Does it pay okay? Do they cover moving expenses?

As for teaching English, the best way to learn a language is for the teacher to only speak the language you are learning. This really facilitates learning faster, teaches the student to do the footwork of researching what they don’t understand, and having to output whatever they have learned. As you can imagine, it’s always easier to understand a language first, and super hard to create the sentences yourself. The teacher must just start out very simplistically and build on it.

This is the best certification program in our opinion: http://www.cambridgeesol.org/exams/teaching-awards/celta.html

I like what you are doing to live as an organic church. It will be interesting to see how that develops.

Thanks for the link. I’m headed over to read it right now.

Well, we aren’t sure we will even be able to stay next year due to difficulties in our paperwork. But if it works out, for us to continue on, we are open to whatever God’s plan may be in how long we stay. We have both family and family in the faith back at home that we feel drawn to be with, just as we had hoped for some time with our friends here.

Yes, my husband teaches English in a Slovak elementary school here. Since we had lived and worked here in the late ’90′s, both of us as ESL teachers, we had some connections that helped us get settled this time around too. I am only teaching English minimally this time, as I homeschool our kiddos.

This post in particular > http://esztertun.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/have-you-read/ tells a little more.

My blog mostly explains what I’ve been learning personally, and then there are a few posts for our relatives back home about our general interests. I haven’t written much in the blog that describes what we are doing here. I guess I feel like it is personal, down-to-earth, real life, or not really blog-worthy.

We are not being led into a mammoth-sized work; quite the opposite really. Meeting in our flat was how some of them had come to Christ and felt comfortable meeting in the same way again. Some understand the concept of “organic church” being each member bringing something to the table like it’s described in the New Testament. Others expect it to turn into something bigger with a big name. Maybe they’ll always be of that persuasion. Our job isn’t to bash other believers and their idea of church. But we are praying that we can just live out our faith together, grow spiritually, teach each other, and love each other all because Jesus is living through and in us.

What is really cool is that some of our family back in Indiana is heading down the same road, so to speak. So were journeying together, e-mailing back and forth, but so far apart. God is showing us how real he is!

Does your husband teach in English, or the local language? How did he find this job?

Frank Viola’s books have been helping me as well, though I am not sure I fully agree with everything, he is challenging me to think, which I value above all else.

I really want to learn more about your journey and your present ministry. I hope some of it is on your blog?

Over the years my husband and I often felt caught between not feeling comfortable with titles, and then others feeling like they can’t relate if we didn’t call ourselves by some title.

We were missionaries in Hungary and Slovakia around the time we were first married in 1995, and were wanting to return to central Europe for many years afterward to visit our family in Christ. We’re currently living here in Slovakia again.

Back in the States we most recently had been part of General Baptist churches we were usually involved as worship leaders and Sunday school teachers, my husband a deacon. We were often misunderstood when we could not in good conscience agree to being paid for any of these “ministries.” But it just wasn’t super clear for us why, until this last year.

We believe God led us back last year (12 years later, this time with our 2 kids in tow), though now without any straight church affiliations, just spiritual support of mentors and friends. We came with no other plan than to encourage the faith of our friends here. It looks like it will work for us to stay for just one more school year (my husband teaches in the public school system here in Komarno). Some had been hurt by churches and were just wanting to meet in our home when we arrived.

It was here that I picked up Frank Viola’s books, starting with “Pagan Christianity” and wow! what a difference it has made in the direction we took here! They gave voice and reason why we have always felt adverse to titles, why we felt uncomfortable in making ministry a vocation.

My husband does a very good job in staying on good terms and trying to encourage rather than cause division. If I didn’t follow his cues, I would probably have “disowned” everyone as I went through this shift. So thankfully, he was a huge help to me in discussing the new perspective we’d gained (which was more like confirmation of what we already believed), and helping me get through the stage of wanting to despise the institutional church and anything that slightly smelled of it. (I experienced a deep aversion at first, and he was sure that that wasn’t the right, godly response.) I am glad that I listened…and continued reading.

Because eventually God brought me back around to Jesus being the focus and allowing all the other stuff to go. Church isn’t a business, it is the living bride of Christ. Bringing Jesus to those around us is our calling as Christians. Letting Him reveal Himself through us…that is what His desire is.

Okay, that’s one long reply, but I hope this adds to the encouraging discussion.

Good to hear from you!

I like your comment. I smiled as I read it becuase it reflects some of the confusion we are all facing about what to call ourselves and how to describe who we are and what we do. I struggle with this terminology all the time.

I couldnt agree more with your thoughts on ministry. The more I study the church… I mean the assembly… and the officers of that assembly… I mean the minstries of that assembly, the more convinced I am that we have really rendered ourselves highly ineffective and very inefficient in our efforts to fulfill the great commission. I pray the light continues to come on for you as it does for me.

I really enjoyed reading your blog as well, and it is now in my bloglines reader. Thanks. Quite a series on tongues!