Karl and Kristen Nielsen Just another weblog 
One of the benefits we have living here on the support center is that there are often church planters visiting for a variety of reasons (medical appointments, visiting their children, or just taking a time of rest). We have much opportunity to interact with them and hear about the tribal works they are involved in.
I had the privilege a couple of weeks ago to sit with one of these church planters who was on our center for a short time. I was able to talk with him for a few hours as we watched his son (whom I have in my Algebra 2 class) play soccer and got a chance to better understand the enormous task it is to translate scripture into the “heart language” of people. The layers involved in this process are too numerous to describe here but beyond the concrete, physical difficulties, he asked for prayer in an area that is not related to the process.
In beginning to translate Romans into the Hewa language, the difficulty is the content. Up to this point, the translation has covered a narrative of events (creation through Exodus, life of Christ, the book of Acts) which tribal people can easily relate to as they have a long history of “story-telling”. But the people from this tribe have never before been involved with argumentation, building a point based on logical foundations and evidence. Can you imagine the difficulty of this task? The church planter made a statement I will never forget – “It is not humanly possible to complete that task”. Praise God it is not left to our abilities, but to Him who provides life, equips his workers and blesses faithfulness.
Pray for the Hewa tribe in the highlands of PNG as the church planters lay the foundation in the hearts of the people there to receive the wonderful and piercing words found in the book of Romans.
