Mike and Kelly McGregor Serving in Papua New Guinea with NTM Aviation
We will be spending the summer raising support as we prepare to go overseas in the next year. Here’s our schedule:
Baltimore: June 1-July 4th
Calgary: July 4-31
We would love to catch up with you and share with you a little more about what we are doing.
We are also looking for opportunities to share with small groups and housechurches, or even just a few of your friends.
We just finished our time in Missouri training for life overseas. The staff at the training center spent a lot of time with us as a couple to make sure that we are fit for serving overseas (in case you are wondering they have told us that we are!). It was great to have people who put so much time into making sure we would be successful overseas.
This year’s training was very interesting. Here is a summary of some of the things we have been learning:
More than anything on this list, what we enjoyed the most were our classes on church planting. We learned how to share the gospel with animistic people and disciple them to maturity in Christ. We are so excited about being part of reaching people with the gospel who have never had the chance to hear it before.
We recently shared that Kelly was not able to get on New Tribe’s health insurance because pregnancy was considered a pre-existing condition. We have just heard amazing news! The health plan WILL cover Kelly’s pregnancy EVEN THOUGH it is a pre-existing condition. We are praising God for providing for us! This is above and beyond what we could imagine! God sure is amazing, isn’t He?! THANK YOU for praying for us about this! God has answered!
Kelly and I had asked you to pray for us as we tried to figure out housing for our time in Baltimore. We are going to be in Baltimore for the month of June and in Calgary for the month of July before having to be back with NTM in Arizona. God has provided us a home to stay in while we are in Baltimore! Thanks for praying about this with us!
We’re having a baby! We were very surprised at first. We were planning on waiting a few more years before having kids. Despite all this, God has given us peace knowing that He planned this and our life is in His control. We are growing to trust Him in greater ways. I think often of Psalm 121:2 "My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth (babies included!)"
The baby is due in October. I am about 14 weeks along and doing great. Mike has been great, feeding me snacks and helping out when I don’t feel well. This doesn’t change our timeline for heading overseas. We are still planning to move to Arizona in August to begin our final flight checkout before heading overseas. Thank you for keeping us in your prayers as this baby develops!
The Kims are making progress, even though it can appear slow at times. Learning English as Korean native speakers is very difficult. They are pouring a ton of time and effort into this, but need God’s help.
Their evaluation is coming up in June which decides whether they know the language enough to be able to continue on with New Tribes training. The Kims need our prayers.
Also pray for Kelly as she tries to come up with lesson plans that will be the greatest benefit for the Kims.
God really blessed us with the opportunity to travel to Baltimore for a missions conference at Grace Fellowship Church. New Tribes loaned us a very nice display that we were able to set up. It was our first time having a booth set up at a church. Everything went very smoothly. We made some good friends and reconnected with others we had lost touch with. Pray that God would use that weekend to raise up people who would partner with us through prayer and support.
We will be in Arizona August 13th 2007 for six to nine months of advanced flight and maintenance training. Mike will be learning how to operate and maintain aircraft in rugged conditions preparing us to serve in this capacity overseas. We are excited to be starting this August!
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We have learned in our training how hard it is to plant a church. We are so excited to be able to encourage church planters in this process! Here is a brief overview of the steps necessary to plant a church overseas.
When a missionary first arrives on the field, he/she goes to language school to learn the trade or national language and culture. This usually takes one to two years of study and living among the national people.
After New Tribes analyzes a remote unreached people groups and prayerfully considers starting a ministry in a new village, missionaries move in as a team. Usually two or three couples/singles will work together as a team in one village. For their first trip into the village, missionaries either make multi-day trips in forging rivers and hiking in mountainous terrain or they are airlifted by helicopter if the area allows.
When missionaries first arrive they live in very primitive conditions. There are no Home Depot stores! Often they chop down trees to build their own home. They gather drinking water from rivers or lakes and use a filtration system that makes the water safe to drink. Initially they cook their meals over a fire or a small camp stove. After a house, one of the first priorities is to build an airstrip if there is not already one in the area. Once the area is accessible for an airplane, a pilot will bring them tools and supplies to help them build a more permanent home with a stove, refrigerator, toilet, etc. Most of these homes are powered by batteries charged by solar panels or generators and rain water is stored in large water tanks for drinking.
During the first two to five years, the missionary spends a majority of their time learning to communicate in the distinct language of the people. Each tribal group has its own distinct language. There are 6912 known languages in the world and 2529 of these have never had a Bible translated into their own language. Using the trade language, the missionary and the people are only able to communicate elementary concepts. The missionary is immersed in the language and spends eight hours a day in language study.
Using skills in phonetics, the missionary is able to transcribe the sounds that he hears and learns to reproduce those sounds. The missionary records the language data that he learns each day into computer software to help him practice and remember what was introduced to him.
The missionaries observe the culture and traditions of the people in order to understand their beliefs. They spend time learning how the people hunt, garden, cook, etc. They attend weddings and funerals in order to understand the customs of the people. During this time, the missionaries begin to understand how the world view of the people affects their everyday life. Most of these people groups are Animistic. Animistic people believe that personal spiritual beings and impersonal forces have power over their daily circumstances, leaving them in fear and confusion. They attempt to meet their immediate daily needs by appeasing spirits through sacrifices and magic.
For example, in Papua New Guinea one missionary told us that the people always played whistles on their way to their gardens. He eventually learned that the people played this music in order to frighten the spirits out of the garden to allow the plants to grow.
Missionaries teach the Bible chronologically from creation to the resurrection of Christ. There are many ways to share the gospel, but what would you share with someone who has no idea who God is? New Tribes Mission missionaries share stories of the Old and New Testament with the people using pictures.
This is very effective because most illiterate people pass down their history through storytelling. They start in Genesis teaching the people that God created the world. The stories of the Old Testament focus on who God is; the problem of man’s sin; and the promise of a coming Redeemer. The people are very curious as the story unfolds day after day. After about two months of listening to these stories, the missionaries share how Christ solved the problem of man’s separation from God through His death and resurrection. As the Holy Spirit works, some people accept Christ as their Savior.
The missionaries disciple these new believers and teach them about their security in Christ. A church is established. As the missionaries see believers grow in maturity, they begin to mentor the new leaders. The Bible is translated into the language of the people and the church is taught how to study it on their own.
After a mature church is established, the missionary’s involvement decreases. Believers go out from the new church as missionaries to the surrounding tribes.
I appreciate you praying for us and wanted to share with you a little about what God has done in my life so that you can know me better.
My dad was a youth pastor when I was young. I have two younger brothers, Jason and Jordan. I love my family so much. My parents did a great job raising us and teaching us about the Bible. As a young girl, I accepted Christ as my Savior. I remember feeling like I was a good Christian. Looking back, I can see how this really affected the way that I perceived my standing towards God. I used to trust in my own efforts to please God. When I failed and sinned horribly, I felt ashamed and wondered if God still accepted me. I would pray over and over to make sure that I really was saved. But this was not the right way of thinking.
God has been so good to me. I am so thankful that over the years He continued to reveal to me exactly what it means to be secure as His child. God first had to humble me to show me that I was helpless and deserving physical and spiritual death. When I was in junior high, my parents told us we were moving from our home in Iowa to Maryland. My parents had planned what I thought was a vacation to Maryland. It was not until we were on the flight to Maryland that I was told that were actually going to be moving to Maryland in a few months and would be visiting with a lot of people from the new church where my dad would be working. This really shocked me! At thirteen years old, I thought I had my social life all planned out! Now I was thinking about moving and having to make all new friends. I felt like my world was upside down and I was angry at my parents and God for doing this. I spent the next year really struggling with God. At the end of that year, I knew that I was desperately in need of turning back towards God. I was living in a new city (and a youth pastor’s daughter), and I just didn’t know who would mentor and help me. I had heard of an organization called Royal Servants that led youth discipleship trainings during the summers. I asked my parents if I could apply and go with them to Southeast Asia for the summer and they agreed.
The discipleship training with Royal Servants reviewed truths of God’s word and my relationship with God became even more personal to me. I have been reconciled to God- not through anything of my own doing, but through what Christ has done. My sins of past, present and future are forgiven on the basis of Christ’s sacrifice. I am so thankful for the security that I have on the basis of what Christ has done for me. To this day I continue to thank God for his kindness he has lavished out on me.
My heart was torn out as I spent time with the people in Southeast Asia. I worked at an orphanage and loved the kids (and got lice from them!). We also spent time traveling to surrounding villages and sharing the Jesus Film. I had never thought much about unreached people groups before and I was moved with compassion as I looked around me to see hut after hut of people who had never heard the gospel before. I prayed and asked God how he would use me to share the gospel with others. I was only fourteen, but knew God was calling me to serve Him overseas. I came home determined to share Christ on my own high school. My friends Laura and I began meeting each morning before class to pray for our school.
After high school, God led me to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. I was not sure exactly what I would major in when I first arrived, but I was excited about taking their Bible classes. I loved studying languages and decided to major in linguistics in order to develop the skills to become a Bible translator.
I spent one summer in Papua New Guinea living with a Bible translator on a very remote island. We had roll call twice a week by radio to let the main Wycliffe station know that we were still alive! I was one of her only visitors during the ten years that she had lived on the island. I was burdened to pray for her as she worked on Bible translation in such a lonely location. During that time, I believed that God was calling me to further the work of Bible translation by encouraging missionaries living in remote locations.
When I came home, God led me to pray regularly for my translator friend and her needs, often waking me up in the night with the need to pray. I began praying about about the possibility of working in a literacy role. Literacy specialists often move from village to village working with Bible translators in order to help develop reading programs for the illiterate. I thought this would be a great way to use my linguistic skills as well as visit these missionaries who live alone almost all of the time. After Moody, I took graduate classes for literacy specialists.
Mike and I married in September 2005. God has blessed me with a great husband. I am so thankful for the way he seeks God’s direction and has a humble heart. Thank you so much for praying for us. Sometimes it is hard to have such an unknown road ahead, but I am so thankful that God is the one leading us on it! Even in the times that I struggle through the unknowns, God has been so evident!