YOU’RE GOING WHERE?!

Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of us and get a clear picture of what we do! Here are some of our upcoming events and ministry trips. Although recently, COVID-19 scuttled travel for a good long while. But in 2021 as things have opened back up a little, some ministry trips have been possible with more to come, Lord willing.

In between all the travel, we are developing language learning materials, preparing for all the teaching sessions and consultant trips, speaking in churches, and networking about upcoming ministry opportunities. It’s all about multiplying the number of missionaries who can clearly communicate the Gospel to Unreached People Groups and who can then disciple new believers into becoming mature churches.

Then there’s always the random opportunities that come up… for example, Bill was recently invited to share at a Bible College class about Church Planting.

Many of these are originally posted as “hopes, dreams and prayer requests.” Then, as you can see, God answers your prayers, provides the finances, works out the details, and makes them all a reality!

OKAY, HERE’S (most of) WHAT WE’RE UP TO, AT A GLANCE…

ONGOING PROJECT (Here, There, Everywhere, and Always)

Since December, 2015, Bill’s biggest new assignment has been to coordinate the update of Ethnos360’s Culture/Language Acquisition (“CLA”) materials. This is the handbook our missionaries use to learn an unknown language on their own. It’s been ten years since Bill coordinated the development and launch of the original CLA Manual. It’s time to update and improve it, to coordinate it with new CLA software, to train consultants on the field… and most exciting of all, to oversee adaptations of this material for non-Western missionary language learners from all over Asia and the rest of the world. This massive project is nearing completion. The handbook will be called called Engage.

FALL 2021 and BEYOND

TRAINING VIDEOS   Bill and his team are making trips to Missouri and Florida where we have access to a centrally-located recording studio. We are being recorded as we teach total of 32 hours of training videos that will be used to train missionaries from many countries in Asia to reach Unreached People Groups in their own countries!

UPCOMING “ROLL-OUT” (2021-2022) Bill and his team will have many online training seminars and workshops requiring international travel to fully launch the Engage CLA training materials and the Stages CLA app throughout all our Global Partners.

ICLL (October 2022) A hybrid in-person/online International Congress on Language Learning will be held in late 2022. Bill will attend to present Engage and the CLA app to language consultants from many missions all around the world.

i.

NEW HERE? READ ABOUT PREVIOUS EVENTS BELOW (Organized by Global Regions)…

ASIA

THAILAND (2016) Bill will be co-hosted a CLA consultants workshop in Thailand, presenting an update to leaders from all of NTM’s sending countries around the world.

SOUTH ASIA REGION

VARIOUS COUNTRIES (2016, 2018, 2019) We made several trips to SOUTH ASIA to help missionary language learners and consultants, and to talk about training for missionaries from those Asian countries. (we are not free to name the countries here, for missionary security)

ASIA PACIFIC

(January 2018) We spent about 3 weeks there, training those who train missionaries.

((February 2016) We took a six-week ministry trip in S.E. Asia. First, we stopped through Palawan in the Philippines to teach our Palawano church leaders, and the Palawano youth leaders who are going to school in town. This is a critical time for the Palawano church as false teachers have moved into the village! Then we went on a follow-up trip to the Asia Pacific region to help those consultants do final language/culture evaluations of missionary teams (mostly non-Western missionaries with a few Americans and Germans sprinkled in).

(October 2015) Bill  visited 3 tribal works in the region to work with several NTM consultants to help 18 missionaries who need input as they are almost ready to begin teaching God’s Word. (see our update about this trip). He attended ministry strategy meetings for that region, and worked with local NTM consultants to find the best ways to evaluate and coach both Western and non-Western language learners.

VARIOUS OTHER PAST MINISTRY OPPORTUNITIES

IMMIGRANT OUTREACH (August 2016 through 2020) Yes, Bakersfield California! A church there asked Bill to help some of their members learn the language of an unreached people group which has a large immigrant population right in Bakersfield. We were involved in training the missionaries on this team. If new missionaries join the work, we’ll be involved again.

ICLL in Estes Park CO

(March 2021, April 2016) Every three years, missionary language learning experts from all over the world come together at ICLL (“the International Congress on Language Learning”) to share ideas about how to help missionaries become better communicators of God’s truth. Since 2001, Bill has been involved with ICLL as a presenter, and for 15 years, as a member of the steering committee. The last in-person ICLL was in the spring of 2016 and we was involved once again. Bill taught a couple of sessions and spent lots of time networking with others who have similar ministries. While there, we met with the NTM attendees to discuss the Culture/Language Acquisition project Bill is coordinating. in 2021, the ICLL was on-line, and many other missions were excited to hear about Bill’s CLA handbook and app projects!

RADIUS INTL (Mexico)

(2013 through 2018) Every day for three weeks each year Bill crossed the border to the Radius International missionary training campus where he taught a total of 90 students about Form and Meaning (i.e.”how languages really work”) and Semantics and Translation (how to translate concepts from one language to another). These courses helped missionaries who plan to do evangelism and discipleship, as well those who might actually wind up doing Bible translation. Donna spent her time visiting with the students, encouraging them, and answering their questions about life on the mission field. These trainees are serving among unreached people groups on 4 continents.