Jon and Jen Quast Learning Language and Culture of Paraguay 
So yeah…I don’t think any of us were quite ready for this picture, but it’s a good parallel to today. Graduation from our church planting training almost took us by surprise. This semester has been our most chaotic by far, and we still feel like we just got back from summer break (actually I think I honestly still have a bag to unpack…)
I guess we have hyped up our graduation from the Missionary Training Center enough. We have been talking about the implications of completing the required training, being cleared for membership, and accepting membership starting January 1st. I guess probably the bigger question on everyone’s mind is: what now?!
Immediately? Have a baby :) Baby Jade is due any minute, and we are waiting for her to come. No real contractions yet, but we are expecting her to be here at any time. Until then that’s what is on our mind. We look forward to (hopefully) catching our breath and enjoying Christmas as our little family. We have some family coming to visit after Christmas. We will be in Missouri our whole Christmas break.
In January we start anew with shift in focus. I (Jon) am starting my linguistics training. I have mentioned this before, and will only mention it again. The study of linguistics is a pretty technical field, and pretty boring when you go to describe what it is. But where I might be able to garner some interest is in describing how it will be used in a church plant. We are endeavoring to go where no missionary has gone before. Therefore the language of the people will not have been learned by outsiders before. Therefore there will be no textbooks to learn the language, and more than likely no system for even writing the language down. Linguistics will take care of those problems (among other things) making it very valuable. Now, its not required to know linguistics to go with New Tribes Mission, and that’s why we were able to graduate tonight. But we have been advised to spare ourselves some time and frustration and get trained in linguistics. So, we will take another semester to do so.
So what will Jen do while I’m in class? Well, besides adjust to the craziness of two kids (mom’s are knowingly nodding to that statement), we have just bought Jen a language course in Latin American Spanish. While this course won’t take her to fluency in the language, it will give her a jumpstart into one of the national languages of Paraguay. Many of you know that I lived a year in Argentina, and therefore have a good start in Spanish. This is an effort to even our language abilities so we are closer to the same spot when we get to Paraguay. We also feel that this move is in accordance to a principle we strive to live by: redeeming the time.
Everything we are doing at this point we are evaluating in light of Paraguay. We don’t want to be caught twiddling our thumbs waiting to arrive in Paraguay before we are actively involved in the work. We will do what we can now, to redeem the time to be better affective when we get there.
