Missionary Blogs The latest Christian mission news from around the world 
typical boys
In previous updates we have asked that God would send Higaunon to go teach in villages that have expressed interest in listening to teaching of God’s Word. Here is a report on how God is starting to answer our prayers.
Posts Tagged ‘discipleship’
Answered prayer!!
Posted by Lance and Laura Ostman on Friday, May 10th, 2013One Way Ticket
Posted by David Abbott on Thursday, April 18th, 2013
I was looking though tickets for my trip home for the summer when I realized I no longer needed to click on “round trip tickets”. I’ve been praying about whether to go home next year for a while, but the realization of what the decision meant didn’t sink in till I was looking for tickets.
Reaching the Unreachable
Posted by David Abbott on Monday, April 15th, 2013See more videos of how God is working through New Tribes Mission to reach tribes and transform lives: more mission videos
More about New Tribes Mission: ntm.org/about
Good things happening…
Posted by Lance and Laura Ostman on Friday, April 12th, 2013
Meeting house extension
We thought we’d share with you some of the good things that are going on in the village while we have been working on Old Testament translation.
2 Timothy 2:2 “…the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.“
There’s a Fungus Among Us!
Posted by Jim and Lianne Glemboski on Friday, April 12th, 2013I was walking through our woods recently and saw this awesome-looking fungus.
A Beefsteak Fungus...I think.
I’ve never seen a red one before! Needless to say, it caught my attention and fascinated me. According to my expert studied-it-online-for-ten-minutes opinion, it’s a beefsteak fungus and is actually edible, though I’m not going to try it (!!).
Upon further study, I found out that it causes “brown rot” on the surface of the tree, which can’t be good!
It made me ponder the times in my own life that the Lord has pointed out a fungus or two that had taken up residence in my own heart. I imagine it causes brown rot there, too.
So, how do we find the fungi in our lives? Well, I imagine a meaningful, slow walk with the Lord through the forests of our heart would do the trick. Have your camera ready to capture it so that you and the Lord can sit down afterward and talk about the damages this fungus or that one are doing to your heart and mind.
The Bible tells us to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” (Mt. 22:37) It’s time to go fungus hunting, folks!
Facing the future without fear
Posted by David Abbott on Tuesday, March 19th, 2013
Romans 8:38,39 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Vision Casting!
Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Thursday, February 14th, 2013On Monday I made the two-hour drive down to Branson to share at a Perspectives class with Doug Schaible–an awesome friend and NTM representative who has had a huge impact on my family’s journey to Papua New Guinea. This Perspectives class was especially encouraging, because the pastor of the church served with NTM in Papua New Guinea for more than a decade and reached a tribe with the Gospel. Also, the class coordinators had served in in the Asia Pacific region (of what used to be called Irian Jaya) with Wycliffe for twenty-plus years doing tribal Bible translation as well! I was surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses!
I spoke about a topic that has become more important to me each and every day:
Pre-Field Training
Seven years ago, Lael and I went through Perspectives and were “ruined for the ordinary!” For the first time we heard about unreached people groups and the biblical basis for missions. We were determined to leverage our short time on earth for nothing less than this great commission to see every tribe, tongue and nation reached with the gospel. We were fired up and couldn’t wait to get out there and do “something!”
And that’s the problem. Our “something” was completely undefined. We had no idea what ministry among an unreached people group would look like. We knew we needed a plan. As George Walker, one of my favorite instructors saw, “We genuinely felt the weight of own not-enough-ness!”
The Needs You Don’t Know You Need To Know About…
That’s where New Tribes Mission came into the picture. We toured the Missionary Training Center and were blown away by how thorough the training was. Now we’ve gone through all four years of their training (two years of Bible school and two years of missionary training) and I can’t imagine what our overseas ministry would have looked like had we left straight for the field after college. There were so many issues we didn’t even know we needed to be thinking through.
Now we have a game plan for things like: acquiring a new culture and language, pushing through culture shock, creating an alphabet, developing a literacy program, setting up a medical clinic, running a house completely off of solar, implementing Bible translation techniques, creating chronological Bible lessons that aim at worldview level issues, understanding an animistic worldview, maintaining a healthy marriage in a stressful situation, protecting our children, taking a newborn church on toward maturity in Christ through strategic teaching, discipleship and outreach, preventing and addressing team conflict, tailoring a unique homeschool curriculum for our girls, avoiding syncretism, modeling discipleship from day one, preparing for emergency situations, leveraging various translation and linguistic software, adjusting to an event-oriented culture while maximizing time management, and counting the cost now. That’s just from the classroom side of things.
I can’t begin to describe all the valuable lessons I’ve learned from daily rubbing shoulders with staff and instructors who have been there and done it. God has used the discipleship process here in at the MTC to not only strengthen my walk with Himself, but I’ve also learned some incredibly important leadership principles.
If you’re planning to go long-term, get extensive pre-field training this side of the ocean.
One more thing. NTM has an incredible language, culture, and translation consultant program. When we’re out in the tribe trying to learn a difficult language and a strange culture, these consultants will come out regularly to help us get unstuck and reach the next level of proficiency. Doug Schaible likes to say that NTM’s consultants are like the wench on a Jeep. When you get stuck, they pull you out so you can get back on the road. I’m so glad that NTM has people in place who will be able to continue equipping us at each new leg of this long journey toward seeing a mature tribal church who is glorifying God.
Thanks again for joining us on this journey!
-Jack
Ministering to…a BOBCAT?
Posted by Jim and Lianne Glemboski on Tuesday, February 5th, 2013We had an interesting visitor in our driveway the other day – a 3-legged bobcat!
The poor critter probably got caught in a trap, and thus, lost half of a front leg. He was all healed and functioning quite well in spite of his handicap, however. As a matter of fact, he’d – wisely – come looking for a free breakfast, hoping that Jim had tossed yet another dead mouse into the woods, a tasty morsel to start out his day.
Mr. Bobcat has made me do a lot of thinking of late. How many friends, family members…people in general…do you know who DON’T have scars of some kind or another that they’re learning to live with? Do we turn a blind eye to them, hoping the hurts will just go away or at least not affect us? Or do we have the courage to look them in the eye, love them in whatever “language” they need it in, and point them to the God of all hope?
What “tasty morsel” has God given you today that you can pass on to some other hurting soul?
Suduwama Says
Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Tuesday, January 8th, 2013
Suduwama preaching on an outreach.
One of my favorite teachers, George Walker, served for many years among the Bisorio people of Papua New Guinea. Today the Bisorio church is thriving and has its own tribal Bible teachers and elders. One of the church leaders, Suduwama, asked George to pass this stirring message on to those of us in training at the Missionary Training Center.
“Don’t turn back form the work which you are learning about and being strengthened in. Do not turn back from that work which God has given you to do. Be strong. If you give up and turn back and do not go to tell those who have never heard, then who will go and tell them? Those people will continue living with their total sin debt. But so that they can be forgiven and free from their sin debt, they must be told God’s Word. Be strong in continuing to do the work of God.”
Thanks for helping me keep the real vision in the forefront of my heart, Suduwama.
-Jack
Learn more about missionary training >>
Our Journey Toward PNG…
Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Tuesday, January 8th, 2013Believe it or not, our 3.5 years of pre-field equipping with New Tribes Mission is drawing to a close, and we’d like to take a few moments to share with you all about our future. With that said, we have posted several new blogs that are more reflections on and lessons learned from the last three years of training. Click the link at the bottom to go to the blog.
Christmas break:
We’ve been bouncing around between Oklahoma and Arkansas ensuring that grandparents get their much needed grand-baby time! Now we’re back in Arkansas and will be at New Heights on Sunday worshiping together and touching base with some of you all.
This Spring:
Lael will be receiving specialized (and very intensive) linguistic training. We all have received some linguistic training during the normal 3 semester track here in Missouri, but Lael will be focusing on this specific problem: how do you accurately break down an unwritten language and produce a usable alphabet (i.e. create an orthography)?
To remedy this problem of developing an orthography, Lael will be taking the equivalent of a 20 hr. semester class load (not including several hours of practical homework each night) of solid linguistics classes. The alphabet Lael will create in the tribe will be extremely important, because it will be the foundation for literacy, Bible lesson development and Bible translation for the tribal people.
While Lael is developing her linguistic muscle, I’ll be working on staff with the mobilization and development office at the training center. I worked in that department as a student last semester for my campus work detail. I’ll be working on developing/writing/editing digital textbooks for some of the specialized courses on campus, as well as scripting various mobilization video projects. That journalism degree keeps coming in handy : )
This Summer:
We’ll be focusing on reconnecting back in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. We’ll also be trying to finish raising our recommended financial support, so we can make it to Papua New Guinea in 2014. A sincerely humble thank you to everyone who has been faithfully partnering with throughout our years of training! We couldn’t do this without you, and we wouldn’t want to! Drop us a line, if you’re interested in joining our partnership team.
This Fall:
Lael will be putting her linguistic skill to the test as we go to a Cherokee reservation in Tahlequah, OK for the LING Practicum. For six weeks, Lael will be working with a Cherokee language helper and develop her own alphabet for the Cherokee language. Practice makes perfect….and perfect is close enough!
2014:
Papua New Guinea accepts new missionaries in February and August (due to their six-month national culture and language program). Please pray for us as we endeavor to be wise stewards of our time and accomplish two vitally important tasks: taking the time to build relationships and plug back into life at our sending church and with friends and family, and completely raising our field-recommended financial support.
We want to accomplish both of those things well before we leave. This means that if we make it to our required financial amount, but have not had enough time to connect with our church, our ministry partners, our family and friends, we will probably go in August instead of February. Conversely, we don’t feel right about leaving prematurely with only 75% of our recommended support with a hope of just “getting by”. Getting by often translates into having to shift focus away from where it should primarily rest: the tribal people among whom we’ll be serving.
Please pray for us as this year unfolds, and God continues to surprise us with plans far more beautiful and rewarding than our own could ever hope to be.
Looking to Him,
Jack