So…what are you doing? When people hear that we are missionaries here in Latvia, the next question inevitable is, “So what do you do?” Our ultimate goal is to partner with fellow believers to share the gospel and plant churches. We want every Latvian to know at least one Christ follower and live near one Christ-exalting church. The short answer for today is that we are studying language.

Latvian is not the easiest language to learn. Furthermore, around 25% of Lativans speak English very well and there are times where it is tempting to just focus on English ministries or use interpreters, but that would not be good for our long-term ministry. If we want to be able to share our lives and the gospel with the Latvian people, then we must be able to speak the language of their hearts and minds. We want our ministry to be modeled after Christ who came and “dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Learning the Latvian language will allow us to know others and be known ourselves.

Our missions organization expects for us to spend 35-45 hours a week in language studies. Typically for us, this includes 10 hours of tutoring, 12.5 hours of studying, 15  hours of lifestyle or community (reading, visiting with people, watching TV, community events, spending time with Latvians, etc.), and another 5 hours in religious activities (like Sunday morning worship services).  We log these hours each week and report them to our language supervisor who helps us to make sure we are balancing our language studies and progressing in our language acquisition.

Our goal is to be at a B2 language fluency level by year two of our first term here, which will put us at upper intermediate according to the CommonEuropean Framework:

However, our end goal is not fluency in Lativan. Our ultimate goal is to know Latvian well enough that we can share the gospel easily, build relationships, and help disciple fellow believers. This past weekend, we took the A level exam – if we score 50% we will be at the A1 level and if we score 75% or better, we will be at a A2 level. We left feeling fairly confident about being at the A2 level and in fact, some of us (Patty…) should have taken the B-level exam. However, every day we continue to learn more about our exam and grow in our ability to build relationships, share the gospel, and disciple fellow believers.