When Albert called me from Papua New Guinea, he shared something that deeply challenged me.
He said that he had met several other New Tribes translators at the NTM Translation Workshop who were working hard on their current tribal translations, but who were dead serious about moving into a second, totally new tribe once they were done in the first one.
Talk about a missionary being challenged about missions. What dedication! The realization that there are simply not enough missionaries to fill the job made them decide they were going to keep going hard at it in a second tribe. I asked myself, 'would I be willing?'
I've always known this is a lifelong commitment, not a short-term thing. And as we continue to make progress on the Banwaon translation, and see the church go from strength to strength in growth and maturity, we are naturally working towards phasing out of the work here. It's been the goal all along.
But a second tribe, with all it entails -- a new language, new culture, all the settling in and making relationships that take years to develop, and what if they weren't as nice as our beautiful Banwaon people?
I was challenged.
I had to ask myself ... would we be willing to finish up here and start fresh in a new tribe if that's what God wanted.
We recently received a communiqué from our NTM Field Ministries team. NTM is hoping to begin ministries among 106 people groups who are open to hearing God's Word. I wonder if there will be enough missionaries available to go reach them.
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