Matt, Karissa, and Ty Long
New Tribes Mission
Tribal Church Planters
Papua New Guinea
Our story
We both received Christ at a young age, and became convinced we wanted to be missionaries by high school. Our lives have been impacted by Christ, and we believe God’s heart is for everyone to be saved and have a relationship with Him. There are still many people who have never heard about Christ’s sacrifice for them and have no idea how they can know Him. Our desire is to go to an unreached people group where there are no Christians, no believers who know their language, and no way that they can hear the gospel unless someone goes there. We just finished a year and a half of training, and are now support raising full time.
New Tribes Mission
New Tribes Mission’s goal is to plant mature tribal churches for God’s glory by teaching the Bible chronologically in people’s heart language. The process takes 20+ years and includes learning the tribal language and culture, teaching literacy, translating the Bible, teaching through the main themes of the entire Bible, and getting to the point where there is a self-functioning tribal church. This is what we hope to spend our lives working towards in Papua New Guinea.
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea is a country north of Australia whose people are primarily animistic- the belief that spirits are all around us and must be feared and appeased. The Umeda, the tribe we hope to go to, are a monolingual, isolated tribe. They have never heard the gospel and need someone to go to their village if they are ever to hear about Christ and His salvation.
Romans 10:13-15