NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Believe 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