Duane Bakken

Why has the blogging stopped?

July 11, 2015

From the beginning of our journey we have been eager to share each step with others, and the blog has been a great way to do that. When we began language study my time and mental energy were directed fully to study and blogging became less frequent and more challenging. Even though I have much […]

A Different Sort of Askim | Seth and Rochelle Callahan

January 22, 2015

This is a recent story from a friend’s blog. People are desperate for the Gospel! A DIFFERENT SORT OF ASKIM Here’s a conversation that I had with an elderly man last week. He belongs to a dialect right next to the language group we’re living in right now. My friend translated my pidgin (the trade […]

Over the river and through the woods

January 1, 2015

A year ago we jumped at the invite to spend this Christmas with friends in another region of this country, for fun and also to explore it as a possible ministry destination. Since our arrival to this sunny paradise ten days ago our hosts have shared a lot of local fun with us including snorkelling with tropical […]

The Language Progress Process

December 1, 2014

We’re doing a lot of language study these days, which can be exhausting for the mind. If you have been following our prayer updates your mind may also be stretched trying to figure out the levels and stages that we talk about. I hope this will bring some clarity for you. First: NTM equips tribal […]

A New Spark

November 2, 2014

When my friend Peter helped me arrange a welder to make security bars for some windows I wasn’t thinking about the language learning opportunity. Our study is culturally-derived and experience-oriented. That basically means that we not only learn by doing common things with people, but we discover what we need to learn the same way. […]

Burned in Translation

September 20, 2014

This poster I saw at church shows the importance of accurate translation into the heart language – in this case mine (English). In addition to grammatical issues and metaphorical issues (did they mean ‘Let the fire burn us’?) an english speaker unfamiliar with church lingo could get some very wrong ideas about what this poster […]

Warm-up

July 31, 2014

Maybe it’s a sense of urgency or maybe it’s just impatience, but as soon as we recovered from jet lag (three days after arrival) I was ready to dive into language learning. I had to wait. Learning language before arrival may seem like a time saving strategy but it has proven from experience to be […]

Departure

June 25, 2014

With the approval of our visas two weeks before departure we got full swing into packing and final preparations. We sold our pickup truck, built a shed to store the all-terrain snowmobile and the scooter while we’re gone, and packed the necessities into 2 suitcases, 12 rubbermaid bins, and 12 carry-ons. Each bin was weighed […]

Stitching Up

May 27, 2014

What do you do when medical care is needed but there is no doctor? That is the reality in a lot of tribal missions work. Either missionaries or tribal people may be in need of medical attention with no doctor or hospital for hundreds of miles. When you rely on air travel you can’t be […]

On the Bikes

May 1, 2014

Two months ago we learned that our initial visas will be more like a visitor visa than a student visa, making them easier to get but requiring frequent renewal, and limiting privileges. That means we can’t get a national drivers licence until we are done learning the national language (roughly a year). So we were […]