles. They wouldn’t know if they are supposed to apply the messages to their lives or use the verses to invoke power over spirits. Yes, there are Haitian pastors, and a few of them are doing a good job. We plan to work with such one when we move there. But we see the need to start over from the beginning with many folks in the community, reteaching the Bible from its foundations… young, old, men and women. We want to use relationships and discipleship opportunities to get people growing with us into clear understanding of the Bible. Our goal is to see individuals and the local churches grow into maturity in Christ, and to see them reproduce the same work in their neighboring villages.
Q: What about all the need for humanitarian work in Haiti? Are you guys ignoring that?
A: We don’t (indeed cannot) ignore the tremendous physical and social needs that exist in every corner of Haiti, nor do we look down on our brothers and sisters in Christ who are called to use their God-given skills to do relief work. We are good friends with many missionaries whom God has led to Haiti to address the obvious physical issues that abound. In fact, we are board members of a community-change organization called Hope In Haiti that works in the same community where we plan to be stationed. Hope In Haiti provides schooling for underprivileged Haitian children, brings in medical teams, assists with building projects, and sponsors pastors conferences, to name a few things. We intend to work side-by-side with Hope In Haiti periodically, and also be available to assist any other ministries in country who may need help from time to time. Looking forward to our strategy for building the “right to be heard,” we may in fact set up some workshops and aid stations to assist the locals and help them in long-lasting ways. But our first goal is not to meet humanitarian needs… it is to bring Christ into focus so that His Word cannot be ignored or mixed with other religions.
Q: Will you be working as “faith” missionaries (depending on support), or living on a salary, or perhaps “tent-making?“
A: There are many contexts in which cross-cultural missionaries are able to work a gainful job to fully support themselves (tent-making) on the mission field God has led them to. Haiti is not one of those contexts. Unemployment is perpetually through the roof in Haiti, and even those jobs that people do get hardly earn a wage enough to feed their families on, let alone take on ministry costs. Some people have suggested ways to set up cottage industries, and these are great ideas to teach to our Haitian brethren, but we don’t want to spend the vast majority of our time trying to work these projects and make money off of them and become self-supporting. Our ministry will be primarily in the Word. We do not currently plan on joining one of the few mission agencies that salary their missionaries either. So it seems that we will continue to live as we have for a few years now: day by day and month by month living on whatever the Lord chooses to provide through folks like you who want to invest in eternity. It is a challenging experience, but rewarding in our growth in our walk with God as we learn to depend less on self and more on Him, plus it allows the double blessing of opening doors for other people to be involved as God leads them.
Q: Will you have teammates working with you?
A: As far as we know, we won’t have any ex-patriot (non-Haitian) coworkers in our village with us. We are not trying to find any full-time teammates to move down to live and work with us, but if God laid it on the hearts of some individuals who have the same faith, passion, and like-minded ministry priorities, we would prayerfully consider forming a team with them. However, as it stands, our teammates will be our local pastors and perhaps some other believers in the area. For needs of guest housing, supply-finding, and physical assistance, we plan to network with our friends who serve in Haiti with other missions and reimburse them accordingly. For our encouragement, guidance, and friendship, we intend to stay fully connected to YOU back home for our mutual growth. We are blessed to have you in our lives as friends and prayer partners, and we would not want to go anywhere without you here as our home anchor. Thank you.
If you have a question about our future work in Haiti, please email us directly at brandonandgracegloor@gmail.com
