NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Del, Silas, and Arielle shortly after the birth!

Silas Ezekiel Griffith

After 12 hours of labor it is 5:45 pm and Arielle, Lily (Del’s sister), and I (Del) speed up to the hospital doors in a hurry to transport Arielle into a room.  (more…)

Tonight the smell of chocolate chip cookies filled my nostrils.  What a delightful aroma that caused me to crave one of the cookies coming out of the oven.  It reminded me of the passage in 2 Corinthians that says, (more…)

Ezra the birthday boy and Arielle

Ezra turned one on March 25^th!  Can you believe it?  What a first year for this little guy.  The first month consisted of mostly crying, then whooping cough at 4 months, he traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast and lived in Missouri, Oklahoma, and California.  (more…)

We praise God there was a fairly good response at the presentation we did this past Sunday at our home church.  Peoples’ eyes were opened to the need of missions in addition to better understand their role in it.  Thank you for praying.  It is hard to quantify, but we felt like there was a good response.

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Ezra before he came down with a fever

Del continues to work on his Cherokee write up.  On top of working on his write up he had the privilege of preaching a sermon today.  Thank you to those who prayed as the sermon went pretty well.

Despite being busy, (more…)

Ezra enjoying a ride from dad!

Del continues to elicit new Cherokee words and phrases each day.  After his daily session, he then spends the rest of the day analyzing it.  This makes for long, mentally tiring days.  As for Arielle…she is going to post something later this week.  Thanks for checking out our blog and thanks to those who have been praying for us.

Ezra is starting to be able to sit up

Three weeks have already passed and there are only four more weeks left in Oklahoma.  Del and his partner Joel are going through a bible study with there language helper Jerry.  Pray that God would use this in Jerry’s life to open his eyes to more clearly understand Scripture and who God is.  (more…)

Joel, Jerry (our language helper), and Del

Del and his partner Joel have continued to meet with their language helper Jerry.  Every day their vocabulary grows.  This week they began to elicit present continuous verbs, such as “coughing,” “sneezing,” “running,” and “dancing.”

Trip to Missouri

I don’t know if we have mentioned before that Joel, Del’s partner, is also going to West Africa. On Tuesday night Del and Joel had the opportunity to drive up to Missouri to meet with New Tribes Mission leadership from West Africa.  (more…)

Ezra, Del, and a friend Joel

Each day we walk in and greet our language helper, “Osiyo!” We proceed to set up our little table next to his lazy chair that sits feet from the TV that plays old Western movies the entire time we are there.  Joel, my language partner, records new language data as our helper Jerry spouts off new and foreign sounds. (more…)

The building we are staying in is next to the grave yard

We arrived in Oklahoma on Friday and set up our new home for the next seven weeks.  Even though it took several days and will take more to adjust to our new living situation and surrounds, we are excited to be here to study and learn what we can of the Cherokee language.  (more…)