You type it. You’re the blogger in the family.
No, you. It’s your story.
I can’t write it like you can.
Well…that goes without saying.
What? Fine! I’ll show you!
Hey, sorry about that! Despite what it says in the author slot above, this is Wife, taking over blogging duties from my husband.
Welcome! Come on in, have a Diet Coke, and get a glimpse of what I am struggling with on the field. If you want coffee, go find Ethan.
My husband and I are Deaf. Our three children are all hearing and use a variety of languages. Being with the IMB for almost 13 years, we have certainly faced a lot of challenges. However, we are now facing a dilemma that we never had to face on the field.
No, it’s not related to peanut butter. We’ve faced that one before.
Ethan here….how hard is it for volunteers to follow instructions regarding which peanut butter to bring? Crunchy, people, C-R-U-N-C-H-Y. It’s not rocket science! And besides, who likes that creamy stuff? I’ll tell ya…the American church today….
Sorry. He gets so emotional.
The dilemma we are looking at is what to do with our children for church. I am sure you are thinking, “What? You’re making no sense, lady! You’re a church planter and church is a problem?” Yep…it is true. Let me explain it all to you.
We work with Deaf Ecuadorians who use a minority language: Ecuadorian Sign Language (the dominant language here is Spanish). When we were first appointed to South America, we made a decision before our plane landed: immerse our children in the Spanish language. Our reasoning was that they will be around native Spanish speakers daily through friends, neighbors, storekeepers, the guards, etc. We placed them in a Spanish school for 3 years, and they learned spoken Spanish quite well, well enough to mock our feeble attempts at oral communication. We did not require them to be fluent in the local sign language because we knew their interactions with our people group would be limited; very limited as compared to their interactions with Spanish speakers.
Don’t get me wrong, our kids hang out with our Deaf friends, but they primarily play with our Deaf friends’ children who are hearing and speak Spanish. Our children know enough Ecuadorian Sign Language to communicate the basics with local Deaf, but that is about it.
When we planted a Deaf church in Quito, we planted it within a hearing Ecuadorian church; sister churches, basically. It was a great set-up for our family. The Deaf congregation met in the basement for worship while our children attended S.S. and worship with the Spanish-speaking congregation. We were not in the same room, but we were in the same place at the same time. Our children were able to worship because they could understand the language…we were able to worship because we could understand the language. All was good.
Then we went on stateside or as the older..ahem…wiser missionaries call it, furlough. While on stateside, the Deaf church decided they wanted to leave and become a house church. We were excited. We thought it was awesome. That is, we thought it was great until we remembered our kids.
You had to “remember” the kids? “Mother Of The Year,” ladies and gentlemen!
Drink your coffee and leave me alone.
Scenarios ran through our minds:
We require the kids to come with us to the Deaf house church where they don’t know Ecuadorian Sign well enough to worship, learn, and grow. They aren’t around local Deaf enough to develop greater language skills, so every Sunday is a wasted experience. Yuck!
Dad goes on to the Deaf house church while Mom takes the kids to the Spanish church. Mom sits in the back of the auditorium at the Spanish church, bored, unable to understand what is going on. Mom misses out on worship with a body of believers while Dad is at the Deaf church. Yuck!
Mom and Dad drop the kids off at the Spanish church, go on to the Deaf house church, which is about an hour and half away from the Spanish church. The kids would be sitting on the sidewalk waiting for an hour or two after church for Mom and Dad to return. Yuck!
Of course, we teach our children God’s Word and pray together as a family, but we believe in worshipping with brothers and sisters in Christ in church. We want our kids to worship in a language they can understand so that they can grow, learn, and serve.
Sigh…our kids…left behind. This is not an option.
There is no “right” decision for me. Or rather, “right” decision is for all of us to be in the same room worshipping in a language we all understand, but the realities of living on the field and difficulties of our situation call for us to set aside that ideal.
I want to make a good decision, and to be honest, none of those decisions seems good to me. I know God will help us and guide us with His wisdom to a decision that is best for our family, for our children. In the meantime, I will drink Diet Coke and I will pray. Will you join me?
That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Whatever.
Hilarious.
I hope that really was your wife writing this Ethan, or you will have really stepped in it.
I think we all love to hear your reflections on real-life struggles our IMB workers face.
I enjoy they’re real-life people!! Not to mention the struggles they face.
Struggles…that’s the right word.
You would not believe how many volunteers think that creamy peanut butter is just as acceptable as crunchy.
In all honesty, we do sort of agonize over this particular situation; we’re not the only ones, either. We’ve asked other people who minister among a minority language group, yet their kids have only mastered the dominant language. Their answer? “Yeah, we messed up a lot. Kids turned out ok, though, because we love Jesus and we showed that.”
You and your kids are children of a Great, Great God? (Not exactly apologies to Mark Medoff…)
Having been an MK who never got proficient with even the national language (much less regional languages) and constantly stammering when nationals attempted conversation with me: you toughen and grow. You give them more incentive to learn the language of your people group. They might chafe, but if they love you and love Jesus, they understand your calling and will accommodate your calling and might even be drawn to missions because of your faithfulness.
They likely are proud of their parents for who you are and glad to be your children and if God is gracious, they understand the time with you is short and soon they won’t have the privilege of sharing your ministry.
Thanks for the input, Greg.
We’ve always required our kids to do their best in interacting with others in whatever language. This is different, though. If we were to decide that the Deaf house church is the place for us all to worship, the kids would be exposed to Ecuadorian Sign Language once a week for about 90 minutes. How long do you think it would take them to master that language in order to use it for worship if they are learning the language at such a slow rate?
During the week they have school and homework and bedtimes and chores. There are no places to hang out in order to learn the language. As it currently stands, they use 3 different languages on a daily basis, so finding the room to add a fourth (at 90 minutes a week) just doesn’t seem realistic. And while they would be learning this language, they wouldn’r comprehend enough in order to serve and learn.
We would love for them to learn this, a fourth language, but the price they would pay is too steep: no Sunday worship.
Thanks for interacting.
I wasn’t speaking prescriptively. That was biographically. 😉
The Wife asked me to write it for her, and I did. However, it lacked a certain panache, a specific voice that she desired. Therefore, she re-wrote it; this is the result.
I was responsible for editing only, and inserting certain clarifying comments here and there.
Good stuff.
Yes, indeed, there can often be a real tension between most effectively fulfilling our missionary calling among the people to whom we feel God has called us, and our responsibility for taking care of the spiritual and other needs of our children. I do not have any easy answers. I admire you for being willing to sacrifice and stick it out while you try to do both as well as you can. I pray God will continue to give you strength and wisdom to do what He would have you do.
Here are some further thoughts I wrote on this when I reflected on the same thing a couple of years ago:
http://sbcimpact.org/2008/01/03/missions-and-family/
David,
Thanks for sharing the link. It was a great read for me. I appreciate you sharing your experience and insight. Are you still on the field?
We served 18 years in Spain, 14 of them with the IMB. We resigned about 5 years ago, due to concerns for the welfare of our family. What I wrote there I wrote from the perspective of a good deal of personal experience and pain. We are very thankful that God has been faithful and has taken care of us and our children in the meantime.
I know this is late to comment, but I did share this with my wife. We’re prepping ourselves for overseas missions work, and with an 11-month-old we are thinking more and more about missions and family. I wish I had a good suggestion for your conundrum, but my wife and I have been praying for you and your situation.
Andrew,
Thank you for praying. As of today, we are still undecided. If you/your wife ever have any questions related to missions/family and balancing it, please feel free to contact us via email.
Good article on a problem that all missionaries face to some degree. I would add it is sometimes even a bigger problem when MKs return to the states.
We always attended a national church and our MKs attended with us. The language was Mandarin Chinese and even though their Chinese was okay I know they seldom undertood everthing. The same is true for my wife and I except when I was preaching in Chinese. They attended an MK school so they were not immersed in the language. David Miller would be familiar with that school.
In some countries the MKs do attend national schools and have no problem with the language.
What I see often though is that when MKs return to the states they have trouble fitting in with the church in the US. They are often used to attending small store front churches or house churches. The cultural aspects of worship they are used to often are different. I could go into more detail on the differences but it could be different depending on the part of the world they come from. It took a while for my kids to really get involved and feel at home in a church back here. They all three grew up from a very small age until they graduated from high school on the misson field.
Hey Ron, welcome to the discussion. There is a much earlier post that you can read about what your kids went through, https://sbcvoices.com/five-questions-with-an-imb-missionary-kid/
It discusses some of the issues related to MKs rejoining the US church. It isn’t comprehensive, of course, but it might resonate.
One issue we face is that our kids ARE fluent in the national language. Our people group, though, is not from that language group. They are a linguistic minority. No one on the streets uses that language. No one at the kids’ school uses it. The only times our kids interact with folks who use Ecuadorian Sign Language is when we have Deaf friends over to our home. That is an insufficient language base for Sunday morning worship, I think.
I feel badly for the struggles your kids went through, though. I imagine you folks tried to figure out how to put the kids in school while also trying to give them the language exposure they needed. No easy answer, as I am sure you know.
Thanks for the comments.
CRUNCHY! YESSSSSSSSSS!! CREAMY has NO REASON TO EXIST…until…like…you get OLDDDDDDDDDDDDD…and LOSE your TEETH…and then…??? Well, then you sit around and eat CREAMY by the JARFUL! [Wait…one moment…got to scrape out that last little…arggggg…oops…yep…finalllllyyyyy…THERE it IS! 😛 {Creamy} ROASTED PEANUT with HONEY is the BOMB! 😉 heh]
Ermmmm…[blush!]…seriously, there WAS a POINT to this commentary, which is: you’ve already SAID the WORD–IMMERSION! 😀
When I [hearing] tried to learn Spanish, I suspect it would have taken me MUCH longer had I been blind, because the biggest help to my advancement was my Spanish Bible Study classes, taught by a man who I think could not have spoken while sitting on his hands…… 😉 heh
His exceedingly animated 😉 mano-ual *explanation* of every little detail he spoke made it SO MUCH EASIER to have a CLUE! 😀
In my personal experience, therefore, Bible Study is actually the OPTIMAL context in which TO learn a language! 🙂
So, I vote for immersion…again…for ALL of y’all! Our Lord, THE Word…Christ or Jesus Christ in English…Cristo or Jesucristo in Spanish…in ASL it is the touching of first the left then the right palm with the opposite middle finger. The beauty is that the sign language can be done at the same time as any verbalization, so your kids would immerse by SIGNING individual words as they learn them whenever they speak that word in whichever language they are speaking at the moment, and you two would immerse by VERBALIZING your signed words in Spanish as you learn the Spanish terms.
This also addresses the issue of inclusivity. Wouldn’t you like for your church members to be better received in the context of their own society and national culture? What better first steps than having your children walking around chattering away in both languages at once? 😉
I still remember from my own mission service watching two youths in Madrid outdoing everyone else on a very noisy city street, by carrying on a very animated conversation ACROSS THE STREET [one on each side] at a time when the rest of us were finding it impossible to hear ourselves think, worse less HEAR the comments of our neighbor. The youths, of course, were SUCCEEDING where all else failed because THEY were speaking SIGN LANGUAGE! 😉
Best wishes! 😀
Wow. There’s a lot here.
The only thing to which I am going to respond is the comment about languages. It is all but physically and cognitively impossible to express two different languages simultaneously. If you are speaking English while attempting to use American Sign Language, one language or the other will suffer. Period.
Same goes for spoken Spanish and Ecuadorian Sign Language: one cannot express both languages simultaneously without one (or both) language being watered down in the process.
And that’s bad missiology and poor language learning.
I approved that one for Dave. Almost more smiley faces than Jesus had apostles.
If you don’t like it, you need not post it. NO reason to get dumb and snarky. That’s just ugly, and certainly not Christian, Mike. Unlike you, I was at least trying to be supportive.
Obviously one cannot speak with any level of grammar in the sense I referenced, I was simply referring to increasing vocabulary. I’ve no knowledge of your comment “It is all but physically and cognitively impossible to express two different languages simultaneously.” I do so frequently myself–I guess, as always, “With God ALL things are possible.”
I apologize S. I didn’t mean any offense to you. It’s simply a long standing joke around here that Dave Miller our editor abhors smiley faces. And since he said he was not going to be around to comment or anything today, and b/c your comment was held in moderation (perhaps b/c of being a new poster), I simply said that I approved this one just for Dave.
I didn’t mean any offense or snarkiness towards you, just teasing Dave.
In Mike’s defense – he’s right. For those who frequent this site, the fact that Dave (our editor) detests emoticons is rather well-known. I understood his comment to be a slight dig at Dave more than anything else. My wife didn’t catch the reference either, until I explained it to her.
As for your comments about grammar, language is useless without it. Your comment (seeming to set aside the grammar of things) proves my point: one cannot express two languages simultaneously without one or both languages suffering in some way. In this situation, grammar is suffering.
I happened to have a linguist over for supper this evening (really!). I asked about this concept and this was the approximate response:
“You cannot express two languages simultaneously and completely. Perhaps you can shift from one to the other, first stating something in English and then following with a translation into American Sign Language. Even while speaking English and signing at the same time, you are not likely doing both languages the credit they deserve, and one (probably the one you learned later in life) is going to suffer. You may manage to use individual signs drawn from American Sign Language while you are speaking English, but the idiomatic expressions, the verb conjugation, the pronoun use, the grammar, the syntax….all will suffer. The result is that you will be speaking ONE language while inserting pieces (vocabulary words) from another. Not two languages, not simultaneously.”
On a side note, you mentioned something about verbalizing and signing. What gave you the impression anyone was verbalizing in church? Perhaps I wasn’t clear…Deaf church, not hearing. My fault.
Thanks for interacting, S. And again, Mike was poking at Dave’s sensitivities. Please forgive him.
I would have said something about so much SHOUTING in one post, except that CB has gotten me used to it.