Training

Step by Step

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Hanuman

Huge statue of the monkey god Hanuman in the square outside our hotel

Baby Steps

In November and December we took our first trip to South Asia, the region with the most Unreached Peoples Groups in the world. Thousands of unreached groups call this part of the world home. We were blown away by the vastness, the tremendous need for committed Gospel ministers, the poverty, the oppressive idolatrous false religion, the powerful anti-Christian sentiment of the government, and how much we have to learn to be the most effective in helping missionaries in this part of the world.

We were blessed and encouraged by the believers in some of the already-reached People Groups and their gracious hospitality, their love for the Lord Jesus, and their passion to reach the Unreached in their corner of the world! We also enjoyed some pretty amazing food and all the colorful beauty in the South Asian culture.

We helped four couples with their language learning (one South Asian couple and some expats) and Bill was training two consultants to coach language learners in the same way (one South Asian consultant and an expat.)

We were also able to reconnect with Singaporeans friends as we passed through their airport. Most of them were on a team that came to our tribe on Palawan in 1987. We hadn’t seen some of them in 30 years! The other friend we had met at missions camps in 2010.

Spices

Our South Asian host was ready to make every meal taste amazing.

Big Steps

While in South Asia, we were excited to be able to meet up with nine graduates of Radius International. We were part of their prefield training, when Bill taught them about how languages, language learning, and translation principles. Now they are in place, thriving in a very challenging context, and doing very well in language learning as they prepare for their future ministries. These Americans have left much behind and stepped out to do big things in the power of the Spirit to share about the Savior they love so much.

Painful Steps

While in Asia, we had to climb a many flights of stairs. Lots of them. Every day for 4 weeks. This took its cumulative toll and Bill got home in mid-December to find himself in tremendous pain and sometimes unable to even walk. The holidays made it difficult to schedule an appointment to see his doctor, so we went to urgent care first. Now, many weeks, 3 more doctor visits, a few x-rays and an MRI later, we know that his body took a beating and he has inflamed joints in his pelvis, swollen bone marrow, and a partially detached muscle (hence the pain, as you can imagine!) The pain clinic prescribed steroid injections. He just had the first injection on Feb 17th, and the next is set for March 3rd. If those reduce the pain as hoped, he will start physical therapy. Your prayers for a fast recovery are really appreciated!

Next Steps

In Asia, we were within sight of the highest mountains in the world, and in one location, we could see the hills of FOUR closed countries, each with many unreached People Groups. But to these unreached tribes, political borders mean very little, so they cross over from their closed countries to places where believers are waiting to engage them. The most exciting thing is how local South Asian believers want to reach those groups on their side of the border and these South Asians are asking for training in language learning and effective cross-cultural ministry. We want to help them!

So we have a number of potential ministry trips: follow-up visits to South Asia and to the islands of Asia Pacific, a workshop to train Singaporeans, trips to the Philippines and West Africa…

…but first we are getting Bill’s body ready to travel. He can’t be walking between airport terminals or dragging luggage around just yet. Meanwhile, he has his ongoing projects to keep him busy developing language learning materials and he’s preparing for some upcoming workshops and consultant training here closer to home.

Pray for healing, for God’s grace and provision, and for all that’s involved in the preparation of materials to enable many more missionaries to take God’s message to the world and to communicate it clearly in the Heart Languages of the Unreached.

Because everyone deserves to hear in their Heart Language.

 

Spices and Thankfulness

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family-pumpkin-photo

Some Reasons We Are Thankful

Thankful for Pumpkin Spice

It is the season for pumpkin spice you-name-its (and we’re thankful for those!); but we are also closing in on the season for giving thanks in a special way. Since we will be traveling in Asia over Thanksgiving, here is our list…

Thankful for Ministry

We are so grateful for the privilege we have in being part of training students at Radius to go out and reach Unreached Peoples “in all the hard places.” We just finished up two weeks of Bill teaching 17 eager missionary trainees about how to communicate effectively in languages which are very different than English. We love investing in their lives and future ministries.

Thankful for our Family

We love our kids and grandkiddos, and are so thankful to be close to them (when we’re not gallivanting around the world). We staged our own home pumpkin patch for a family photo shoot, welcoming our newest little pumpkin Elias to join with big cousins Max and Myri. This may just become an annual event!

Thankful for Ministry… with Spices!

We leave tomorrow for Thailand and then on to South Asia. It’s a nearly 6-week ministry trip. Bill will be leading a weeklong workshop, training missionary language coaches, and helping missionaries learn some hard languages in needy places. And we will be thankful for the amazingly tasty spices of the cuisine in that part of the world.

Thankful for God Answering Prayer

We are only 34 days into our 100 Days of Prayer, and God has done some amazing things. We’re at least 1/3 of the way to our Level 1 goal for monthly support. We are humbled and encouraged, and feeling very blessed by many generous one-time gifts and several who have joined our ministry team as new financial partners. Several have become advocates, recommending us to pastors they know. We’re grateful for the Lord and for his people.

Keep praying! God is able to get us to our first goal and beyond!

Pray for safe travel and smooth connections–specifically no problems with our tickets or other bookings.

And please pray for Bill especially in the next 5+ weeks, that he will be a blessing and encouragement to those he ministers to.

May this be a season of thanksgiving for you, as well. We serve a great God who richly blesses his children.

Because everyone deserves to hear in their Heart Language.

 

** No pumpkins were harmed in the making of this photo (although Elias did try to chew on a few)

 

What Are We Doing Lately? Lots…

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THE  PALAWANOS  NEED  MORE  TEACHING…

   …WE’RE  HELPING  WITH  THAT

WE’RE STILL INVOLVED WITH THE PALAWANOS

  • Ongoing ministry after 33 years of ministering to the Palawanos and translating the New Testament for them
  • Recently put the Southwestern Palawano New Testament (written and audio) into an Android app
  • Annual trips to Palawan for Bible teaching seminars to supplement our partners’ teaching
  • Working with our missionaries who are mentoring the youth: Bible study materials and online discipling
  • Helping missionaries learn Central Palawano and put our New Testament into that related language

 

 THE  WORLD  NEEDS  MORE  MISSIONARIES…

   …WE’RE  TRAINING  THEM

WE’RE TRAINING A RADICAL NEW GENERATION OF MISSIONARIES

  • Teaching language learning and Bible translation at Radius across the border – come along sometime!
  • These are young people who want to go to all the hard places to reach the Unreached
  • Serving as a language learning consultant for them as they get out on the field

 

MISSIONARIES  NEED  LANGUAGE  FLUENCY…

   …WE’RE  HELPING  THEM

WE’RE HELPING MISSIONARY LANGUAGE LEARNERS—AND THOSE WHO HELP THEM

  • Developing the DIY language learning materials all our missionaries around the world will use to be able to communicate the Gospel clearly and to disciple the Unreached
  • Teaching and leading language coach workshops in the USA, Thailand, Latin America, and more to come…
  • Doing online language coaching via Skype

 

NON-WESTERN  MISSIONARIES  NEED  TRAINING,  TOO…

   …WE’RE  PROVIDING  CULTURE-SPECIFIC  TRAINING

WE’RE WORKING TO DEVELOP THE TRAINING FOR NON-WESTERN MISSIONARIES WORLDWIDE

  • SE Asians including Filipinos, Chinese and Indians, etc., want to reach the Unreached
  • Two recent trips to Asia Pacific to help local believers reaching other tribes
  • An upcoming trip to South Asia to help our missionaries to begin training local Christians as missionaries

 

THE  CHURCH  IN  AMERICA  IS  REACHING  THE  UNREACHED…

   …WE’RE  TRAINING  THEM

WE’RE HELPING CHURCHES REACH UNREACHED PEOPLES… RIGHT IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

  • Training language learners so an immigrant Unreached People Group can be reached in their heart language

 

WE  NEED  HELP  TO  KEEP  GOING…

   …OUR  PARTNERSHIP  TEAM  IS  STANDING  WITH  US

WE CAN’T DO IT WITHOUT YOU!

  • One upcoming ministry event is our November trip to Thailand and South Asia to train missionary language learners and consultants
  • International and in-country tickets needed for Donna (Bill’s tickets already covered)
  • Conference expenses already provided—praise the Lord with us!

Then… and Now

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Then-Now single

Then (1980s) and now (2016)

 

A LOT HAS CHANGED. (Well, besides the fact that we are a little bit older…)

THEN: For 33 years, it was easy to explain our ministry: Bill and Donna? Oh yeah, PALAWAN. We lived and ministered on Palawan. We worked with the Palawanos (we were palawano.com, for goodness’ sake!) We were translating the Palawano New Testament. It was easy for people to “get” what we were all about. And when people thought of us, they thought of Palawan, Palawanos and translation. Simple.

NOW: We’re all over the place. Lots of different countries. Various projects. We even have to be cryptic about where we are going sometimes for the safety of the missionaries there. Since our ministry is not tied to one location or one people group, it’s harder to get a handle on… especially for many who have had “Bill & Donna = Palawano” in their minds all this time.

Basically, we are helping lots of missionaries to do what we did.

We had to learn Palawano on our own (there’s no Rosetta Stone language course for languages like that.) And other missionaries who want to reach other Unreached People Groups have to do the same kind of language learning. It’s hard! So we’re teaching them how to do it. And many of the missionaries we get to train are non-Western missionaries: Asians from many countries, and (soon) Latin Americans and Africans.

WHAT HAS NOT CHANGED: We’re still with New Tribes Mission, still passionate about seeing Unreached People Groups like the Palawanos reached for Christ. But instead of reaching one people group, now we are a part of reaching many groups as we train others all around the world. It’s a big ministry with many challenges in terms of travel, budget, health and strength, as well as the often daunting task of figuring out how best to train missionaries from such a diverse range of cultures.

We need your prayers more that ever. We need others like you to join our team, as well. So many people groups around the world are waiting to hear the Gospel in their Heart Language. We’re doing all we can to reach those people groups by training missionaries to learn their languages in order to reach them with a clearly-communicated message.

This weekend were asked to shared at the Missions Moment in a church who have been partnering with our ministry for nearly 20 years. So we took the opportunity to make a one-page flyer explaining what we did “back then” and what we are doing now.

We thought you might like to see our cool flyer. You can read it here (or click on it to open it/save it.)

Join our team. Pray for us. Let’s reach the world.

Flyer

Over the Border and Around the World

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Training in Tijuana

Last week we once again had the privilege of teaching at Radius International in Tijuana. There are 11 students there this year, all being trained to go to the hard places of the world, and take the name of Christ to Unreached People Groups.

They are also being taught how learn the Heart Language of the people to whom they will minister, and that’s where we come in. This semester Bill taught a 10-hour course called Form and Meaning.

Form & Meaning? What does THAT mean? Glad you asked…

Form & Meaning

Missionaries have the most important message in the world (that’s the “meaning” part.) They want to communicate that message clearly. But that’s not so easy. To have effective cross-cultural ministry, they need to be trained about what to say and do (that’s the “form“) that will clearly get that message across.

The trouble is, people around the world communicate meaning in different ways. Each language and culture has unique forms to share a particular message. Sounds, words, letters, grammar, gestures, even acts of friendship… all are forms that communicate very different meanings.

THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL WAY TO COMMUNICATE A PARTICULAR MEANING

Bill teaching Form & Meaning at Radius

It’s All About That Meaning

Here are some fun examples of form/meaning differences:

  • Letters: The letter j represents one sound in English (as in “jump”), but a different sound in other languages: h as in Juan in Spanish, y as in Bjorn in Swedish, etc. “What a j sounds like” is completely arbitrary.
  • Words: “Cat” in English is gato in Spanish, right? Well, kinda. Gato also means a car jack, a person from Madrid, and many other things. Words don’t have one-to-one correspondence.
  • Metaphors: In our English Bibles, we have “edge” of a sword; but in the Hebrew and Greek it is actually the “mouth” of the sword (yes, it’s a double-mouthed sword in Hebrews and Revelation!) In Palawano, the “mouth” of the sword is its tip; the blade or edge is called the “eye” of the sword.
  • Grammar: English has the single word “us.” Palawano has three different words, meaning: “us, but not you,” “just you and me” and “you, me and all of us.” Three forms. English has one form, and lumps all three meanings together.
  • Little Things: English has about 150 prepositions and some of them, like “of,” for example, have a dozen or so meanings! Some languages have ONE preposition. Meaning gets communicated with very different forms.

And those are just the easy kinds of differences!

Expect the Unexpected

  • Turning verbs into nouns: Some languages don’t make nouns (repentance, baptism) out of verbs (repenting, getting baptized) the way English and Greek love to do.
  • Making friends: What if saying “I just got you a little something” was an insult? What if saying that a baby was beautiful made the mother frightened (because you just alerted the evil spirits to where a cute victim was)? What if you were supposed to change the form and say that the baby was “ugly” and mother (but not the spirits) would understand the meaning to be, “Oh, what a cute baby!”? What if you gave a friend a dozen roses and they understood you to mean, “Drop dead!” because it was an even number?
  • Asking questions: And what if Jesus’ rhetorical question, “To what shall I liken the Kingdom of God?” meant that he really didn’t have a clue and was asking the disciples to explain it to him?!

In each case, you would have to make some big changes to communicate what you meant to say.

THE FORM MUST CHANGE FOR THE MEANING TO REMAIN THE SAME

That is the lesson Bill was teaching the students. They cannot afford to “think English and translate.” They must learn to think about the meaning and communicate that in the best form. In the fall semester, Bill will teach them more about how to discover the underlying meaning.

It’s a joy and a privilege to teach these eager missionaries and to get to know them. Both of us enjoyed chatting with them over lunch and answering their questions about missionary life.

Oh, and by the way, lunch at Radius is always awesome:

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Thank God with us…

  • a good week of teaching
  • no hassles driving in and out of Mexico 5 days in a row
  • safety in spite of a flat tire on the interstate (after leaving Mexico on Friday)
  • the privilege of training others to reach the Unreached

Give us the Tools!

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Sharing a Passion for Equipping Missionaries

“Give us the Tools…

…and We Will Finish the Job!”

 

Sir Winston Churchill spoke those inspiring words in 1941 when England was under severe attack and needed help to survive, and to win the war. He boldly told the world that his country was ready and willing to fight.

They just needed the tools.

That is much like the situation we find around the world today. Missionaries from Asia, Latin America and Africa are ready and willing to join in the battle, to endure hardship and to labor to see every people group reached with the Gospel.

They are asking for the tools they need.

Training Forum in Manila

The Forum on Missionary Training in Manila was a huge success. 65 attendees came from 16 different countries to talk about training missionaries in many different contexts throughout Asia, Africa and Europe. NTM brought them all together to meet one another, to learn from one another, and to encourage and help one another. We were there to listen to them and see how they felt we might be of assistance to them.

We were blessed to learn more about the training programs that are already in place. At the same time, we were challenged by the tremendous needs and the many opportunities that remain.

There are large areas in Central Asia where help is needed in setting up training programs for missionaries. Existing programs are asking for Bill to teach modules or to help them further develop their course materials.

Our next several updates will feature different connections we made at the forum.

First up… THE PHILIPPINES

Bill & Joseph (crop)

Bill with longtime friend and coworker Joseph Lee

After 33 years in the Philippines, for us, attending the Forum in Manila was like going home. We enjoyed fellowshipping with many of our Filipino missionary coworkers and talking about their training program.

They have invited Bill to teach some courses on translation and language learning at their School of Missions. We’ll be working with them to figure out the best timing for this. Bill will also want one or more Filipinos to work alongside him that he can train to take over teaching those courses.

We want to give them the tools and see God use them to finish the job!