What We Are THANKFUL For…

November 13, 2017

It’s hard to believe as I sit here now writing this that we are coming up on 10 months of being here in Papua New Guinea. In some ways it seems like just yesterday we were saying our goodbyes to friends and family back home, but in other ways it seems like we’ve been here […]

He is Faithful!

January 15, 2016

Trusting God with The “Impossible” As we begin our year of support raising, we are reminded of God’s faithfulness. We started out on this journey with a beautiful house in a quiet and scenic location, ministries we enjoyed in our church and a great job that Paul loved. Now, in a year we plan to fly to Papua […]

Servanthood and Our Next Steps

November 11, 2015

What does it mean to truly be a servant? What does it take for me to effectively serve others? Those are questions that Ellen and I have been challenged with as we have been going through our Culture and Language Acquisition Practicum and particularly while reading Duane Elmer’s Cross-Cultural Servanthood: Serving the World in Christlike Humility. This […]

Why Read?

September 10, 2015

The Importance of Literacy… Imagine your life for one day without the ability to read. More importantly… where would your relationship with the Lord be if you could not read your Bible and no one around you could either? As our final semester of training begins, we are looking into the importance of literacy to young tribal churches. […]

To The “Jungle” and Back!

July 15, 2015

To The Jungle and Back! (Sort of) We have just finished our 6 week “Jungle Camp” Practicum. For the first two weeks we designed and built a “cabin” made of duct tape, small logs and plastic complete with a natural clay covered/ wood fired oven. Then for the next four weeks we lived there. We also had different tasks along the […]

What Country?

May 18, 2015

Our vision for the future… An obvious question that we are asked a lot is “where do you plan to serve?” Naturally if we are planning to do the work of tribal church planting, Bible translating, etc. we need to decide on a country to work in… with languages that do not have a Bible yet. Actually we cannot […]

It Takes a “Village”

March 30, 2015

It Takes a “Village” (not just a missionary) A theme that has woven its way through our last month or so has been teamwork. We studied in Acts how the church prayed and sent out Paul and Barnabas from Antioch (Acts 13:1-3). They didn’t go alone, the church was behind them. We’ve also had the privilege to learn and pray […]

A Letter from the Isahu Village…

February 7, 2015

Romans 10:14 NASB “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?” Aigen Awahhi’s Letter (English translation) NTM receives many letters like this: Yes, I am writing because I have some thing […]

Diving into the “Impossible”

January 8, 2015

Goodbye 2014. Hello 2015! Thank you so much for your prayers and support for us throughout this past year. As I reflect back on all that happened during 2014 I’m so thankful for how God has been at work in our family. 2014 was filled with times of transition for our family, but all the […]

Christmas Video

December 4, 2014

Merry Christmas! Instead of a letter, you get to see the Swenson Tribe Christmas Video! Click here to view our “Totally Awesome and Very Professional Christmas Video”! (Okay, maybe just “Christmas Video”)… Feel free to use it in your churches as an update. Love Paul, Ellen and The Tribe. http://youtu.be/MPJ48lorIMU