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.