NTM

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This last weekend (11/13-15/09) I went on a women’s retreat that was put on by the NTM training center here.  There were about one hundred women from our school that went and I had the opportunity to teach a crochet class in the evenings during free time/crafts.  The theme was “He has prepared a table before us.”   One thing I enjoyed was taking communion outside on a porch by candle light as we served each other.   We had a chance to share and pray for one another during this time.  Ellie enjoyed all the extra arms that wanted to hold her while we were there.

We hope you are enjoying the fall weather as it cools off after a hot summer.  It’s cooling off here too; but Zach and I don’t think we are ready for winter just yet.

          Well, we just finished a class called Dobu, which was really a language/culture study.  The Dobu people are from Papua New Guinea (you can look them up on-line).  Our instructors dressed up as Dobu; and we would go and visit with them, applying the things we have been learning.  It was really neat; and the staff did an awesome job responding to us as real Dobu people would.

          Right now we are taking a Practical Skills class.  We love it!  Our homework is cooking from scratch, reading about survival, and turning our lights out at 9 PM like most people would in the tribe.  We just light candles; it’s fun.

          We did a camping trip last weekend where we were supposed to build a shelter using just tarps and poles, build a fire, and went on a hike using our composes and GPS’s.  Ellie and I didn’t stay over night because it rained the first night and froze the second.

          We’ve had some short workshops on cooking, building, plumbing, chainsaw maintenance, and a few other things; like hair cutting!  Zach cut my hair today for class; that was fun, the instructor did a great job, and Zach did a good job too.

          Well, thanks for all your prayers and love,

Zach, Sara & Ellie

We have been taking a class lately called Semantics – Bible Translating.  We have been asked before why we translate the Bible into the native or heart language of a people group and not just in the trade language so more could read it from other language groups.  Way back in the day, when God spoke to and through the prophets and those who wrote down God’s word for the first time, did he not speak in their language; one which they would understand every tone change to get the exact meaning that the Lord was trying to convey to His people?  Of course, and when the Bible was translated into English, it was translated in such a way that the meaning as well as word use would be the same to those new readers as to the ones that knew the original language.  As the English language has changed over the years, so have Bible translations, to keep up with the times in such a way that the original meaning of Scripture can still be understood by current readers.  (Now there are some that are closer to the original meaning than others that may be over idiomatic or too literal, trying to keep the words the same yet not bringing the meaning with them as this changes when we cross language barriors).  People understand best in their native or heart language.  This is not to say you wont understand in another, but never as well, unless you learned two at the same time and used both to an equal extent.

We have been learning methods and tools to better elp us to make a faithful Bible translation into the language group that we will one day be working with.  Our goal, in the words of Beekman in Translating the Word of God is to make a “translation that is so rich in vocabulary, so idiomatic in phrase, so correct in construction, so smooth in flow of thought, so clear in meaning, and so elegant in style, that it does not appear to be a translation at all, and yet, at the same time faithfully transmits the messageof the original”.  God’s word provides us with a foundation so that we can grow and spread His good news. 

Let us not take the Word of God so lightly and for granted but enjoy God’s communication to us through it each day!

We have been enjoying the fall weather and the changes it brings.  Our classes have been exciting: as our “Dobu” class finished with three final papers we then began taking a “Practical Skills” class (for jungle living) and we have been enjoying it.  Read the rest of this entry »

There are many ways we have seen the Lord provide for us lately. We are especially thankful for those that have kept us in prayer and to those that have been supporting us as we train. One very recent provision was from the church we have been attending with our friends, Del and Arrielle Griffith. One year ago they had voted as a church to add us on to their missionary support team once we became members. This last Sunday they decided to begin supporting us now, even while we are in training and they decided to double the original support amount! Praise God! This sure helps as we still have school bills for this semester that have yet to be paid.
We continue to be grateful to those that have been supporting us along this journey. We only have a couple more months before we graduate and become members. Then we will stay on until May to finish with a current training internship that Zach is working on. We are excited as our time to leave for Papua New Guinea slowly comes closer. As for current ministry, we are still very much involved with our local Young Life group and it is picking up momentum as the school year progresses. – Pray that we will be a light to these students that don’t have a relationship with Jesus yet. . .

Okay, you might be thinking politics, however, this is the name of Young Life’s discipleship group. The name??? I’m not sure where that came from. But, here is a great opportunity to reach out to some of YL’s teens that have made a commitment to follow Jesus and disciple them and help give them a good foundation to continue on in God’s word with. We currently meet on Sunday evenings and begin with a Bible lesson, then break up into small groups to discuss further the lesson and how we can apply it to our lives.
Please pray for the kids in this group, about 12, that they will hunger to know Jesus on a more intimate level.

So, Young Life began this week!  Another great year lays ahead of us as we plug into the lives of high school students in Camdenton, MO.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Dobu hut

We have been puting into practice much of what we have been learning in our training at our Dobu sessions.  The Dobu are an actual people group from an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea that has been studied several decades ago. As a class, we are in a “set up” or a “mock trip” as if we are going in to live among them as the first outsiders who have come to bring the Gosple to them. Read the rest of this entry »

Our 1st primer!

We just finished our Literacy class! This was the next step from our Phonetics and Phonemics class in that we learned how we would create a literacy program. Read the rest of this entry »