NTM

On the 2nd of this month I took Gloria to the ER at the local hospital here in town. She was having massive chest pains, and many other symptoms of a heart attack.

Because this is an interior town there wasn’t much that could be done for her. I took her later on last week to a cardiologist here in town, but also she didn’t have the means to run the necessary tests to find out the cause of her symptoms.

After much prayer, and consulting with our home church, our field leadership, and our family, we have decided to go to the USA to see if we can find out just what is wrong with her.

Our plans are to fly to  the USA on the 20th of this month. Gloria is still very weak, though the pain has eased up a bit. Please pray that she will be able to make the flights with no problem.

Also please pray for our son, Scott, who will be here alone until our co-workers return in April. He will have both houses (the one here in town and the one near the tribe) to take care of, plus keep the ministry going.

Our plans at present are to take care of Gloria’s health, and once we find out what her problem is we’ll plan our future. Thank you so much for praying.

We have had to postpone our Christmas activities with the Katukina people for two reasons.

First, there is a terrible cold/flu that has attacked the whole tribe as well as the missionaries. So far two babies have died in the hospital here in town from complications of this flu. Scott, Gloria and I have all come down with this cold, and though the worst is over it hangs on and on, really causing us to slow down our activities.

The next problem is our pickup. Recently the seal in the power steering blew, so Scott had to drive the truck to town without the power steering, no easy job! That has been repaired, but now the drive shaft to the forward wheels needs to be replaced before we use the four-wheel drive again, and that is a necessity due to the poor condition of the road to and through the Katukina’s land. Please pray that we might soon be able to have the repairs done so we can have the Christmas activities right after the New Year begins.

Scott recently tore the meniscus on his knee while playing soccer with some local children in his yard. He had done this to his other knee years ago when we lived with the Katukina people on the Gregório River. That time it slowly improved so that he could use it, but did eventually have to have arthroscopic surgery to remove the piece of cartilage that was behind his kneecap.

Yesterday the orthopedist told him that he could operate on it here to see if it really is a torn meniscus, or he could go to Manaus to have an MRI done to confirm the damage, and then surgery as needed. Another option was for him to go to the government hospital here in town and be given general anesthesia. The doctor would then try to straighten the knee (that is bent at roughly a ninety degree angle at present) and work the piece of cartilage out without surgery. This would give him limited use of the leg until January, when he’ll be going to Manaus to attend our annual field conference followed by a Scripture translation conference. Manaus does have an MRI and a good orthopedic clinic.

So tomorrow Scott will go to the hospital to see if the doctor can remove the cartilage and straighten out the knee witout surgery. If not, Scott will have to plan on going on to Manaus fairly soon to avoid atrophying of his leg muscles.

This leaves us quite short-handed as our co-workers are on furlough. I’ll try to keep the meetings going, but the medical end of the work is going to suffer. So please pray for Scott’s recovery, for extra strength for Gloria and me as we try to keep our work going while desperately short-handed, and for another couple of His choice to join our team. Thank you for praying, your prayers DO help.

We as a team have recently come to the conclusion that there are so many new folks coming to our meetings that we need to re-teach the Chronological Bible Lessons from Creation to Christ for these folks who have never heard them all.

We’ll not teach as we did the first time, but will try to do this in a bit more of a concise way. Also, they all know who God is, and who Jesus is, so there won’t be the anticipation created as happened the first time. But we do want them to hear the Old, Old Story in a way that many of them can come to put their trust in the Reedemer, who died on the cross for them.

The Katukina church never objects to hearing the message again, so there’ll be no problem from that end. Unfortunately our son, Scott, will be leaving for three weeks to attend a linguistic seminar in the city of Manaus, and Róbson and Alaiane are due for furlough at the end of the month, so while they’re gone we’ll be short-handed again, situation normal, unfortunately.

We have been holding meetings in two villages for quite a few months. However, due to the "problem" we are facing, we are going to have to change to three meetings each weekend.

The reason for this is the greatly increased number of folks coming to our meetings now, which is getting to be too much for our small pickup. We had been giving folks from the fourth village a lift to the fifth one for our Saturday afternoon meeting, and then folks from the first and third villages a lift to the second village for our Sunday morning meeting.

Because the number of folks wanting to come to the meetings has grown so, we are going to have two meetings on Saturday afternoon, and one on Sunday morning. Now we’ll go a little earlier to the fourth/fifth village’s meeting on Saturday afternoon, then on the way back, stop at the third village for a meeting there.  On Sunday morning we’ll pick up folks from the first village to take to the second village for the meeting.

Our greatest continuing need is for one more family to enter our work. The Katukina language is gramatically a very difficult language to learn, and over the years only a handful of missionaries have learned it well enough to have a spiritual ministry among the Katukinas. So we’re asking the Lord to send in a couple with at least the man gifted in linguistics and language learning, as these gifts are necessary to really learn the Katukina language. We know the Lord has someone capable, now we’re trusting Him to bring them to us.

At present we are teaching the Katukina believers on prayer, using our Lord’s teaching His disciples in Matthew 6.

However, before we can go into the deeper areas of prayer life we have to explain why it is we bow our heads and close our eyes. I explained how people in olden days bowed down before their kings and rulers, something they had never seen. Then we explained that out of reverence to our God, and to follow the one who was leading in prayer, we bow our heads and close our eyes.

I am teaching that we need to pray in His will, that not all our prayers will be answered in the way we want them to, and am showing from the Scriptures some examples of prayers not answered in the way we desire. This is new to people who have been used to manipulating the spirits, but I am amazed at how they have been following. We would love to see the prayer life of the Katukina believers grow, so please pray with us.