reading Psalms for the FIRST time!

We had the most wonderful time in Panama for the Kuna leadership conference. It’s always a thrill to be able to reconnect with our Kuna friends, study God’s Word together, sing and hear reports of how God is working in the churches. But the thing that touched our hearts the most was something that they carried back to their villages.

Our Kuna friends received the first copies of the newly translated books of Psalms, Proverbs and Exodus. Let that soak into your mind for a moment…Makes us want to shout each time we think about it!!!

Most of us grew up hearing “the Lord is my Shepherd…” We have had free access to God’s whole Word through multiple translations in our language (often sitting in dust on our bookshelves), digital copies if we prefer, and even apps that go wherever we are. Praise God that by 2013 the Kunas will have the whole Bible in their language! Pray for the final steps necessary to get things finished up and off to the printers.

A part of preparing for the Kuna Bible is literacy training. The printed Kuna Bible will be wonderful, but how will it change lives if people cannot read with understanding? Next year we will be working hard to get this important step completed. We invite you to participate by giving to the project. Together our small gifts add up. God has provided 64% of the funds! For information on the project, please go to usa.ntm.org/projects/kuna-literacy

For pictures of the conference click on the photo tab above and go to the album:

our last trip. 

Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

There is great value in taking time to be sharpened, equipped, and refocused for the tasks God has called us to do. This guards us from becoming dull and ineffective. The annual Kuna leadership conference in Panama, held early in November is a “sharpening” time for the church leaders and their wives.  

Some specific prayer requests:

• Preparation of Bible study materials in Kuna for our teaching sessions. Pray that we will communicate well the things God has laid on our hearts.
• Safety as everyone travels – some are coming from jungle villages on horribly muddy trails. Others from island villages traveling in canoes on the ocean to airstrips where they will fly in. Then there will bus trips to get to the little town where the conference is to be held.
• Provision of finances for conference, food, printing and travels, including our own personal travel expenses.
• That God’s Word will speak to all of us with transforming power – each of these church leaders will be given Bible study materials in Kuna that they can take back to their congregations and villages. 
• For encouraging fellowship together – many of our Kuna brothers and sisters are serving the Lord in remote locations where they do not receive much encouragement. Many of them even face opposition for their faith.
• For wisdom as we present the upcoming new Kuna literacy program and teacher training to be held in 2012.

We appreciate and need your prayers!

Edelfonso & Jerry

Hello from Panama! The checking of the Kuna literacy materials has gone very well. The Lord’s timing is so perfect! The Kuna Bible translation team has recently made some significant changes in the spelling of certain words and hyphenation. Since the literacy program’s main focus is to equip people to read the Kuna Bible, we want to make sure it completely follows the spelling and punctuation used in the Bible. Had we finalized the literacy books sooner, they would not have been correct. So we just have to smile at God’s amazing timing.

We were able to visit with Pastor Edelfonso. The Kuna believers stood with him and the children as they adjust to Eneida’s death. His oldest daughter Yanera and her husband, who have one child of their own, have moved back into the village to help Edelfonso with the eight other children. We were concerned that this would be a heavy load for her at 23 years old. The believers have come to help Yanera with all the tasks she has inherited – hand washing clothes in the river, bringing firewood for cooking, cutting platano, etc. And this testimony of God’s love is touching some of Edelfonso and Eneida’s unbelieving relatives.

Edelfonso’s father, a chief of the village, has always opposed the Gospel message and the believers. But God is using Eneida’s death to soften his heart. Recently, while visiting in the city, he attended a Kuna church with Edelfonso. He listened to the teaching and later told his son, “I am close. I believe this is God’s Book.” Other unbelieving family members in the village are asking questions that show they are contemplating the Truth. Many are coming over to Edelfonso’s house to listen to the audio Kuna New Testament.

So Edelfonso asks us to join him and his children in prayer that God will use their life to bring many more to Christ. As Edelfonso told us with tears in his eyes, “This is something for which Eneida and I have been praying for a long, long time. If this is what it takes to bring others to Christ, then may God’s name be made great in our pain.”

For pictures of our time here in Panama, go to the photo tab above and click on the third album, “our last trip.”

PNG man taking notes on Bible lesson

Imagine God allowed you to move into one of the 2,500 still unreached people groups of the world. You have progressed well in learning the unwritten tribal language and understanding your new friends’ culture. So where do you go from here? How do you move into Bible translation, evangelism and discipleship? 

The first step is to determine an excellent orthography (alphabet). Did you ever stop to think that alphabets are not “one size fits all?” Every language has different sounds, put together in their own unique way (because our amazing God left His touch on the languages when He confused them at the tower of Babel). So every language needs its own special alphabet and grammar.

Missionaries learn unwritten languages by writing down what they hear using a phonetic alphabet. This system of writing has a symbol for every possible sound the mouth can make, including the clucks and clicks found in some languages. While the phonetic alphabet is perfect for determining the exact sounds in the language, its complicated symbols are not easy to learn to read.

So the teams take their language data written in the phonetic alphabet and boil it down to an easily readable alphabet for that language. Normally, this would follow the alphabet of the national language of the country as closely as possible. This makes it quicker later on for the people to transition into reading the national language. And with an excellent alphabet in place, your team is ready for the next steps in ministry: literacy, Bible translation, evangelism and discipleship.

So next time you try to spell a word or divide a word into syllables, thank God you speak one of the languages with an alphabet and translation of the Bible! And pray for the millions of people speaking one of the languages that do not.

sisters in Christ

Recently Panama experienced some of the heaviest rains and flooding on record. Many Kuna villages were affected, including the village where we lived and served for many years. The believers report that 41 homes suffered damage and most of the villagers’ gardens were washed away. This was the food for their daily life as well as cash crops for next year.  All the coffee plants were washed away, the corn, rice, fruit trees, and avocados.  Much of the platano was lost (and this is the main staple of their diet). Many faithful Kuna brothers and sisters are faced with nearly a total loss. Rupentino & Griselda lost their crops to the flood, including their coffee which was a cash crop to pay for their children’s education.  Belquis, a single mom with three children who is very active in the church and a Sunday school teacher, lost her garden on the river bank. The flood took everything. Her unsaved mother blames this on her teaching children in the church and not participating in the village’s drunken ceremonies.

Also wiped out by the flood was the church’s garden which was used to support their own missionary couple, Anelio & Silverixia in the village upriver. Now there is nothing to share with them. The village where Anelio and family are serving is much worse off because the roads are still impassible in their area, even with horses. So supplies are very limited. Out of their meager supplies, the church has brought food up to Anelio, Silverixia, and the believers there.

A fund has been established to help with the needs of these two Kuna villages. Use the “contact” tab (above) to receive information. We appreciate your prayers for our Kuna friends that are suffering. Pray that the believers will see God’s provision and continue trusting Him as their Jehovah-Jireh. Pray that the unbelievers will see the love and generosity of God’s people and come to know Christ as their Savior.

the understatement of the day - dangerous curves ahead

Thank you so much for standing with us in prayer while we were in Bolivia! We had a wonderful time getting to know the missionary candidates who are preparing for service. They learned about literacy’s importance in church planting and discipleship and practiced writing primers and teaching them.

look Mom - no railing

After class was done we traveled to the other side of Bolivia to the Simba work to encourage the team with their literacy ministry. (For pictures of our harrowing trip along winding mountain roads, click on the Photos tab and then on: our last trip). God is doing exciting things in the Simba church. But with very low literacy levels among the Simba people, there are only a handful of people who can read and use the Simba Bible translation and study materials. Even many of the church leaders struggle to read the Word with comprehension. Pray that the team will have wisdom as they move forward with their literacy strategy – that every Simba person will have the opportunity to read God’s Word in their own language!

Simba-Guarani lady, Bolivia

We are very excited for the opportunity to train 22 Bolivian missionary candidates, begin equipping a new literacy consultant, and make some trips into tribal areas to evaluate and move literacy forward.

Most of us haven’t heard much about the country, but Bolivia is quite the fascinating place! The landlocked country could be summarized by the word “diversity.” Besides Spanish, Aymara and Quechua languages, there are 34 other officially recognized indigenous languages spoken! That’s quite a challenge for missionaries seeking to clearly communicate the most important Message of all time!

Bolivia has the largest deposit of salt on the planet. And under all that salt is the largest deposit of lithium in the world (used for batteries). Bolivia is located in one of the wettest zones – receiving over 8 meters of rainfall per year. This makes its tropical rainforests and wetlands full of life. Forty percent of all types of animals and plants in the world are found in Bolivia.

We should see some beautiful butterflies in Bolivia. It ranks 4^th in the world for the most butterfly species. Important exports are Brazil nuts, organic coffee and cacao. Bolivia has the two highest cities in all of the world – Potosí and La Paz. And we have a connecting flight in La Paz!  

We appreciate your prayers as we minister in Bolivia!

Bolivia, one of the first countries that New Tribes Mission opened up in the 1940’s, is the location of our next trip!

Even though it’s an older mission field, there’s still plenty of work for tribal missionaries. Several groups in Bolivia have yet to hear the Gospel even once! And to finish up well, there is church planting work to do among the Ese Ejja, Chimane, Guayaru, Weenayek, Yuqui, Yuracaré people. An extensive survey is going on this year to clarify the needs.

One thing is for certain. Both in the new works where tribal people will be hearing the Gospel for the first time as well in the older works where churches are moving toward maturity, literacy will play an important part so that people can read God’s written Word in their own language.

We appreciate your prayers as we prepare for this upcoming trip in October and November.

enjoying new friends, Arimtap

We had such an awesome time in Indonesia! We were able to work with 18 different language groups, encouraging tribal church leaders and missionary teams of the importance of literacy skills so that people can read the Bibles in their own languages. A great Bible translation will not have the life-changing effect that God desires, if no one can read It!

We traveled through quite a bit of the country with 28 airplane or helicopter rides. Thank you so much for your prayers! Each tribal group we were with had their own unique situations, and we sure were leaning hard on the Lord for His wisdom to give practical help. God gave us great health and safety as we traveled (even as we ate all sorts of new and “interesting” things).

We met a whole new set of friends and coworkers in Indonesia. We worked most closely with Darryl and Kyla Palmer. Kyla is the literacy consultant for the field of Indonesia, and we want her to have everything she needs for her ministry.

There’s no way we can even begin to tell you all the stories of how God worked, but perhaps a good way to summarize is to share the words of a Punan tribal church leader named Kesi who attended the literacy seminar. He became convinced of how important it is to teach and read in the language that speaks to the people’s heart. Returning to his village he said,  “I have studied the Indonesian language translation of Genesis for many years. But it wasn’t until this last month when I read the whole book in my own language that I can say that I really understood it.” In another language group the missionary took our suggestion to develop more booklets for the people to practice reading and has already written 10 new stories! The improvement in reading skills will soon be very noticeable.

It’s good to be back, but we are so thankful that we can invest our lives that tribal people all around the world can read and grow through God’s precious written Word!

for pictures of the adventure go to our photo page and click on Indonesia!

It is a location known for amazing diversity in wildlife, plants and scenery. There you will find the world’s largest lizard, the Komodo Dragon; the world’s largest snake, the Reticulated Python; the world’s largest flower, the Rafflesia; and the world’s largest bee, the Chalocodoma Pluto. 

So…did you guess Indonesia? Joyce and I can hardly wait for the opportunity to work with the missionaries and the tribal churches. We will be there from April 5th through May 14th.

Please pray for:

• The details of traveling…flight connections, physical stamina for the 13 hour time zone change, paperwork and customs in different countries with different languages!

•Prepared hearts for us and those that we will be serving (missionaries, tribal church leaders, consultants). How we want to be instruments that God can use to build His Church among tribal people in Indonesia! Please pray for God’s wisdom as we listen, learn and minister.

•And for the Kuna churches in Panama as they continue to send their own missionaries into unreached villages. We just got an update from Kuna co-worker in a new work where God’s Word is changing lives. Please also pray for the ongoing final revisions of the Kuna Old Testament translation being worked on by our dear friends and coworkers, Keith & Wilma Forster and the Kuna translation team.

We need and are counting on your prayers!