“When is the soonest you can come? We need some help here. We do not have a ………” This is from the lips of a man on the island of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea.
He has heard the explanation of what New Tribes Mission is doing in Papua New Guinea and is very excited about the possibility of having some one come. They would be coming in and learning his language and culture, translate the Bible and do literacy classes in the language, and then teach them God’s word in their own language.
The responses to our questionnaire were the same in every one of the 13 village locations we were able to stop into on the 5 day boat survey. “We want a Bible in our own language and to be taught God’s word in our own language” We met people from 5 different languages located along the coast of the New Ireland Papua New Guinea.
One characteristic of this island of PNG is the level of education that is there. In most every village you will find a large average of the middle age people who have been educated up to grade 6 in both English and Pidgin English.
These are not people who are starting from no literate understanding at all. While they speak their own language they are not literate in it. Yet for true understanding of God’s Word to take place we have proven that it must take place in their native tongue.
The main reason for our survey of the area was based on invitations the mission has had in the past 10 years to come and work in 2 of the 5 languages. We also have some new missionaries who feel that this is a location God is leading them in.
Therefore, Randy Wise, Aaron Luse, Wesley Alip (a PNG elder in the Ata tribal church) and I went on this survey. It is crucial to have a man who is a believer and is and from the PNG culture to come along and be our eyes and ears to the things we do not see.
We had been praying for calm seas and a good reception from the villages that God was leading us to. We traveled in a 23 foot long banana boat with a 50hp outboard on it.
We started out by boat Saturday October 14, at 2:30pm and visited 1 village to get our bearings, before finding a location to sleep for the night.
The second day we visited 3 locations. As we were on the ocean that day though it was quite rough and some of the swells were around 10 feet from the bottom of the trough to the top. That is an intimidating feeling in a small boat in large seas. On that second day when we went to shore we were facing some 10 foot breakers.
The one thing we had to do each location was to pull the boat completely out of the water so it would not get swamped. We were able to have enough people to help us do so at every location but not always before we had the back end swamped with one or two breakers. You have to get in the back of the boat and quickly bail out the water and then everyone pulls it on shore.
We were thankful for the safety God granted us overall on the trip. We all realized that we could have drowned on the waters quite easily.
As we went to each location we had to observe how the seas were and where a person could pull their boat into for a good landing. We were looking not only for the future team moving there but also for our own safety.
At the end of the trip we were recounting the good things that had happened, and for all of us the best thing was to see the rough seas instead of the calm seas. If we had only seen the calm seas we would not know to warn the team about the dangers of simply trying to get supplies.
What is the next step for this team? We need to wait for some letters of invitation to be sent to NTM before they proceed. The second item is to do a secondary survey of those villages that do send the invitations. Please be praying for God’s direction in this regard. We are specifically praying for the Lak (Siar) language, and the Kandas language.
I returned back to Home Sunday and have the privilege of heading back out Thursday for another week (October 26 – November 4th) long trip for 4 language evaluations. Please be praying for safe travels, wisdom in evaluating the progress of the missionaries and for Erika and the kids to have a good week.
Returning from this evaluation I have been asked to attend a 2 week (November 13 – 26) Advanced language workshop. This will help me in understanding how discourses features work in languages and how to find the patterns.
Again please be praying for Erika and the kids during this time that I am away. Hopefully this will be the last trip I will have to go on that will require such a long time away. We do covet your prayers in all that we are able to be a part of. God is planting and cultivating His church for His Glory here in PNG. We are so excited to be a part of it.
In Christ,
Aaron & Erika, Rachel Micah, Joel, & Grace Weatherl
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