Every one of Ned’s flights into the tribes to do translation checking went off without a problem. Every day before and after the days of his flights were filled with typhoon winds and rains with no chance of an airplane or helicopter flying – BUT the days his flights were scheduled the weather was clear. Totally amazing!

Also, Ned’s computer revived itself and is up and running. If it can just hold out until summer we will be thrilled! The Scripture checking went well too. The Lusi tribe now has all the Scripture portions translated and checked in order to teach from Creation to Christ. The Mengen tribe now has the books of Jonah and Acts translated and checked.

The picture above is some of the Tigak believers with their new Scripture portions. The new book has 48% of the New Testament including the new books of Philippians, Philemon and Revelation. It is a joy to be able to place the Tigak Scripture in their hands.

Thank you for standing with us in prayer, encouragement and giving! We couldn’t be here without you.

The TTW is for the missionaries who have recently completed learning a tribal language and are ready to begin translating the Bible into their tribal language. It is required for the whole missionary team to attend the workshop since there are many ways each person on the team can help move the translation along at a faster pace even if that is not their main responsibility.

There were actually two workshops going on concurrently. One included 17 nationals from 8 different tribes including three national teachers. This workshop was held in the national language – Melanesian Pidgin. The English TTW had 17 missionaries representing 6 different tribal languages plus Ned and another consultant as the teacher/facilitators.

I, Linn, was responsible for the logistics. I had some amazing ladies who organized all the housing for the missionaries and national helpers along with meals for everyone. That left me with organizing child care for the 21 children of the attendees – including three of my own. It was an exciting and encouraging time to see the missionaries and their translation helpers gain a vision for “turning the talk” into their own heart languages.

There were some incredible people attending the workshop! It was encouraging to meet Seong and Mina Mun from S. Korea. They are 62 years old serving in a village in the Highlands as their only missionary. They finished learning the tribal language at age 59!

Ezra and Paal from the Patpatar tribe were also an example to us. They traveled a couple of miles every day to hear the Gospel when it was presented in their tribe. The day before leaving for the TTW – Paal’s brother died. It was a very hard decision to make and went against their families’ wishes but they felt like the Lord had given them this opportunity to attend and that they should be here.

One more lady I would like to tell you about is Kariang. She has been helping with the Mengen translation for many years but has never been able to attend a TTW due to having many young children. Most of her family is not Christian and her husband had said she could not come out. She prayed quietly and the Lord worked a miracle in her husband’s heart – allowing her and her one month old baby to come out and take part in the TTW. She was very excited to be here.

I know this is getting long – but please be praying for Ned these next two weeks as he is checking translation in the Lusi and Mengen tribes. He flew by helicopter this morning. The Lord gave beautiful weather which was a big praise. Another HUGE prayer request is that Ned’s computer quit working last night!! He has hard copies of what he needs for the translation checks but cannot continue on with his own translation until either the computer is repaired or replaced or I guess he can take over my computer. Anyway, we need to figure out something pretty quickly.

There are some uploaded pictures of the TTW and a music video of a song the national translation helpers wrote during their time here. Go to www.sinco.nl and click on the Jan. 15th entry. The blog is in Dutch but if you go below the third picture and click on the link it will download the music video which is in Melanesian Pidgin.

Kara Linn’s long term goal for now is attending medical school. She will be working on preparing for the MCAT and applying to medical schools during her time at Bible school. We are praying that the Lord will make HIS way known to her and guide her through each step. If medical school is what the Lord has planned for her, it is a huge commitment. We are thankful that she now has a plan for January at least! Thankfully Kara Linn already knows some people at Bible school so that will make the transition a bit easier. She will be driving herself to Wisconsin the first or second week of January.

We are excited to celebrate Christmas once again! It is such a fun time of year – to relax with family, enjoy good food and celebrate the birth of our Savior! We were able to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Our main substitution was eating chicken instead of turkey. We will probably do the same for Christmas dinner. Even a chicken is a treat since the price is about $14 for a whole chicken.

We have our presents wrapped, our Christmas tree decorated and lights up! As a result of having weak batteries and having to run the generator more in the evening – we can have our Christmas lights on more! So, there are advantages to running a generator.

Chris and Erin Lujan are in our tribe right now checking the progress on culture and language learning for Aimee and the Carltons. They are just making sure they are making progress and on the right track. They are also available to answer any questions they have about how to make the best use of their time each day.

Ned is working hard on checking the book of Acts, Jonah and Old Testament portions of Scripture for the Mengen and Lusi tribes. He will be helping with a translation workshop and traveling into these other tribes for the month of January. We are hoping he can finish before Christmas so we can have a week of family time before the marathon month of January begins.

Have a VERY MERRY CHRIST-MAS!! Never forget Jesus is the reason for the season!!

We are having a lot of visitors this month.  The Carltons just had our NTM-PNG solar specialist here to set up their batteries and solar panels.   Thankfully it all seems to be working.  Batteries are always the weak link in solar power and we are finding that our own batteries are on their last leg and need to be replaced.  Right now we just run a generator every evening in order to use lights, computers, etc. when the sun goes down.  Not the ideal but it is getting us by.  When the batteries completely die we will lose the use of our fridge and freezer and we certainly don’t want to go there!  So, we are in the process of trying to get some batteries shipped to PNG.  We would appreciate your prayers that this could happen quickly and the Lord would provide as He always does for the finances.

We also have a leadership couple coming to visit tomorrow and then later in the week we have language consultants coming!  The language consultants will be doing a Culture and Language Kick-off for the Carltons and a 6-week check for Aimee as they begin the process of learning the Tigak language.  We are very excited that the consultants are bringing believers from their own tribes – Siar and Patpatar – so they can fellowship together with the Tigak believers.  It will be a great encouragement to the national believers and to all of us!!

The next two weeks were spent actually checking the book of Ephesians for the Dinangat tribe. There were four Dinangat men helping missionary Ralf Schlegel check his work. There were 8 consultants-in-training checking the work. The check went very well and the Dinangat men were very grateful for everyone who came to help make sure the translation was clear and accurate. The Dinangat men even brought thank you gifts of peanuts and onions from their gardens for each consultant. It was quite humbling!

We are so blessed to have God’s word in our language. What an awesome opportunity to be part of bringing God’s word to more language groups in Papua New Guinea. Thank you for standing with us so that we are able to be here!

Bethany and Savannah setting up their dorm room.

While I was getting the girls settled into school, Ned has been back in the tribe continuing on with translation. He is doing his final corrections to Revelations, Philippians and Philemon to get them ready to send to a printer. The Tigak believers are especially excited about being taught the book of Revelation once it is printed.

Aimee’s house is almost ready to move in to. After two work teams being on our island for three weeks each, a final two man crew is setting up her solar panels and batteries and finishing up her plumbing so she can actually have power and water in her home. It will be a relief to have that behind us. It is exhausting building a home – but when you are dealing with a third world country where materials are not always readily available when you need them – it adds more stress to the job. Also, with the value of the US$ dropping our money doesn’t go as far as it used to. For an example – one gallon of paint cost over $100!! Most of the things we buy are imported and are heavily taxed. Maybe as a result of rising prices I can lose some weight – changing from meat, cheese and potato meals to greens, rice and sweet potato meals can’t hurt!

Tom and Beth Carlton have a new baby girl, Iris! They plan to return to the tribe in Sept or Oct. We look forward to having them back and seeing them get started in learning the Tigak culture and language.

Thank you for being a part of reaching the Tigak people by praying, giving and encouraging us!

The check was stressful for Paska. It was up to him to give back each verse of Revelation, Philippians and Philemon in the trade language to make sure everything was accurate and understandable. The day before the check began a situation arose with Paska’s son on the island and it was hard for him to not be there to be a peacemaker. He was thrilled to be out here though visiting with his Christian brothers from other language groups!! It was fun to see the excitement for Paska and his friends to be reunited once again.

Tomorrow morning we will be making the trek back to our home from our regional center where we have been working the last month. We will purchase supplies and head right into the tribe. Our kids have loved being at our regional center with lots of friends to play with but it will be nice to have a few weeks left of summer break to be together as a family.

Aimee now has all the wood needed to complete her bush house! The first work team was able to get the framing done and the roof on. The second work team arrives July 2nd and will be there for three weeks. We are thankful for the sacrifice these 9 men and 1 woman are making by coming over to help with the construction work. As soon as Aimee’s house is functional she will be able to begin the long process of learning the Tigak language. Our other new partners, the Carltons, are still in the USA waiting on baby #2 to arrive.

We know these are challenging times for all of you. We trust that the Lord is showing Himself faithful in meeting your needs. We find ourselves shocked at the rise in prices each time we buy supplies. We are thankful to be serving a faithful and loving God who never fails to know what our needs are.

Continue to pray for our new partner, Aimee, as she starts house building this weekend. There will be four men coming for three weeks. Pray that the wood is ready as promised this week. Pray for good weather – rain at night – sun during the day. Also, pray for one of the team members who is having passport/visa issues with little time to resolve them. It has been fun to watch the Tigak believers work together and help Aimee gather everything needed for making cement, clearing the ground, digging out stumps, whatever needs done. They are excited to have Aimee here and want to help in any way possible.

I thought you might like to know some of their background. Beth spent her early years as a MK (Missionary Kid) in Indonesia and then her family returned to the USA where Michigan is home. Tom grew up in Oregon but they now claim Michigan as their home base. Aimee is a California girl. They all met through the NTM training and came together to PNG last fall. They are currently sharing our past partners’ house. The Carlton’s son, Jude, will be two in April and they are expecting their 2nd child in June. They plan to return to the USA in April to have their new baby and return to PNG in September to begin language learning. Aimee will be here with us during this time. She plans to have a couple of building teams come to help her build a house so that she will be ready to begin learning the Tigak language and culture around the time the Carltons return.

We appreciate all your concern during the tsunami warnings. We had someone monitoring the wave that evening and giving us updates via our HF radio. We did have some very strange tides but nothing that was dangerous – just about a 2 foot tidal change every 30 minutes for 24 hours. On our sand island there is not really anywhere to run and hide except the roof of our house!

Please pray for Ned as he is under a big time crunch finishing up translating the book of Revelation. We found out that the consultant checking his work will not have email access after the beginning of April due to being in a remote bush location so Ned needs to be finished by then.