NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Lyle Mankey and John Meerstra talking with the Dinangat people at the airstrip.

The following came from the NTMA field news on www.ntm.org. It is a great story of how we are all part of the same team:

A visit from a church team from Alaska helped the Dinangat visualize something they’d heard about.

A work team recently came from ChangePoint of Anchorage, Alaska, one of the sending churches of Eric and Casey Zimmerman, to do some construction and help in other ways at the NTM Aviation facility in Goroka. During their visit, they made a 45-minute flight to visit the Dinangat church, deep in the mountains of Papua New Guinea. (more…)

Print PDF

Joel, Missy, Rylie and Camryn Davis

We’re absolutely thrilled to have the Davis family join us on Mindanao and we are hard at work keeping up with our normal flight program responsibilities as well as training Joel and Missy to take over so we can go on home assignment. When we return, we will work together with the Davises to keep the flight program running safely and smoothly.

Brian and Joel went to school together at Moody Aviation starting back in 1998 in Chicago and then again in Tennessee. We met up with them again in our training in Missouri and in Arizona and are now partners working together in the Philippines. It is really fun to have such dear friends that we call our “family” here to work with.

We have really enjoyed our time on Mindanao, but have been lacking relationships with anyone in our same stage of life. It can be lonely at times so it has been incredibly refreshing to have the Davises here. They have two daughters – one of them the same age as Maycie. What a gift they are!

Please pray for us as we enter into a new dynamic in our relationship and will have to work through the dynamics of becoming teammates in a high-stress environment. Pray that we will remain humble, have the strength to keep short accounts and have forgiving hearts so that Satan will not gain a foothold in our ministries together, but that God will use us mightily to encourage and support those missionaries and Bible translators that we serve here.

Print PDF

Due to recent earthquakes and flooding, the foundation of the dam was knocked loose allowing the water to flow under it. This changed the depth and path of the river.

We haven’t lived here long enough to know the seasons, but if I didn’t know better I’d say dry season started yesterday. Dry season is a big deal here for many reasons. It marks the end of extreme mud and trades it in for normal mud. This allows the folks in the tribal areas to clear their farms and begin planting the next crop. It also means fewer canceled flights because of weather and a lot less stress for me as the pilot.

Dry season will also mark the end of the constant floods in the Higaunon tribe where they have been slugging it out with their hydro-electric system’s dam which was undermined and destroyed during a recent flood. I flew hundreds of nylon sacks and other supplies which were used to try and save the dam. It appears they have done the job and the dam is holding. If they lost the dam, they would have lost their electric system until major work could be done to re-route the water inlet for their turbines.

That dam, while seemingly insignificant, is a huge part of the ministry to the Higaunon church. The missionaries there have set up a full-blown printing, laminating and binding facility in the tribe which is used to print and bind lessons and Bibles as new portions of scripture are translated. The missionaries there are translating scripture into three dialects at the same time and printing materials for all three dialects. It is a massive undertaking that requires modern equipment and electricity to run it as well as air support to keep them stocked with supplies for the translations, and groceries for their cupboards.

Thank you for being a part of this great work among the Higaunon church. It is really neat to be working to support not only expat missionaries, but also missionaries from within the Higaunon church. This really is why we are here – planting churches that plant churches. If you want to see more pictures of this project and learn more about the Higaunon, read Lance and Laura Ostmans’ blog.

Print PDF