Bryson and Mindy White Culture/Language Acquisition in Paraguay
Below is a little video about our time in Missouri. It works best if you push ‘play’ then ‘pause’ and let it buffer until the gray line is half way across, then push ‘play’ to watch it. Click the four-arrow icon at the bottom to watch the video full screen.
Thanks for watching!
Missionary Training Center from Bryson White on Vimeo.
At first glance, this may appear to be a boast of our giving and willingness to sacrifice. But really, this is a tribute to God’s provision.
You see, just because we’re training to be missionaries, doesn’t mean that we no longer have the responsibility to give financially to missions. We already had a couple commitments of giving before entering the training in August of 2007, so we kept doing that. I’ve never been one to be strict on giving an exact tithe, but I have looked at 10% to be a gauge of our giving. Well, due to those commitments of giving, for our first year and a half here we were giving about 12.5% of our income, which doesn’t seem like all that much except when you consider that the 12.5% came to a grand total in the double digits.
But recently, God has seen fit to increase our support as we get closer to leaving for the field, and we saw that 12.5% fall to 6.5%. Of course, that means that we’ll be increasing our giving, but the glory cannot go to us. The glory goes to God who sees fit to “give us a raise.” Thank you to those of you who responded to God’s urging in your life and have committed to supporting our ministry. I hope and have prayed that God will bless your generosity. Know that we’re in this ministry together. If you want to witness God’s provision in our lives, keep an eye on this graph that we’ll be updating monthly.
Not sure about this missions business? Take a step back and read these tips by a friend of mine in Mexico to avoid becoming a missionary:
10 WAYS TO AVOID BECOMING A MISSIONARY
The following are several of the classes that we had during this last fall semester. Together, they rounded out the majority of our preparation to begin church planting. We covered topics concerning daily living in a tribal location as well as a model of what a maturing indigenous church should look like.
CLA Practicum
CLA (Culture/Language Acquisition) is a process that we will go through at least twice: for the national culture and language and for the tribal culture and language. The structure of its name is very intentional. It is not culture and language, but culture/language because the learning of these things are so intertwined with each other. As for the order of the words, language is often thought of as being the more important of the two, but culture is at least as important. So, to diffuse that thought, culture is listed first in the name.
We had culture/language sessions with a Dobu helper. She was actually an instructor dressed up as a tribal person and we met outside her tribal house where there was smoke and unfamiliar smells. She spoke a real tribal language. There were 12 of these helpers that different groups met with to gather cultural and language information; together they shared a very intricate culture. We were introduced to several techniques for learning language with this helper and for gathering cultural information and organizing all this into software specifically designed for this. At the end we did a write-up on the specific topic that we had investigated.
Practical Skills
Practical skills sought to give us an overview of what skills we would need on the field. We were exposed to cooking from scratch, taking care of boats, taking care of and using chainsaws, the theory of building a house, and other various things that we will have to do for ourselves.
Missionary Technology III
Missionary Technology III gave us time to practice what we had learned in the previous Missionary Technology courses. We were given a chance to hook up solar panels, troubleshoot a photovoltaic system, and restore batteries by zapping their dendrites!
Literacy
The Literacy class gave us a look at how to teach the tribal people to read their own language. We were shown how to write literacy primers, then we practiced making one in Pidgin English and teaching through a literacy lesson.
Translation
This class introduced us to the process that we will be going through on the field to get the Bible into the tribal people’s language. We were given an opportunity to practice the translation techniques we learned by using one of today’s translations and re-writing the translation having a specific group in mind.
Developing Church
The Developing Church class sought to give us an idea of what our responsibilities and what the tribal people’s responsibilities will be during the development of the church. This time period spans from when we first get to the tribe until we have mature believers. We want to get the tribal people involved in their church as soon as possible.
Maturing Church
In this class, we were given a goal to keep in mind while we are evangelizing. Our goal is to plant a church and to enable them to grow into maturity. Eventually, we hope to be their partners, following their leadership as we go to the next tribe to see the Gospel spread to the ends of the earth.
Overall, we have had a wonderful experience here, going through these classes. Now we are in our last class, Linguistics. This is an advanced class for preparing to develop an alphabet for an unwritten language and for translation. We are extremely excited about being able to use these tools that we have learned in Paraguay.
On the evening of Friday, December 19, 2008 we graduated from the church planting course at the Missionary Training Center in Roach, MO. We received our degrees at that time and we will become official members on January 1, 2009.
Our neighbor and friend, Wayne Chen, was one of our class speakers. He encouraged us to remember the words of John the Baptist as we go to our various fields of service. In John 3:28, 29 John said, “I am not the Christ…He must increase, but I must decrease.” These words really are applicable no matter what circumstance we are in. These words will help us to maintain the proper perspective when our ministry is flourishing, when we appear to be failing, when we are in the midst of a conflict with our coworkers, and when we are having a hard time liking the tribal people that we are there to serve. Our ultimate goal is to see Christ increased in people’s lives.
Having finished the church planting course, we are ready to begin the linguistics course in January. Out of a class of about 80 students, 20 are staying for this advanced course in language analysis, and Mindy and I are two of 
them. The decision for us to do this class was based on our aptitude, interest, and future ministry.
Upon completing the linguistics training, we hope to leave for Spanish study in January of 2010. Then we will head to the tribes of Paraguay, reminding ourselves that we are not the Christ and we must decrease, that He might increase.
In a class called Semantics and Translation, I caught a glimpse of one of the ministries that I would love to be involved with and am eagerly anticipating.
In this class we worked in small groups to go through the process of determining the intended meaning of every phrase in Mark 2:1-12 and came up with a point-by-point list of propositions covering every detail of the passage, using the NASB as the source text. As a group we decided to direct our translation toward third graders, so of course we had to decide how to deal with difficult words and concepts like paralytic, faith, blasphemy, and the rhetorical questions.
In order to ensure accuracy, another huge aspect of translation is to put the written translation through a number of checks including grammatical precision, theological accuracy, and cultural comprehension. Here I’ve posted our final translation of this passage for another check from you.
At the end I’ve included our reasons for translating some things the way we did, but no peeking! Send me your comments or at least write them down before you read our reasons. So read Mark 2:1-12 in your Bible, then read our translation, remember that our target audience is third graders, and send us any comments you have about it!
Mark 2:1-12
1: Several days after that, Jesus came back to the city of Capernaum. People heard that He was at home.
2: Many people came to the house where Jesus was. The house was so full of people that there was not even room to stand by the door! Jesus was teaching the Word of God to them.
3: Some people came to the house, trying to bring to Jesus a crippled man that could not walk. Four men were carrying him.
4: They could not get to Jesus because there were so many people in the way. So they went up onto the roof and made a hole. When the hole was finished, they lowered the man down on his sleeping mat to Jesus.
5: When Jesus saw that they believed that He could heal him, Jesus said to the man who could not walk, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”
6: But some of the Jewish teachers were sitting there thinking,
7: “It is wrong for Jesus to say that. What He is saying is really evil because only God can forgive sins.”
8: Right away Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the Jewish teachers, “You should not be thinking that way.
9: There are a couple things that someone could have said to the crippled man. Anyone could have said, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ but it would have been hard to say, ‘Stand up, pick up your sleeping mat, and walk.’
10: “But now I will prove to you teachers that I, the Son of Man, have the power to forgive sins.” Then Jesus said to the crippled man,
11: “I am telling you, ‘Stand up, pick up your sleeping mat and walk.’”
12: And the man stood up! Right away he picked up his sleeping mat and walked out of the house! Everyone saw him, and they were all very amazed. They praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this before.”
Below are our reasons for translating some of the things the way we did. Send us your comments before you read them if you’d like.
Capernaum we translated as city of Capernaum because we wanted to make sure that our younger target audience understands what it is. City of does not add to the meaning, it simply clarifies it.
There are a few options for how to translate the word that Jesus was teaching them in verse 2. We felt that this was referring to more than just the words that Jesus was saying, but that it was referring to the Old Testament. However, using Old Testament or the law and prophets didn’t sound right, especially for this age group. The Word of God seems to clarify this without adding to the meaning.
I’m actually not sure why any modern translation chooses to use the term pallet for the object on which the man was carried, because of the images that it raises in my mind. We thought about a few different options and decided on sleeping mat because we thought that it was accurate and that it would be well understood by our audience.
As for the paralytic, at first we had translated it as the man that could not walk. I’m sure you could imagine that that quickly became a mouthful to say and was just really confusing in some instances. So we started brainstorming for something easier to say. We thought about how Jesus’ cousin was introduced in chapter 1 as John the Baptist, then later he was simply referred to as John. So we decided to call the paralytic the crippled man that could not walk the first time he was introduced and then just refer to him as the crippled man from then on.
Now we come to a couple terms that carry a little more theological implications than the ones already mentioned. The first being that we translated Jesus seeing their faith as When Jesus saw that the people believed that He could heal him in verse 5. First of all, we changed the noun faith to the verb believe. Then, we thought it might be confusing to a third grader what these people were believing, but we also thought that it was obvious to us from the context. At this point, they were not believing that Jesus would forgive the man of his sins. They were believing that He would heal the man, so we translated it accordingly for our third grade audience.
Another theological term here that would be hard to understand is blasphemy in verse 7, which we translated as really evil. Blasphemy would be difficult for third graders to understand. In this context, it seems to be talking about Jesus claiming to be God, but it also seems to carry the meaning of speaking evil, so we decided to keep it general. Blasphemy is also a very strong term, so we decided to go with really evil.
The final thing that I wanted to remark on was how we dealt with verses 8-10. We spent quite some time deliberating about these verses. For one thing, we realized that our audience would probably not understand rhetorical questions, so we removed them completely. But, so as not to just do a blanket removal and rewording, we were very diligent about determining the exact intended meaning behind each rhetorical question and translating it accordingly. Basically, a rhetorical question is one that’s intended meaning is not to elicit an answer; a rhetorical question is meant to either make a statement or an exhortation.
The term to say in verse 9 doesn’t seem that significant; however, looking it up in the Greek helped us determine that it really did only mean to say and does not contain any meaning referring to do or accomplish. We also found that it is always the definite past tense. Both of these facts helped us to conclude that Jesus was saying “It was easy to say ‘your sins are forgiven,’ but it would have been harder to say ‘stand up, pick up your mat, and walk.’” The second really is harder to say because it requires proof. Since Jesus is God, and both of these things are actually equally easy for Him to say and to accomplish, He is obviously speaking to them from a human standpoint. This is maintained by Him speaking in general terms: “Anyone could have said…but it would have been hard to say…”
So there you have our translation and our reasons for translating some things the way we did. Please let us know what you think.
The Paraguayan landscape is home to thousands of people who have never heard the Gospel and have never had the opportunity to read God’s Word. Our vision is to reach the unreached in Paraguay with the Gospel and give them the Word of God in their own language. You may be thinking of being a part of God’s work here, but have some questions about how to do that. Please read these FAQs about financial support. You can also open a PDF version of this article for printing by clicking here.
What is the suggested support level for Paraguay?
Why is your monthly financial need so high?
Does NTM require all its missionaries to raise full support?
Is my financial support tax-deductible?
Will all of my support go to you?
What is the best way to send my support to you?
We have obviously never lived in Paraguay before, so we do not know what the living and ministry expenses are from personal experience; however, there are a lot of missionaries that have experienced living and serving in Paraguay. The suggested support level for a family of 6 as set forth by the field of Paraguay as of January 2010 is $5323/month. It is our ambitious goal to raise adequate support for us to continue our ministry in Paraguay as effectively as possible which began in March 2010. Here is a general breakdown of monthly expenses:
Each country has a specific suggested support level. Church planting in a tribal location in Paraguay is expensive. Paraguay is an underdeveloped country and many things are more expensive than in the US. There is a substantial start-up cost to set up a home in the tribe (building costs, solar & water filtration system, generator). The rise in fuel price has also increased the cost of flights and supply trips. Most tribes are accessible by roads, and we will be driving in and out of the tribe for supplies, 
so part of the start-up cost will be a vehicle. We need to pay for all the trips in and out of the tribe (including our monthly food supply runs).
Since NTM does not take a percentage of our support to cover general overhead and administrative costs, we need to pay for every cost we incur on the field (use of NTM’s vehicle, training material, photocopies, printing of lesson plans, printing of translated Scriptures, and others). The monthly support also includes education for our children as well as saving ahead for furloughs and retirement.
No, NTM does not require all of its missionaries to be 100% supported before they can go or stay on the field. It is not uncommon for NTM missionaries to serve under-supported; however, this support level is based on actual experiences and needs and is highly recommended for efficiency in ministry.
Yes! As members of New Tribes Mission, all gifts and support donated toward our ministry are tax deductible.
Yes, all of the support from you will go into our personal missions account in NTM’s home office in Sanford, Florida. NTM does NOT take a percentage from its missionaries’ support to cover administrative overheads or its leaders. Everybody in NTM needs to raise their own support. The field of Paraguay has decided that each missionary will set aside 6.5% of their monthly voucher into a field fund. This field fund will be used for expenses incurred in the operation of the field such as maintenance of mission buildings.
Our aim is to be completely transparent and open with you. If you have any questions or concerns about any area of our ministry or your gift, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Once again, New Tribes Mission was listed by MinistryWatch.com as one of the “30 Shining Light Ministries,” which means that it is one of the Christian ministries to which donors can give with confidence and trust. New Tribes Mission is also a member of CrossGlobal Link, and adheres to the organization’s standards. You can find out more at crossgloballink.org.
More information regarding NTM’s financial practices and audit reports can be found online at www.ntm.org/give. You can also find NTM guidelines regarding finances in the “To the Finish” booklet.
On the Give page of our website, I have posted an up-to-date graph showing our support. You can find it at www.ntm.org/bryson-white/give. You can also contact us personally any other way to find out our current monthly support at the time.
If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to ask us. Please pray about how you can be involved in reaching the unreached of Paraguay with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you do choose to join our ministry in this way, please inform us of your decision. No matter what, we would love to hear from you. You can contact us through our website or via e-mail.
Bryson and Mindy White
Each country has a specific suggested support level. Church planting in a tribal location in Paraguay is expensive. Paraguay is an underdeveloped country and many things are more expensive than in the US. There is a substantial start-up cost to set up a home in the tribe (building costs, solar & water filtration system, generator). The rise in fuel price has also increased the cost of
supply trips. Most tribes are accessible by roads, and we will be driving in and out of the tribe for supplies, so part of the start-up cost will be a vehicle. We need to pay for all the trips in and out of the tribe (including our monthly food supply runs).
Since NTM does not take a percentage of our support to cover general overhead and administrative costs, we need to pay for every cost we incur on the field (use of NTM’s vehicle, training material, photocopies, printing of lesson plans, printing of translated Scriptures, and others). The monthly support also includes education for our children as well as saving ahead for furloughs and retirement.
After much research and prayer we have indeed chosen Paraguay as our field of service. We are extremely excited about knowing where it is that we’re headed and we’re looking forward to seeing what God is going to do to get us there.
We have a few reasons for choosing this field. Paraguay was first a consideration because Spanish-speaking countries occupied the top of our list. We also looked at translation and linguistic needs, both of which Paraguay does have. The field of Paraguay is one of NTM’s oldest, having been opened more than sixty years ago. In recent years they have not been getting many new missionaries. However, the missionaries that are there are 
optimistically expecting to finish several works and are looking ahead to nearing the closing out of the field. Since there are still several works yet to open, this of course is still many years down the road.
Their excitement has been contagious, and we are excited about being a part of seeing the work of New Tribes Mission come to an end in this country. Having contacted the field and being invited to join their team, we were very excited to learn that two other families and two single ladies from our class here are also headed to Paraguay. Besides us from our class, there are several others from classes before and after us that are headed there or considering it. 
For some reason, it seems that God has chosen this particular time to direct a handful of His servants to Paraguay. To the left is our prospective timetable for the next couple legs of our journey toward a tribal ministry.
Click here to find out more about the work of NTM in Paraguay.
That was the question that we faced when our new van broke down on us this summer. We sat on the side of the road in 105 degree weather, with no water and with groceries sitting in the van.
Being forced to depend on God and fellow believers, we learned in a very real way that none of us is in this world alone. We need to accept our need for God and our need for others. I was also amazed to realize in a more real way that God uses unbelievers as well as believers in our lives to minister to us and show us He cares. There we sat on the side of the road – hot, tired, and frustrated – when God brought along a very generous man who brought Bryson to the only mechanic open on a Sunday. Another generous man gave me and the kids some water, and furthermore, the mechanic (also an unbeliever) was able to figure out what was wrong and fix it. That Sunday afternoon, the glory of God was shown to us, and unbelievers were used by the Almighty, even though they were unaware.
It has now been some time since this all occured. We went through three alternators last summer, but so far the van seems to be doing fine. Praise God for his provision.
I promised another article displaying a few of the things which we studied during our second semester at the MTC. Here are some things that we considered to be highlights of the semester.
Phonetics
Phonetics is where we begin in deciphering an unwritten language in order to develop an alphabet. Every sound that can be made with the mouth for communication purposes is assigned a particular symbol. As we hear the tribal people speak, we will write what we hear phonetically.
Phonemics
While we use phonetics merely to get the sounds of the language on paper, phonemics is the science of forming those sounds into an alphabet. Through the different stages of interpretation, analysis, and orthography we will determine which sounds are significant in their language and how they should be best be symbolized for the tribal people’s ease of learning to read and write.
Grammar
There are many different and unique ways in which every language orders words and phrases to facilitate communication. In Grammar we deciphered and looked at grammatical structures of several different languages. It helped us think outside the box of our English language and realize the creativity of God in his creation of the diverse languages around the world. This will help us in learning a new language as we are exposed to different cultures’ ways of putting sentences together.
Form and Meaning
In this class we looked at some very basic considerations for translating the Scriptures. We learned of the necessity to examine the language and culture into which we are translating in order to convey the original meaning of the Bible as closely as possible.
Romans 5-8 and Romans 12-14
These were two different classes that we had at the beginning of the semester and then near the end. We do not want to just go in and speak words at these tribal people—even though they may be spoken in the best tribal accent. We want to go in and live the Christian life among them and show them what it is to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
International Health and Wellness
We learned about all the different kinds of diseases that are out there as well as how to protect ourselves against them in International Health and Wellness. We also practiced giving each other shots, taking blood pressure, and checking for ear infections.
Conflict Resolution
Unfortunately, the reality is that the majority reason for people leaving the field from mission work is relationships with coworkers. Conflict Resolution pointed us to the Bible when relationships need working through. Rather than giving up and walking away from a ministry because of a conflict, we are given tools and encouraged to work through our problems with other people. This topic is very significant when the one or two families that are one’s coworkers are the only English speaking people with which he converses, worships, and fellowships for months at a time.
Suffice it to say that there was much more that we studied and these listed were studied more in depth than mentioned. But at lease this gives you an idea of the preparations we are making to serve God in missions. Please pray as we continue our training next semester with Language Practicum, Literacy, CLA, and other classes. Also check back here around the New Year to read descriptions of these and other classes.