"Comprehension +1"

We have completed our 1st week of Culture and Language Acquisition practicum. It has been great. Some of the things we've learned about the Dutch culture, from Kees, are helping us understand why some of the words and phrases he's teaching us are used the way they are. Kees has been just wonderful. His willingness to learn something new has been a definite motivator for me, Roland. Each 2 hour session brings excitement knowing we will spend time with our new friend. So far he has taught us over 200 nouns, adjectives, and verbs combined. This week we are scheduled to learn more verbs and nouns, plus we're going to add numbers and adjectives, too. He has also taught us more than 15 necessary, practical expressions. One we've used frequently (you might even guess), "Vat is dit?" Another is "Dankje vell!" Think you can figure those out? You may have an ability to learn language if you can.

We are so blessed to start each session with a word of prayer. Kees has even taken some time and provided some scripture reading from a couple of Dutch Bibles (pronounced the same). Jinni and I don't understand all of what's being read but we're able to pick out some words already. God has amazed us with what we have learned in just a few days about His faithfulness in creating languages which communicate culture. We are so thankful that He has taken the time to make sure His message will be clear in them all. God communicates and He desires that everyone has the chance to hear His message for themselves.

Quite a bit of our time is spent using our computer to 'file' all the day's data. We must transfer our recorded sessions from our digital voice recorder to our laptop PC first. After thevoice recordings are on the computer we begin the processing work. The recordings must be edited before they are filed with the CLAware application. The end result is an embedded sound file with phonetically transcribed text with which we do our review. Once the review information is complete the CLAware application allows us to file our phonetics into a lexicon. The lexicon is a dictionary, sort of, that associates the phonetic rendition of the data to a rough translation provided by Kees. All tolled we have spent anywhere between 4 and 9 hours - depending on the recording quality - completing the processing tasks. It all pays off because we have clean audio files to use in our review stage of the whole program.

We thank the Lord for the software, the recorder, the laptop, the CLA practicum program, and Kees! We also know we are being prayed with and for, which makes us ever so much more grateful for this experience. God, in His faithfulness, has brought folks alongside to ensure we will complete this stage of preparation - seeing Him as our Sufficient One.

Thank you for your participation and partnership with us while we train, so that every nation and language will hear the GOOD NEWS...

Roland (for the Shafers)
2 Cor 4-5