NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

In our last newsletter, I told you about the requirement that we know when we are entering Paraguay in order to apply for the visas.  That meant, we thought, that we needed to buy our tickets near the beginning of the year.

There are a couple of things that have influenced our decision regarding the purchase of the plane tickets.  One being the length of time needed for the legal paperwork.  Another is that we really feel that the timing is perfect for us to leave in March.  The field wants to stagger the arrival of all new missionaries to the field, and March is open for us.  Third, we are constantly remembering that the tribe in which we will work is still without the Gospel.

So, through careful thought and with much prayer, we made the decision to buy the tickets.  About mid-December, we bought tickets to fly from Los Angeles on March 16 to arrive in Asuncion, Paraguay on March 17!  We are very excited about this and are looking forward to our move down there.

Of course, this means that we have a lot of work to do before March.  We have begun the legal paperwork process.  We are also busy packing; which entails deciding what is most important to bring with us and figuring out how to divide it up into twelve suitcases at 50 lbs each for 600 total pounds.

There is also the issue of our support.  Frankly, it is rather expensive to move a family of six into a secluded area of Paraguay and then to maintain a home there and perform all the necessary actions to establish a mature church over the course of 20+ years.  We are currently at about 33% of the support that the field of Paraguay recommends for our size family.  Several people have said that they will join our team financially in January, so we are hopeful that this will increase over the next couple months.  However, you can see that we have a lot of room for growth in this matter.  Now, being under- supported does not mean that we will not be able to do anything there, but our ministry will be much more effective with adequate financial backing.

Certainly, the most important issue here is not just our wellbeing, but the end goal:  the translation of the Scriptures for the establishment, edification, and expansion of a tribal church.  To accomplish this purpose, finances are but a necessity, while prayer is our most valuable resource.  Please consider being a part of this ministry, both financially and prayerfully.  No matter the size of the contribution or monthly support, it will be appreciated and God will use it to further Christ’s Kingdom in Paraguay.  Please also join us in prayer, for we cannot go without the amazing effects of interaction between God and His people.

At first glance, this may appear to be a boast of our giving and willingness to sacrifice. But really, this is a tribute to God’s provision.

You see, just because we’re training to be missionaries, doesn’t mean that we no longer have the responsibility to give financially to missions. We already had a couple commitments of giving before entering the training in August of 2007, so we kept doing that. I’ve never been one to be strict on giving an exact tithe, but I have looked at 10% to be a gauge of our giving. Well, due to those commitments of giving, for our first year and a half here we were giving about 12.5% of our income, which doesn’t seem like all that much except when you consider that the 12.5% came to a grand total in the double digits.

But recently, God has seen fit to increase our support as we get closer to leaving for the field, and we saw that 12.5% fall to 6.5%. Of course, that means that we’ll be increasing our giving, but the glory cannot go to us. The glory goes to God who sees fit to “give us a raise.” Thank you to those of you who responded to God’s urging in your life and have committed to supporting our ministry. I hope and have prayed that God will bless your generosity. Know that we’re in this ministry together. If you want to witness God’s provision in our lives, keep an eye on this graph that we’ll be updating monthly.

The following are several of the classes that we had during this last fall semester. Together, they rounded out the majority of our preparation to begin church planting. We covered topics concerning daily living in a tribal location as well as a model of what a maturing indigenous church should look like.

CLA Practicum
CLA (Culture/Language Acquisition) is a process that we will go through at least twice: for the national culture and language and for the tribal culture and language. The structure of its name is very intentional. It is not culture and language, but culture/language because the learning of these things are so intertwined with each other. As for the order of the words, language is often thought of as being the more important of the two, but culture is at least as important. So, to diffuse that thought, culture is listed first in the name.

We had culture/language sessions with a Dobu helper. She was actually an instructor dressed up as a tribal person and we met outside her tribal house where there was smoke and unfamiliar smells. She spoke a real tribal language. There were 12 of these helpers that different groups met with to gather cultural and language information; together they shared a very intricate culture. We were introduced to several techniques for learning language with this helper and for gathering cultural information and organizing all this into software specifically designed for this. At the end we did a write-up on the specific topic that we had investigated.

Practical Skills
Practical skills sought to give us an overview of what skills we would need on the field. We were exposed to cooking from scratch, taking care of boats, taking care of and using chainsaws, the theory of building a house, and other various things that we will have to do for ourselves.

Missionary Technology III
Missionary Technology III gave us time to practice what we had learned in the previous Missionary Technology courses. We were given a chance to hook up solar panels, troubleshoot a photovoltaic system, and restore batteries by zapping their dendrites!

Literacy
The Literacy class gave us a look at how to teach the tribal people to read their own language. We were shown how to write literacy primers, then we practiced making one in Pidgin English and teaching through a literacy lesson.

Translation
This class introduced us to the process that we will be going through on the field to get the Bible into the tribal people’s language. We were given an opportunity to practice the translation techniques we learned by using one of today’s translations and re-writing the translation having a specific group in mind.

Developing Church
The Developing Church class sought to give us an idea of what our responsibilities and what the tribal people’s responsibilities will be during the development of the church. This time period spans from when we first get to the tribe until we have mature believers. We want to get the tribal people involved in their church as soon as possible.

Maturing Church
In this class, we were given a goal to keep in mind while we are evangelizing. Our goal is to plant a church and to enable them to grow into maturity. Eventually, we hope to be their partners, following their leadership as we go to the next tribe to see the Gospel spread to the ends of the earth.

Overall, we have had a wonderful experience here, going through these classes. Now we are in our last class, Linguistics. This is an advanced class for preparing to develop an alphabet for an unwritten language and for translation. We are extremely excited about being able to use these tools that we have learned in Paraguay.