Reaching the Iski

The Iski are an unreached people group living in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. There are about 10,000 speakers of the Iski language. They live in the swampy lowlands where there are no roads or airstrips. The only way in or out for missionaries is by helicopter.

A neighboring language group has a healthy, growing church. NTM missionaries planted a church there using the chronological method of teaching the Bible. The teaching series follows the story of the Redeemer from God’s creation in Genesis to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ in the gospels.

Three Iske men hiked a day’s journey to the village where “God’s talk” was being taught. They were not fluent in the other language, but they understood enough of the message to place their trust in Jesus for salvation. After believing the gospel, the three men went back to their homes in Iski. They were babes in Christ, and there was much that they didn’t understand well enough to explain to the other Iski people. But they knew that they wanted their families to hear this message. The Iski people are located a day’s hike away from the village where these three men heard the gospel. To complicate matters, very few Iski people know the language of this other village.

Despite these difficulties, the three men were able to convince about 300 other Iski people to leave their homes, gardens, and livelihoods, and relocate to a little hamlet that is closer to the village where the gospel was being taught. This meant transporting all of their families, possessions, and starter vegetables by foot and canoe. Then they had to clear virgin jungle in order to build their new homes and plant their new gardens. They wanted to be as close as they could be to the teaching that was continuing in the village with the gospel. The Iski wanted to hear and understand “God’s talk.” But that meant learning another language.

Learning another language is difficult at best and trying to learn that language while building houses and providing food for your family makes it all the more difficult. Unfortunately, they were not able to learn the neighboring language well enough to help them understand the message. After realizing this, they began sending delegations to the village with the gospel to see if they could get missionaries of their own.

Three NTM couples have responded to this request and have started a new work among the Iski people. Their hope is to learn the Iski language and culture well enough to be able to present the story of the Redeemer by the summer of 2016.

The people of Iski are hungry for the Word of God! Each day men and women wait for the missionaries to arrive at the village meeting house. They are eager to help with language sessions. They regularly bring gifts of food to the missionaries, and ask for nothing in return. When the missionaries thank the Iski for their help, the people typically reply, “We’re not doing these things for you. We want to hear God’s talk, so we want to do whatever we can to help you learn our language quickly.”

Please pray for the missionary families as they are in the process of learning language and culture. Pray for the Iski people as they wait to hear the message of the gospel. Pray that God will prepare their hungry hearts to receive the message of salvation. And pray for us at the Missionary Training Center as we prepare our students to take the good news of Jesus Christ to other unreached people groups.

Our new schedule has the Phonetics 2 course designated to be taught in the spring of 2016. I used to teach that course in a lecture format. Now we are going to teach it in small groups. That means I need to get our phonetics teachers up to speed on a bunch of new sounds they are not used to producing. Some of those sounds can be quite challenging. The good news was that we had plenty of time to work on those sounds. However, due to a scheduling conflict, there is a possibility that we might teach those sounds this fall semester instead. Please pray for myself and our phonetics teachers as we may have to teach Phonetics 2 sooner than we had anticipated.

Bob

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Pain Will Be Lost in Praise
by Vance Havner

When before the throne we stand in Him complete, all the riddles that puzzle us here will fall into place and we shall know in fulfillment what we now believe in faith — that all things work together for good in His eternal purpose. No longer will we cry “My God, why?” Instead, “alas” will become “Alleluia”. All question marks will be straightened into exclamation points, sorrow will change to singing and pain will be lost in praise.

Note: This was written shortly after the death of his wife.

 

Miscommunication

The dictionary defines “miscommunication” as “a failure to communicate adequately.”

It is easy to miscommunicate even between people who speak the same language. The probability of miscommunication is even greater across language and cultural barriers.

Noe was a student in our Culture/Language Acquisition Practicum. He saw a skull sitting next to his language helper’s house and wanted to know what significance or role it played in the native’s culture. But how do you ask that when your language helper has a limited understanding of English? He tried to communicate the concept of “significance” in simple terms as he framed his question.

Noe asked, “So what is behind that skull?”

One definition for “behind” is “something that is underlying but not apparent to the observer.” That’s how Noe was using the word. He wanted to know what was “behind” the skull in the sense of what is the underlying significance of the skull.

But a far more common definition of “behind” is “at the back of someone or something.” And that is how Noe’s language helper understood the word “behind.”

The language helper paused for a second and looked over at the skull sitting next to his house. Then he looked at the area behind the skull. Finally he replied, with a puzzled expression on his face, “Well, there is nothing behind that skull.”

It was obvious to the language helper that there was nothing located behind the skull. But he checked just to make sure that he wasn’t missing something. When he was sure that there was nothing in back of the skull, he told Noe there was nothing there. But he could not quite understand why Noe thought that there was something behind the skull.

Noe and his classmates got a chuckle out of the mistake that he made. But it was a good learning opportunity to demonstrate the difficulty of communicating with someone who does not know your language or culture.

Our summer break is just beginning. We have spent the last two mornings evaluating our Culture/Language Acquisition Practicum. Summer months are a good opportunity for working on curriculum that we teach during the regular semester. I appreciate your prayers as we fine tune our courses in preparation for the fall semester.

Bob

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You can’t break God’s promises by leaning on them!

1.      God’s presence—“I will never leave thee” (Heb. 13:5)

2.      God’s protection—“I am thy shield” (Gen. 15:1)

3.      God’s power—“I will strengthen thee” (Isa. 41:10)

4.      God’s provision—“I will help thee” (Isa. 41:10)

5.      God’s leading—“And when He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them” (John 10:4)

6.      God’s purposes—“I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil” (Jer. 20:11)

7.      God’s rest—“Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28)

8.      God’s cleansing—“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9)

9.      God’s goodness—“No good thing will He withhold from them that work uprightly” (Psalm 84:11)

10.  God’s faithfulness—“The Lord will not forsake His people for His great name’s sake” (1 Sam. 12:22)

11.  God’s guidance—“The meek will He guide” (Psalm 25:9)

12.  God’s wise plan—“All things work together for good to them that love God” (Rom. 8:28)