Jon and Jen Quast Learning Language and Culture of Paraguay 
Well, it’s Friday night and it’s time for another news article. When it comes to news, sometimes I’m not 100% sure what to write about when I sit down at the computer. I want what I say to not be boring and to not force myself to write something just because it’s Friday…but that being said I do want my correspondence to be regular. So while I have spent the last several articles talking about the training, I again am going to bring out a certain aspect of the training again this week.
How is training different from schooling? Why Missionary TRAINING center and not Missionary COLLEGE? In a nutshell I would like to suggest that a college is a school that you pay to go to because you have to to get a good job these days. Most employers don’t care what you majored in, so long as you major in something. A college degree is obtained by being correct 70% of the time and shows employers that you got what it takes to commit to something for 4 years. However, training to do something implies that you are going to do what you are training for. It is what you actually want to be doing. When you know that you are going to be using something you could care less what your grade is, you just want to know how it is done.
For example, let’s take lifeguard training. Anyone sitting in on a lifeguarding class has intentions of being a lifeguard. It’s just that simple. As someone who went through lifeguard training in high school, I could care less than what I scored on my CPR test. My main concern was wether or not I would be able to perform CPR to save someone’s life it the situation presented itself. An "A+" or a "D" was irrelevent at that point compared to knowing and feeling confident on how to perform the operation.
The same is true of Missionary Training. No one is twisting our arms to be here. Quite the opposite, many people encourage us not to take our family overseas. We want to be here. We are going through so many training modules. Missionary Technology, Effective Parenting, Child Safety, International Health and Wellness, New Testament Church Principles, Romans…these are all training modules we have experienced so far since Christmas. And I cannot honestly say I know what my grade is for any of them :)
Why? Am I lazy? Do I care to be here? The simple answer is I do not know what my grade is because I know what I have learned. I did not simply score some right answers on a test.
That being said, there is a lot of information being thrown at us all at once. Not to mention things going on in our daily lives, church lives, any books we may be reading, and the things that God is teaching us in our personal lives. As I start to summarize I would like to say that my desire is to never let any of these be idle discussion any longer, I want everything I learn to be incorporated into my life when I learn them. Maybe what I’m saying is I’m striving to be a learner, rather than a scholar.
That’s why our news has been focused on training. It is the biggest aspect of our lives right now. God is preparing us to reach the unreached. To cause those to hear that have not heard.
