For the past few years I’ve been working with New Tribes Mission Communications, as Photo Editor. My job entailed finding and editing photos for the NTM website, and also collecting photos from our missionaries’ emails. We put these photos online, so that they’re available for use by all of our members to help tell the story of what God is doing around the world through the various ministries of NTM.
One of our recent news items was that the Akolet people heard the gospel for the first time. Adam and Julie Martin started teaching the Chronological lessons (Creation to Christ) in January, and culminated in April. One of the key quotes was by a woman named Liklikme, who said, “All along (in my life) I’ve tried and tried and tried so hard. But there wasn’t anything I could do! But now you’ve explained to me that it’s Jesus’ work on the cross. I believe that! I feel so happy! I’ve always felt this weight, like in my stomach, and now it’s gone and I feel light and fresh and free!” For more: http://usa.ntm.org/field-news/akolets-testify-to-gods-saving-grace
NTM currently has over 3,000 missionaries working in 21 countries around the world. While we love hearing from them, it is a huge job to keep up with all of the emails that we receive. It is true that we are not able to tell the stories of some of them, because if the enemies of the Gospel knew the details of their ministries, they would do what they could to stop them. Nevertheless there are many stories about what the Lord is doing among many of the tribes that we are able to share.
In January our editor in chief, Ian Fallis let us know that in the last 7 years, we have posted about 2,850 article for an average of 407 stories a year, or one and a half stories each week-day for seven years. It’s hard to comprehend the impact that all of those stories have had as we have been glorified His name by telling what He is doing among tribal people for the last seven years. Thank-you for the part you have played by supporting our ministry.
It used to be that the main method of communication was via print. While we still publish the monthly magazine, NTM@work, much of the communication nowadays is via the website (usa.ntm.org). Once we’ve posted an article to the web site, believers from around the world are able to see it. This past month we had over 55,500 visits to the website. Articles from our US web site, also feed NTM websites in Australia, Canada, Faroe Islands, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. We also have a Spanish version of our US Site, for the Latin American world. I believe that many who visit the website are praying about the things they are reading there, and that they are making a difference in what God is doing among the tribes around the world!
Some of the members of the team have been working to upgrade the NTM website so that it would be more attractive, and would do a better job of communicating what the Lord is doing. When the leaders of the team heard that I was returning to PNG, they found Tim, another missionary to take my place as photo editor. I introduced myself to Tim in mid-February, and for a while we worked in tandem. I continued to edit and post photos up on the old site, while Tim began editing and posting photos to the new site, (which took a different sized photo), so that the transition would go smoothly. We switched over to the new website the end of March, and except for helping Tim occasionally, I switched over to the other side of my job, which is collecting and cataloging photo from missionary emails.
As you can imagine, saving photos from hundreds of emails each week is a big job. Along with saving photos, I have been looking for a way to automate the process of saving the photos and renaming them according to the country and tribe of origin, along with the name of the photographer and the date they were sent, so that we can put them into the correct collection, give proper credit to the person who took the photo, and also know who to contact if we need more information about the photo. I have spoken to the leaders of the communications team, and they are for the project, but most of our programmers are tied up with other work. I have looked at some commercial programs that do some of what we want to do, but most of them are not equipped to rename the saved files according to the person who sent the email. Please pray with us that the Lord will raise up someone who will have a heart for this project, and the expertise to write the program. Thanks!
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