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Have you ever wondered what it takes to translate the Bible into a previously-unwritten tribal language? No? I’m going to tell you anyway. Step 1: Move into a tribal village, learn their language and culture through lots and lots of conversation, and write an alphabet for their language so that you can write it down. […]

First things first: It was Bailey’s 12th birthday yesterday! Which means that I was up until 10:30 the night before making tiny elephants out of pink and gray icing to put on the cupcakes that she made for her class. I thought they looked a bit pitiful, but she thought they were cute so we’ll […]

I am taking advantage of the time difference between PNG and the States to get this last post of the year done. From where I sit, it is already January 1st, but as long as I post this before 4 pm, it will still count as December in the US! Last night we all stayed […]

This is the time of year in which I always get the most homesick. Right about the time when everyone in the US starts complaining about Daylight Savings, I am reminded that there is snow on the ground at my parents’ house, there are Christmas decorations up in all the Targets and Walmarts, and our […]

Chris got to take a short trip to the tribe this month to work on some translation projects and to check in with the Bible teachers. He made good progress on the translation side of things–2 Corinthians, James, 1 John, and Jude are all another step down the path toward being finished Scripture–and any time […]

Now that we are back in the land of eternal summer, it is easy for me to forget that many of you are pulling out your jeans and sweaters and consuming pumpkin-spice everything while building your social schedules around football on Sundays. And yet, somehow the desire to decorate for Christmas is slowly taking root […]

It has been a full month for the Hostetters. Here are the highlights. After traveling across the world, we moved into our new house on our mission center in the Highlands. It is a great house, and we look forward to making it our home for the coming years. After we spent about a week […]

For almost the entire month of June, we were touring the country in our van to see family, supporters, and churches who have loved us and prayed for us and supported us financially for many years. We started off in Missouri, then swung down to Louisiana, then stopped in Mississippi, Kentucky, and Ohio and finally […]

This month’s blog post is a chapter of a book written by Cole and titled How to Be a Missionary Kid. He wrote it for an English class assignment, and the title of this chapter is “Run Around in the Mud.” It’s impressive how much fun we could have with merely the space around three […]

When we teach and translate in the Pal language, we have to be very careful as we choose the words to use. A deep understanding of the language is necessary because a simple transfer of words from English to Pal will sometimes result in unintended meanings. We often remind ourselves that it doesn’t matter what […]