New Tribes Mission Aviation in Papua New Guinea serves 40+ church planting locations where travel by car is impractical or impossible. Below is an update from one of these locations.
Tanguat Discipleship and Translation Update
Around 2010, a church planted among the Inapang language group had the desire to reach out to their neighboring language group, the Tanguat. They asked for New Tribes Mission’s support in translation and discipleship, while a few bilingual Bible teachers from the Inapang church would focus on the teaching. In 2015, a church was started in Tanguat. However, soon afterwards one missionary family left for health reasons, and a single missionary was left to continue translation in the Tanguat language. At the same time, the needs of the Inapang church pulled their teachers away from further discipleship of the Tanguat church, so two new missionary families joined the work— the Swensons and the Chens.
Soon after moving in, they had people from the neighboring villages who spoke the Tanguat language, come regularly to ask when they too would be able to hear God’s talk. At that time, the Chens and Swensons still needed to learn the language and culture in order to help prepare the Tanguat church to carry out that outreach.
After several years of learning the Tanguat language, the two families were able to further disciple the Tanguat believers and continue training the Bible teachers. As the team continued with translation, restarted the literacy program, taught the church and trained the Bible teachers, they began praying about when the time would come to bring the Gospel to the two villages that had been asking to hear God’s talk.
After much prayer and preparation, in 2025 the six Tanguat Bible teachers, along with Derek Chen and Paul Swenson, began teaching God’s story to those two villages. After months of teaching, many from those villages believed in Christ as the only way that their sins could be paid for. In March 2026, the new believers in those two villages gathered for their first Sunday morning worship service which was led by the believers from the original Tanguat church plant.
Throughout this time much progress has also been made on the Tanguat translation. The team is currently working toward reprinting all the Scripture that has been fully translated and consultant checked so far into one book for the Tanguat believers to have. The book of Luke was most recently consultant checked. Pray for the team as they continue to translate the rest of the New Testament.
News from the Hangar
In addition to flying, Travis’s most recent project as the Training and Competency manager has been to create a training program for flight instructors/examiners and add it to the current Operations Manual in order to meet national requirements. He finished all the internal checks this past week and now it goes to CASA (government flight agency) for approval. Once it is approved then Travis can apply to become one of the official flight instructors here. Please pray for the process to go smoothly.
Prayer Requests:
Please pray for the Tanguat church to continue to grow in knowledge and faith. Also pray for the continuing translation work in their language.
Pray for government paperwork for the aviation department to be processed in good time.
Please pray for staffing needs at Numonohi Christian Academy. More information at the end of this newsletter.
Please pray for good health for our family and our co-workers. And wisdom in parenting.
Thank you for your prayers, encouragement, and support as we serve church planters in PNG through aviation!
Love,
Travis & Becky
Numonohi Christian Academy (www.ncapng.org) is looking for schoolteachers Contact personnel-director@ntmpng.orgor go online atwww.ntmpng.org/ncaorhttps://ethnos360.org/find-your-fit.
