Three Great Ways to Get Started Learning a Language

Most people who move to a foreign culture--including missionaries--will need to learn a language. While many businesses are conducted in English or through translators, this luxury is often not affordable for missionaries (also, learning the language and culture gives the missionary great advantages in presenting the gospel).

Since I have lived in three countries and spent significant time in a few others, I've been exposed to several languages. I have learned fluency in Indonesian and familiarity in Tagalog and Spanish (although my competence in all three of these languages has plummeted in the last few years that I've lived in the States).

I want to offer you three tips that will help you get started learning any new language:

1. Study the Basics

Take some time to learn the basic pronunciations, pronouns, tenses, colors, and directions in the language you will be learning. These topics will be covered in the first few chapters of any language book. Although it would be helpful to master these basics, even gaining a familiarity in them will help you pick more up as you listen to others' conversations.

2. Immerse Yourself

You will learn a surprising amount just by hearing others speak. Once you have the basics down, you'll start to recognize words and phrases that you hear. This familiarity will help you understand more of the foreign language, especially as you begin to understand the context of the conversations.

I took Spanish 1 in high school and didn't think I had retained anything. I remembered a few basic words and basic grammar, but I couldn't have any meaningful conversation. However, four years later, I had Mexican and Guatemalan roommates during my junior year of college. As I spent more time with them and listening to them, I began to understand nearly everything they said and was often able to respond in Spanish.

3. Don't be Afraid to Make Mistakes

When you were a child, you did not speak your native language with complete fluency. You mispronounced words, used wrong grammar, and had a limited vocabulary. However, as your parents and teachers corrected your mistakes, you learned your native language with fluency. If you are reluctant to practice your new language because of a lack of confidence about making mistakes, then you will be unlikely to learn the language.

These mistakes always result in great stories. In Indonesian, I often confused the words for hair (rambut) and grass (rumput). A missionary I know once preached a sermon about how Jesus was born in a toilet rather than in a manger. 

Have you ever studied a foreign language? What helped you learn? Any good stories about mistakes you made?

Related articles:

How to Choose a Missions Sending Organization

Hosanna, Hallelujah, and Other Foreign Things

How to Become a Missionary

May 2012 in Review

Well in terms of the different things I track (comments, unique visitors, total page views, etc.), this has kind of been a down month, but it wasn't a major dip.

My top three posts of the month were:
Someone is Always Watching You, which, by the way, is probably my favorite post I've ever written.
What's Your Growth Plan, which resulted in my time at Chick-Fil-A's leadercast seminar.
Two Themes of World Missions Work


How did your blog do this month? Include links to your top posts so I can enjoy them too.

Three Great Ways to Beat Jet Lag

Missions Wednesday is a little bit late today. I had Monday off, and I got my days all mixed up. When I think about having my days all mixed up, I think about jet lag. Jet lag is a common experience for all world travelers, including missionaries, so for this Thursday edition of Missions Wednesday, I want to talk to you a little bit about jet lag and how to beat it.

What Is Jet Lag?
In order to best understand jet lag, it's easiest to compare it to how you live your life now. Your body is used to waking up at a certain time; being hungry for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at certain times; and finally being ready for bed at a certain time. Sometimes you'll hear this referred to as your body clock.

Well, if you travel to the other side of the world, what used to be lunch time is now in the middle of the night and what used to be time to get up in the morning is now time to eat dinner. Basically, jet lag is what happens when you take your body clock and make it adapt to a whole different time zone.

How Do You Get Jet Lag?
You're most likely to get jet lag when you travel to another time zone, usually ones that are far enough away that you're daily routine is displaced by several hours. You can actually give your self some of the symptoms of jet lag when you have to adjust to a new schedule or when you have to adjust to Daylight Savings Time.

Three Great Ways to Get Rid of Jet Lag

1. Adopt your new timezone before you get there. The trick to doing this is to set your watch to the timezone you'll be traveling to. This will confuse your stomach and your sleep schedule, so snacks and naps may help you get started as long as you don't over do it. It can be tricky to decide when to start the transition. I usually preferred starting the day before I left, but many travelers will suggest that you start when you board your first plane.

However, it's important to not start this process too early. You need to finish well in your old timezone so that you can succeed well in your new timezone. If you start too early, then you'll be tired and groggy in both timezones!

2. Drink lots of water. Water helps you feel refreshed when you're tired (since your sleeping schedule will be all out of whack), fuller between meals (since your eating schedule will be all out of whack), and hydrated (since airplanes will dry you out).

3. Spend some time outdoors. If the sun is shining, you it won't feel like bedtime, no matter how tired you are. If it's dark out, then you can start giving yourself mentally ready for bed even if you're not that tired. Also, if you take time to go on a walk while you're outside, you'll get a short-term energy burst and longer-term assistance in feeling tired sooner.

Have you ever experienced jet lag? What was it like? What did you find helpful in getting through it?

Memorial Weekend

Have a great, fun, and safe Memorial Day.

Who are you remembering this Memorial Day? What are your plans for Memorial Day weekend? Did you get any extra time off of work?

Missions: Protecting the Home Front

For Missions Wednesday this week, I want to look at the other side of missions. To help explain this concept, let's compare missions to sports.

The objective of most sports is to have more points than the other team at the end of the game--even sports like wrestling, boxing, and martial arts include scores to determine a winner if one person didn't clearly win the fight. To score points, there is usually offense and defense--offense's objective is to score points and defense's is to prevent points to be scored.

In the "sport" of missions, it is necessary to play both offense and defense. The offensive players are the missionaries on the front lines, churches and supporters who help get the missionaries on the field, and the prayer partners who lift up their missionary friends.

Even with missionaries on the front lines, the American church still needs defense!

Do you know what countries/regions missionaries get sent to? Places like China, India, the former Soviet Union, and the nations of Africa are some of the first places we think of when we think of where missionaries are needed. However, did you know that many of our missionaries go to Europe? Did you know that other countries appoint missionaries to minister to the United States?

Europe was once the center of global Christianity, but now less than 3 percent of the population are Evangelical Christians. The United States sends more missionaries than any other country, but now is receiving missionaries.

How to play defense in the American church

There are countless ways for the American church to step up and play defense, but I'd like to offer three:

Lose the checklist mentality. It's easy to let your faith become a checklist. Go to church--check. Read my Bible--check. Smile at a homeless person--check. With a checklist mentality, our faith becomes about meeting minimum requirements, not about becoming growing and vibrant.

Focus on your heart. The Book of Proverbs is a guide to Christian living--its words contain so much wisdom that it would take several lifetimes to try to apply all of the lessons. One of the key verses (in my opinion) in the book of Proverbs is 4:23, "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." When you focus on your heart, you allow yourself to be someone who can be completely used by God.

Make partnerships. The opposing offense will try to succeed by using teamwork, so you'll lose if you try to do defense alone. Partner with your church and other Christians, allow yourself to be discipled and take time to disciple others, and evangelize to those who need to hear the Truth.

I've only listed three of the many ways to play defense. What are three other defensive plays do you think will work?

Wycliffe Words

Every Wednesday I blog about missions. Obviously, today is not Wednesday, but I was too excited about this topic to let it wait another half week. If you're interested in reading my other Missions posts, click here.

Along with missions, there are a few other things that I'm fascinated with: marketing, effective uses of social media, trivia, and the Bible. This week, I have found something that combines all of those interests: Wycliffe Words!

If you're not familiar with Wycliffe, they are one of the leading Evangelical missions-sending agencies. Their primary goal is translating the Bible into languages that have no Bible, but they excel in many other missions roles too.

The Game

Wycliffe Words is an online game that will run until June 12, 2012. The goal is to accumulate as many points as possible by answering Bible trivia questions, checking in each day, recruiting your friends to play along, and connecting your social media accounts. There are several prizes up for grabs, and all of them look pretty sweet.

What makes this different than other Bible trivia games is that each day you are given a Bible passage in another language but, as you correctly answer the trivia questions, you are given a clue to how to translate the foreign passage.

Spreading The Message

The trivia is fun, but what really draws me to this game is the social media components. The purpose of this game is to make more people aware of the ministry of Wycliffe, which will hopefully help attract new donors and prayer partners. One component of the game is to recruit as many new players as possible to play, and this is accomplished by seamless Twitter and Facebook integration.

If you are interested in trying this game, please visit this site: http://www.wycliffewords.org/?pid=32437&source=LinkRecruit. Signing up is very fast, and you can immediately start accumulating points for your own chance at the grand prize (which is a trip for four to Orlando!).

My Thoughts On Wycliffe Words

Wycliffe Words is doing something that many Christian organizations don't do well--embracing technology to spread their message. The focus of this game is making more people aware of missions, but similar techniques could be embraced to spread the message of Christ, aid discipleship, and make Christian education fun and interesting to future generations.

Have you tried out Wycliffe Words? What ways do you think Christians could effectively embrace social and digital media? Does it cheapen anything for you for prizes to be used in ways like this?


Come on, help me out! http://www.wycliffewords.org/?pid=32437&source=LinkRecruit It'll only take one click to sign up!

How To Choose A Missions Sending Organization

This is Missions Wednesday. For an archive of all of my missions posts, click here.

If you search "Missions" on Google, you will get thousands of results in only a fraction of a second. A closer look will reveal that there are hundreds of missions-sending organizations. If you or a team are interested in going on a short- or long-term missions trip, you'll inevitably find that the opportunities are endless.

Here's a guide to help you get started in your missions trip planning. I hope this guide will help you make the best decision about a ministry partner next time you go on a missions trip. Since I work at the national office of the Assemblies of God, I have to highly recommend going on missions trips with the AG. GoAG.org is a great resource for helping you get started.

Go Independently
Unless your group has the backing of a strong church and has great overseas partners, this probably isn't ideal for long-term missions, but it can work well for short-term trips. When you plan your trip independent of a sending organization, then you design a trip that will specifically work for you or your group and you may be able to reduce your overall costs. A major drawback to this approach is that you must take care of all of the logistics instead of having the help of an established organization.

Look Within Your Denomination
If you attend a denominational church, then it is valuable to look at the opportunities within your organization. They will likely have a missions department or will be able to endorse certain organizations. Depending on what you plan on doing on your trip, your denomination's office may be able to connect you with people on the missions field who can host you and your team. Additionally, staying within the denomination may have special opportunities or incentives. For example, in the Assemblies of God, churches can receive awards for how much money they give to missions each year, and the money spent on the trip counts towards that total.

Choose Based On Your Ministry
A friend of mine is a missionary to surfers, others teach English, others do entrepreneurial work, others work with children, others do manual labor--the opportunities are endless. Some missions-sending organizations work specifically with people and teams who want to do a specific kind of ministry. For example, the English Language Institute helps missionaries use English teaching for evangelism in countries across Asia. If you or your team have specific gifts, then an organization that specializes in that kind of ministry will be great ministry partners.

Choose A Great Organization
Sadly, not all organizations are efficient or reputable. Some organizations have high administrative costs, which means they don't efficiently spend the money they receive. A simple Google search will help you assess the reputability of the organization you intend on working with. There are also organizations that specialize in investigating ministries and non-profits to assess their reputability. MinistryWatch.com or CharityNavigator.org may be a good places to start.

What do you consider when you decide on ministry partners for a missions trip? Have you had a good experience with any? What characteristics do you think a good missions-sending organization have?