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"Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness."

Psalm 37:3

MIBUS PREPARE TO TEACH NEIGHBORS

Bapeke helps Linda Krieg check translation.

September 20, 2007

by David Bell

A young Mibu church in Papua New Guinea, born 18 months ago, wants to share the awesome truths they learned with their neighbors.

One of the neighbors, Bapeke, walked 3 to 4 hours from his village every other week for the entire six months when God's Word was first presented to the Mibus. God's Word made a deep impression on him and his life was changed.

When the Mibu believers began discussing how to reach out to others with the Gospel, Bapeke knew he wanted to be involved with taking the message back to his own village. He thought about the people in his village, especially the women and children who would have a hard time understanding the subtle differences between their dialect and the Mibu dialect.

The Mibu Church knew that the Bible lessons must be changed into the neighboring dialect so that no morsel of truth would be lost or confused. Bapeke, Tomas, Samooel and Justin approached missionary Joey Tartaglia to talk about logistics.

Joey printed a copy of several Bible lessons and set up the men with pens and paper so they could begin translating the lessons. Changes in the lessons would also have to reflect the slightly different patterns in culture that exist between the two dialects.

"I have come to really look forward to the days that they show up with pages and pages and pages of work in hand," Joey wrote. "With hearts fully invested in this work, their zealousness and faithfulness is such a joy."

After changes were made, the lessons were read to several speakers of the different dialect to make sure that it was communicating the same life-giving message. Then a missionary skilled in Bible translation, Linda Krieg, was called upon for help.

Linda worked with Bapeke and one of his friends, Apeke, to see how well the lessons were communicating. They found that the translation was communicating at a deep level to Apeke. In any places where details were lost or misunderstood, Linda was able to give pointers of how to make it clearer.

Last week, the last of the evangelistic Bible lessons was completed. The lessons will be sent to the printer on the next helicopter run in one week.

Mibu men have been training and preparing to teach the lessons in the first of 11 villages, hoping to reach their 850 people with the Gospel.

Please pray for God to give wisdom to the teachers and village leaders as they work out the details of when to begin.

"There is a good healthy mix of urgency to get the message out tempered with a desire to see maturity in the believers who will teach," wrote Joey.