Fricatives, glottal stops, aspirated stops, nasal consonants, and voiced or voiceless consonants—all terms and concepts we had never heard of before our time in Colorado. This past week in our missionary training, we concentrated primarily on language acquisition. We explored and experimented with different tools that will help us learn a new language. We also critically examined our own language to discover how and where we make certain sounds and control airflow within words. We participated in numerous drills with our instructors to practice making sounds that are prevalent in languages other than English. We often found it challenging to form our lips, control our tongues, and hold our mouths in certain ways to utter sounds that differ from our native tongue.

These exercises are intended to bust apart our “44-sound box” of English so that we can become like a baby, learning a language for the very first time. Babies listen to words repeated over and over again before they attempt to speak. Through this repetition, they begin to comprehend the meaning of the words, and they act in response, even if they cannot speak yet. Once comprehension is attained, they start to babble, attempting to speak the sounds they hear. We can learn a new language the same way—listening for comprehension, then doing, then babbling, then fine-tuning our pronunciation of words. As an academic study, this methodology of language learning is fascinating! More importantly, we recognize anew that language is a divine gift. God graciously breathed language into us so that we can communicate with each other and praise and glorify Him. The words “lips,” “mouth,” and “tongue” are used numerous times in God’s Word. In the Old Testament, the word “lip” or “lips” appears approximately 106 times, 27 times in Psalms alone. More broadly, the word “speak” is used 367 times in the Old Testament and 181 times in the New Testament. Through language, we can praise our Creator and declare his precepts (Ps. 119:13, Ps. 119:71, Ps. 51:15, Ps. 63:3). We can also speak falsehoods, destruction, and death into the lives of others (James 4:11, Ps. 59:12, Ps. 120:2). Our lips can be “unclean,” and our words empty with hearts far from God (Hosea 10:4, Matthew 6:7, Ephesians 5:6, Isaiah 29:13). Language holds power. Our communications can unite or divide, build up or tear down, comfort or wound. With our lips, we proclaim the Gospel of Christ. It is our responsibility and privilege to share it in a way that truly makes it Good News to those we serve. We desire to learn Swahili to share the Gospel with new Kenyan friends and to continue building relationships.  So far our training has given us the confidence to believe that we can actually learn it!