NTM

Building nests…and building churches. Both are a lot of work!

Each spring, outside our living room window we watch a LIVE INSPIRING REALITY show…the building of a bluebird’s nest, followed by the frenzied raising of the bluebird chicks.

If you thought you were busy, you oughta watch.

Throughout the year, we notice bluebirds checking the nesting box we have attached to a lamp post. Eventually, if their inspection passes, the activity starts. Both the male and female drag and push twigs into the small hole for hours.

One note of interest is that bluebirds don’t like “messy” boxes to nest in. After the birds are done nesting, John will clean out the box and that way they will come back again for another brood. 

Bluebird parents “team” raise their babies, bringing bugs to the peephole. If you watch for a while, you notice they are constantly searching for food for the young’uns, who wait eagerly for every morsel they can get. They don’t eat seeds. They love bugs, worms, insects, spiders…all that good stuff. I got one good photo of a bluebird  feeding a worm to its mate inside the box. What a job…and oh, how those babies cry in hunger.

I’ve gotten spooked mowing the grass around the post, and having a bird come flapping out of the hole at me. I think they are territorial. If we park close to the nest, a bluebird will come and sit on our van’s mirror, basically (I think) fighting his own reflection in the window. He also manages to leave a lot of white droppings there…making our van easy to find in the Walmart parking lot!

As the babes grow older, we get to see them peek out and survey the wide world. Eventually they flutter out for their first attempt at flying. This part is really cute to see. It is probably also a very dangerous time for them. I tried to watch and see if they ever came back to the nest once they left, but I never did see any come back.

Our job involves church planting. It definitely takes team work. Our small part in this massive job is to train missionaries to go overseas and plant churches. This involves building a church of people and feeding a hungry flock! A previous student, Scott Phillips, wrote about a small, new church on his website. He says that “God has taken this first small group of Dao people that not more than six months ago were not even aware that there even existed a savior that died for them, and He has changed their hearts so that they have fallen in love with Him and rarely stop talking about Him.” They are like the hungry little bluebirds wanting more food. The REALITY of it is… this is what we all should be like.

This is what makes any work worth it all.

By the way, the bluebird is the state bird for Missouri!

Click here to check out our bluebird photos

Wow. Once again, a group of wonderful people have finished New Tribes Mission’s training program. We thank God for each one of them! Please pray for them as most of them will be traveling a lot over the next several months, and will also be preparing for a move overseas.

This fall we have 82 students coming back from all over the country. Most of them have already completed 2 years of Bible College plus their first year of missions training. For the majority, this will be their last semester of school before they head overseas. The first thing those students will do when they get overseas is to begin learning the culture and the language of that country. For example, if they go to Mexico, they would spend the first 1-2 years learning Spanish. If they went to Brazil, it would be Portuguese, etc.

This fall, I will be helping to teach a course that prepares them for that task. A number of the faculty, myself included, will be dressing up and acting out the part of a tribal person 1-2 times a week over the first couple months. After having studied important principles and methods in the classroom, our students will be coming to us and practicing what they’ve learned. My students will be learning a little of the Indonesian language from me as well as beginning to investigate a tribal culture that I will be portraying. Kay will play the part of a tribal lady during part of this time as well. We’ve found this time to be both an enjoyable and practical part of the student’s overall preparation for going overseas.

I hollered that I had trouble over the walkie-talkie to Terry who was driving ahead of us, and glided to a stop along the side of the road.

Nearly two years ago one of my fellow instructors came up with the hair-brained idea of taking our students to Mexico for a month to practice what we’d been teaching them in the classroom. We’ve been preparing for that on and off ever since. In early October of this year we embarked. Four staff, 12 students, and three children all headed south of the border.

Before I left, one of the passages of Scripture that God had impressed upon me was the one in Hebrews 3 where He says, “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” Here God is telling us not to be like the ancient Israelites whom Moses led out of Egypt. In spite of seeing some of the greatest miracles of all time, they continually failed to trust God.

Well, I had plenty of opportunities to trust God on this trip. And consistent with His promises, God went with us and took good care of us. When we were traveling up into the mountains to get to our destination in Mexico, and a pulley really did fall off the engine of the van I was driving, God provided some construction workers  to find a new part and put it back on for us.

One of our main concerns going down was finding enough Mexican folks in the town we were to stay in who would spend time with our students every day, helping them to learn Spanish and become familiar with the community. God worked that out too.  Every person we’d talked to ahead of time about helping our students came through for us and did a great job.

Our students were able to get to know some very special Mexican folks. And they were able to make progress in their ability to communicate with them in Spanish. All this was done in the context of having to live and work together in fairly rustic conditions. In spite of my own tendency to get up tight and worry about how things were all going to work out, God was faithful and met all of our needs.

 As a reminder of how God took care of me, I was awarded a special homemade plaque complete with the car part that fell off and landed on that road in Mexico! All my students and co-workers signed it.

Click here to check out MEXICO pictures!

Thank you so much for praying!