NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Those of you who are like me and enjoy football are going to enjoy watching the Superbowl this Sunday. So to put things in those terms we taught 5 times this week and so far the score is God – 5 and Satan – 0!

We are in awe of what God is doing. And so that you too can rejoice here are some of the things he did this last week:

Faced with God’s awesome character they are seeing their inconsistent beliefs. After teaching them that God created all the angels one man said to me, “My head was shaking thinking about God being greater than everything. I used to think that he had a great enemy that has the same strength as he does, but now I see that he is alone. There is nothing like Him.”

On Wednesday word came that a boy in a neighboring village died. Normally this would mean that they would all go and spend a few days over there mourning the loss with the family. This is a huge part of their culture. However, on their own they decided not to go because they don’t want to miss any days of God’s word being taught to them! I think they’d let us teach Saturday and Sunday if we wanted to do that. They are listening to the tapes 3 and 4 times. It’s incredible how hungry they are. May they be filled!

One man said, “We’ve heard some of God’s talk in other languages, but now that we are hearing it in our own language we are able to understand the depth of His talk.” The ladies too are hearing the same things. They are hearing how excited everyone is about the teaching. And how much everyone is loving hearing God’s word read in their language.

One day we taught on the first three days of creation and what we can learn about God through His creative acts. The people used to think that God needed food so he created it like we would plant a garden. But now they see that God is independent of everyone and everything. He doesn’t need anything! We explained that he created to demonstrate that He is good, kind, and almighty. They shook their heads and were amazed that he made all these things for mankind. He didn’t need anything, but mankind does. And God thought of that so he created what man needed. To learn that God is loving and kind like that after learning that He is almighty and omnipresent was thrilling for them. One man said to me, “I’m not even working these days. I just sitting and thinking about all this. We’ve separated out our food so it can last many days so I don’t have to go to the garden. I can just sit and think about all this big talk.” Praise God.

Today was another great day. Everyone showed up again. Today we taught on days 4-6 of creation (but not the creation of man yet) and the people were confronted with a big one today. One of the stories of origin is that there is a large white snake in the jungle that is the mother of all the tree kangaroos. So we taught them that God created all the various kinds of animals. So then we asked them if their belief of the white snake is consistent with the word of God. They all answered resoundingly, “NO!” One of the community leader men said, “We believed that because we didn’t know better, but now we hear God’s word and see that what we believed in the past is wrong. What God says is true.” It was awesome. You could see God changing their thinking. And the best news about it is they are responding! They are not rejecting what God has said. They are fully embracing it, listening to the lessons over and over again. Soaking in every truth God gives them. It’s exhilarated!

This is our super-bowl! God is stomping his opponent! And even though we don’t have TiVo we know who is going to win!

Your coworkers in Dinangat, Gary and Esther Smith

Next week’s teaching for your prayers:

Monday: God created Adam. Tuesday: God placed Adam in Eden. Wednesday: God told Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Thursday: God created a wife for Adam. Friday: Lucifer rebelled against God

PS I’ve received lots of requests concerning our updates. Many of you have expressed interest in receiving daily updates. I’m happy to do this. I just don’t want to become bothersome to any of you. So if you want to receive daily updates then please send me an email letting me know. I’ll make a separate list and send out daily updates. However at the end of each week you will receive a summary of the week. Much like this email that you will not have to read as it will be a bit repetitive.

Day 1 God brought the entire village to the first day of teaching! There was at least 150 people there. All looking forward to hearing God\’s message to them. I wasn\’t too nervous until 2 minutes before the teaching was to start and I looked up and saw all those precious faces on me. How do I start this meeting? What do I say? Oh God give me wisdom! He was faithful. We taught on what the Bible is. That it is God\’s very own words that he had chosen men write over 1600 years! They were blown away. I few of them expressed that they always wondered how we got the Bible.

It was a fantastic start! Yesterday it was so quiet in the village that we all wondered who is going to come? But God moved the whole village to show up! We gave them the cassettes and the people were thrilled. They immediately started listening again to the lesson. There was about 20 people gathered around each of the 6 tape players. We gave them the hand crank tape players, but they brought out their own batteries. It was incredible to see. Never have I seen so many people so hungry to understand God\’s word.

After everything calmed down around noon, three leader men from a neighboring village came to see me. They wanted to know if they could get a tape each day of the lesson so they could take it to the other village and everyone could hear it!!! Are you kidding me? Are you really that hungry to hear? Wow. I had to decline. I felt like Jesus when he had to deny people a visit because it wasn\’t their time yet. But after I explained it all to them they seemed to understand. They left with these words, “Hurry up and finish here so we too can understand God\’s talk.”

God is at work here and we are getting the HUGE privilege of a front row seat! I will try to keep you posted so you too can see God\’s work here.

Well, I just have to put down in writing what the Lord did yesterday so that I never forget. One of the things that we needed to do was to hold a meeting with the leaders in the community here to discuss with them the Bible teaching. This is extremely culturally appropriate and a wise thing to do as it gets the leaders and the community on board with what we would be doing. But it would prove to be a very intimidating meeting and would have to be done all in the local language. Since I am going to be the main teacher on our team I got elected to lead the meeting.

Well, I was very nervous. I laid myself before the Lord and asked for His intervention. I did this over and over and tried to not feel nervous, but I couldn’t just make it go away. I also wrote out word for word what I was planning on saying and asked the team before hand everything we wanted to communicate just to make sure I wouldn’t miss anything in my nervousness. So I did all that. But my source of confidence and strength was the Lord. I knew that I could not do this unless he interceded. And what I want to record is that He did!

What He did was amazing. Not only did he bring the leaders from our small community of 200 people but He brought half the village! So when I talked about the history of our work and what we were planning on doing and how we would be teaching them chronologically through the Scriptures they all heard it. We showed them some of the pictures we would be using and some of the Bible lessons that I have already written. God used that meeting to prepare the hearts of the people. Excitement slowly spread through the crowd. Everyone wants to come to hear God’s story clearly in their own language. One of the leaders said, “Everyone from the youngest child to the oldest man must come to hear this teaching.” We were elated to hear this. They are catching it!

It was an awesome time with them because God worked. For one of the first times ever we felt a strong connection with the people. Their suspicions were laid to rest and they are excited about this. The elected member from the community here said to everyone, “These men have lived with us for a long time. They know the burdens we carry. They are familiar with our lifestyle because they have worked alongside us in our gardens and slept in our houses. They know our seasons. They are thinking of us when they make these plans. So whatever times they choose to show us God’s talk is best for us. Let’s stand with them.” WOW! What a huge testimony. And all those months and years of learning their language and culture has come to fruition. Everything that we’ve been doing with them was to communicate exactly what that man said. That we are thinking of them! We have earned their trust! This is no small matter. We’ve done all we could’ve done, but ultimately this was a work of God! He is going before us and preparing the way.

God is faithful.

We’ve all had the feeling of frantically looking for something very valuable…car keys, a wallet, or a pet. When they go missing you can about lose your mind trying to find them again, and sometimes the despair can bring on some words that we normally would not want coming out of our mouths.

Recently, we experienced that when Esther looked down at her hand and noticed her diamond wasn’t in her ring. This wasn’t just any diamond. It was the diamond that I had used to win her heart. I’m sure I had it won before the presentation of that little stone, but it was still an irreplaceable jewel. We looked in several places. Each time we swept the floor we examined the dirt and dust to see if anything sparkled, but to no avail. We finally gave up and just committed it to the Lord.

Scripture says that angels rejoice when one lost persons is found. You are all familiar with the stories our Lord used to illustrate this. When the shepherd finds his lost sheep and the woman finds her lost coin, friends are contacted and tears of joy are shed. Well someday, my friends, we will write to you and share that the people of Dinangat have been found. The Lord is right now looking for these dear irreplaceable souls, and He’s doing so through each of one us. As you pray for your adopted family and/or us missionaries we get closer and closer. Just this week I started writing the Bible lessons in the Dinangat language that we will use for the evangelistic teaching. My two language helpers that I’m checking the lessons with are literally on the edge of their seats. We are getting closer.

Please pray that these souls will be found. Pray that God will type through my fingers and communicate His message clearly. Pray now that God will continue to prepare their hearts to receive His love and forgiveness. There are about 70 lessons we need to prepare. So teaching won’t happen for several more months, but as we get closer I will let you know. However, rejoice with us that we are this close! These dear people are so valuable to God that He sacrificed His son to buy them back.

What about Esther’s diamond? About a month after losing it, I was defrosting the fridge and had towels soaking up the water. I picked up the towels and was about to throw them in the washing machine. I was curious if there was any ice on the towel. So I opened the towels up and saw some really sparkly ice. I thought,’Wow that looks cool.’ I leaned in for a closer look and my heart leapt–it was Esther’s diamond!!!! So I ran to Esther and told her that if I had life to live over again I would choose her again. Then I handed her the diamond. We hugged and shed tears of joy! Isn’t God good?

Someday we hope to share a similar story of finding something so much more precious. The souls of the Dinangat whom God is desperately looking for! Who knows maybe Dinangat is the next diamond in the fridge?

Thank you for helping!

We’ve been on a week break in town. While here we did some supply buying, but mainly enjoy some much needed R&R. We are heading back into the tribe and wanted to ask for some specific prayer requests.

1. Pray that I will finish up all the literacy materials to leave a excellent program into the hands of the people

2. Pray that God will grant wisdom and a special understanding of language and culture while I begin writing the Bible lessons for the evangelistic chronological teaching!

3. Pray that we will use wisdom and love as we ask penatrating questions to challenge the people’s world view to help them see the need fo rthe teaching.

4. Pray for prepared hearts!

Thank you!

“Mommy, that for I love you…I love you with a flower.” That is one of my treasured quotes from Nathan this year, with flower in hand. Though my greatest trials and challenges come as I love and train our children each day, so do my greatest blessings! I know it’s been a while since I’ve written an update about what’s happening in our home way over here in Papua New Guinea, so I figured now that school is out for the summer, it’s my turn to write.

For those of you who haven’t been around our children lately, I must say that they are really extremely GIFTED children. Only an extremely gifted child could manage to reach for a cracker on the counter and somehow at the same time flip the whole container of crackers upside down and land on the floor with crackers and crumbs all over the floor. Only an equally extremely gifted little brother could race with lightening speed to the scene of the accident and grab the cracker their brother is reaching for and stuff it in his own mouth before you can blink.

Who else could learn the art of finger painting while potty training? Conduct an accurate across-the-room breathalyzer test on Daddy emerging from the pantry with Reeses-pieces-breath? Call nickels “freckles”… Be so in touch with the Spirit of God to know that “Jesus is happy…He say to me I can have gum”… Who else could wear a muscle shirt on a cold morning “so I can be brave and strong and save lots of people” (what Mom could say no to that?!) God has blessed us indeed with gifted children. 

While some things never seem to change here in our little village in the middle of the mountains, we have seen some significant changes in our family this year. We are officially out of diapers after quite a few years…(well almost…just working on the nighttime thing still). Charis, soon to be in 5th grade, can now make cookies completely on her own, for which we are quite thankful! Caleb can READ! It’s been a really long, hard process for him (and me) these last two years, but before the end of 1st grade this year it all finally starting coming together for him. We praise the Lord for helping us through some really tough times this year with Caleb in school. Nathan turned 4 and is finally big enough to be a fun friend for Caleb and the two Markley boys. Zachary is almost 3, and we won’t have a 2 year old in our house anymore! Two years in a row with these tough training years has stretched us in many ways.

Most aspects of our life here hold the same work and stresses that face many of you Moms back home…laundry, interruptions, cooking, cleaning, planning, kids constantly needing something…attention, training, love, help, teaching. There are a few differences, like not being able to go grocery shopping (or go anywhere) for months at a time, ordering supplies through email, getting supplies and mail once every month or two, finding that your see-through flour container has turned into the worm equivalent of an ant farm, having your co-workers be your closest friends too, dealing with all the issues with your own kids as well as all the issues with your co-workers’ kids, getting to have Gary home for three meals a day, being surrounded by “the Ministry” every time you step out the door, the list could go on.

We are so thankful for the faithful work that God is doing in our hearts each day, as we seek Him for grace to walk with Him and have right attitudes and be wise in each of the circumstances that He brings into our lives. That too, is not very different from your lives there in the U.S. It is so exciting to see and hear Gary teaching the literacy classes each morning from 8 to 10 or 11. As he teaches, he is training one of the especially bright students to be his helper and one day be the teacher himself. After teaching in the mornings, he has been working on translating the next three teacher’s manuals for the literacy program and continuing to revise and update the program as he teaches it this trial time. He is close to completing this task and is eagerly looking forward to being able to start translating the Bible lessons soon.

This month has been special as we celebrated our 13th anniversary, are enjoying summer time, and will soon celebrate Charis’ 10th birthday and Zachary’s 3rd birthday. Next week we will also be going somewhere! We plan to fly to the city of Lae for supply buying and a little R and R.

It’s hard to express how much we appreciate your prayers and financial support as we serve the Lord here in Sakam. We feel your support and are so glad to have you on our team as we together work to reach these people for Christ. A relatively young man died suddenly this week and it’s so sad to see how the people deal with death, always blaming someone for it. We long for the day to be able to clearly teach them in their own language the truth from God’s Word. The day is getting closer! 

Serving together,
Esther (for us)

We are part of something much larger than our small tribe in PNG. People all over the world are God’s hands and feet. We are sent out by individuals and churches who pray for us and faithfully send us money each month to enable us to remain in the remote location of Dinangat, PNG.

We then are aided by New Tribes Mission in so many ways via supply buyers, finance managers, leadership, government representatives, home school corridinators, etc, etc, etc. We are part of a much bigger team inside of New Tribes Mission, so we decided to demonstrate that more practically by joining the NTM website.

So for those of you who have used our personal website before the layout of this website will be different for you, but we’re confident you’ll figure it out!