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@work NTMyour connection with tribal missions NEW MISSION TRIBES The Village that 00 God Remembered page 16 NTM@work (ISSN 1527-9057) Vol. 71 • No. 3 • February 2013 NTM@work team Executive Editor: Macon Hare Debbie Burgett, Rex Crawford, Cathy Drobnick, Ian Fallis, Jon Frazier, Chris Holland and Dena McMaster NTM@work is published quarterly by New Tribes Mission. Periodical postage paid at MID-FL, FL 32799-9625 Postmaster: Please send address changes to NTM@work, New Tribes Mission, 1000 E. First Street, Sanford, FL 32771-1487 Subscriptions NTM@work is provided free to readers in North America on a year-to-year basis. To receive the magazine or have it sent to a friend, sign up online at ntm.org/ subscribe, e-mail [email protected], or call 407-323-3430. If you no longer wish to receive NTM@work, please send a note and your name and address to NTM@work, 1000 E. First Street, Sanford FL 32771-1487. contents While none of us can do The magazine may be read online 4 CONNECT: at ntm.org/magazine. everything, all of us can do something. Starting today, discover ways that you can contact, Requests to reprint articles encourage, pray for, give to, or serve alongside should be directed to NTM missionaries. Executive Editor Macon Hare at [email protected] or call 407-323-3430. 16 The Village that God Remembered: Contents of this magazine may not For many years, the Dinangat people watched be reproduced in whole or in part and heard about missionaries coming to other unless expressly authorized in tribes. They saw the changes. They knew God’s writing. Word had something to do with it. But no one NTM worldwide ever came to the Dinangat village. Had they USA 407-323-3430 been forgotten? Would they ever know the Canada 519-369-2622 truth? How could they get out of this darkness? Australia 011-61-2-6559-8646 Then one day, the answers came. Europe 011-44-1472-387700 This photo David Uttley READ the online edition and VIEW and cover photo by Gary Smith additional photos and video from the Dinangat tribe in the online edition: ntm.org/magazine #012762 CONNECT So, thank you. After hearingFirm Foundations Bible lessons, culminating in a clear presentation of the gospel in his own language, a young Biem man said to me, “I know I should thank God for you guys but I want to thank all three of your families for bringing God’s talk here.” We told him that, no, it’s not just the three fami- lies. There are literally thousands of people praying for you guys to understand God’s talk all over the world. He then said, “OK, then you go and tell them, all of them: Thank you. God’s talk has come to our island. Thank them for praying and sending you guys here.” — Wayne Chen, missionary to the Biem people, Papua New Guinea Plenty of restrooms During my language evaluation, the Paraguayan lady stopped me. She asked in a very sweet but puzzled way, “You have “GOD HAD ONLY four children, true?” “Yes, that’s right,” I replied and then had ONE SON, AND a moment of panic. “What did I tell you?” She laughed. “You said: ‘I have four HE WAS A bathrooms — and I’m going to have an- other one!’” MISSIONARY.” I laughed until I almost cried. It’s a lot of work for us to learn language, but it’s also a —David Livingstone, lot of work for all the patient Paraguayans pioneer missionary to Africa who have to listen to us practice on them. Good thing there is lots of comic relief sprinkled throughout. — Elijah and Moira Hall, Paraguay 4 What in the world is on my hands? A big part of learning the Tigak Step 7: Put it into boiling water and culture and language is by observing boil until very soft. how they do everything—fishing, Step 8: Remove the pot from the cooking, washing clothes, conducting fire. Remove bune from the pot and religious events, etc. I watch carefully, then carefully (it’s hot!) scrape the red taking lots of notes and pictures, kernels off (they’re still clinging to a trying to capture the process step- little piece of husk) into a dish. by-step. Then I print out the pictures Step 9: Now comes the bloody … and go back to the person later who I er … I mean, messy part. Take hand- watched do the process and ask about fuls of kernels and squeeze all the red the language associated with each stuff out into a bowl and discard the step. I show them a picture of Step inner, hard part of the kernel left in One and ask: “What is that? What your hand. This part of the process are you doing? Can you tell me the can also be a little painful. If you story of what we did that day by these didn’t scrape the bune very well earlier pictures?” on, your hands get poked by all the And this is the 10-step story I got pokey stuff still on the kernels. And for making the blood-red dip called depending on how many bunes you “bune.” Notice all the nouns and verbs are working on, the squeezing step can I got from this one process: take quite a long time. It’s best to set Step 1: Get bune out of the tree by up some sort of tag-team effort with a using a long bamboo pole or other friend to give your hands a rest. tree branch. Poke at the ripe bune un- Step 10: Now dip banana, sweet til it falls to the ground. (It looks like potato or saksak in the bune (it looks a giant ear of corn about two feet long like pesto sauce now). Enjoy! that hasn’t been shucked yet.) — Aimee Hedrick, Tigak tribe, Step 2: Remove the leaves (shuck Papua New Guinea it to reveal the huge red “ear of corn” inside). Step 3: Scrape the bune. Its skin is sort of pokey all over, which no one enjoys eating. So gently scrape it off with a particular type of seashell that works well for this job. Step 4: Chop it into round sections and split those down the middle. Step 5: Cut out the center white part, leaving only the long, round red kernels of the outer part. Step 6: Rinse it. 5 CONNECT Why are traditional stories so important? Hearing traditional tribal stories helps missionaries understand a people group’s culture and also provides illustrations which enable them to share God’s Word clearly when the Bible teaching begins. The Mwinika people have a traditional story that, in a way, expresses the concept, “You snooze, you lose.” Once there was genet [a type of wild cat] who got up and said: “I am going to the house of the king of the humans to marry his daughter.” So he went to the king’s house. When he arrived he greeted the king. He then greeted the other people and sat down. The people brought lunch and they all sat down together to eat. Shortly after the genet arrived, the rabbit showed up. He greeted the people and they responded. The rabbit said, “Yes, it is me, I have arrived.” The king said: “Yes, you have found us. We are eating. Come and sit down and eat.” The rabbit said: “No. It is better that I first say what I came to say and then I can sit down and eat.” The king said, “Go ahead.” The rabbit said: “Sir, I have come here for a purpose. I have come court- ing. I want to marry your daughter.” “Really?” “Yes.” “OK,” the king said, “You have said what you wanted to say. Now come and eat.” So the rabbit sat down to eat. At that point the genet spoke up. He said: “What about me? I also came to court your daughter!” The king said: “No you didn’t. You came to eat.” — Phil and Elin Henderson, Mwinika tribe, Mozambique 6 Romans and Mengens The book of Romans should now be in the hands of Mengen believers. Rebecca Preheim expected to com- CONNECT WITH… plete the final check of the translation Jaco and Mary Coetzee in December. She and her translation West Africa co-worker, Kariang, work together to Ministry: Church Planting put God’s Word in the language of the Sending churches: Deltona Alliance, Deltona, Florida, Redeemer’s Fellowship, Mengen people of Papua New Guinea. Roseburg,Oregon Kariang lives a 40-minute hike up the mountain from where Rebecca Born in South Africa and raised in America, Jaco fell in love with the things of lives. Rebecca says, “She has faithfully this world. “Upon graduating high school helped me for many years, in spite of I immediately found myself thousands being the only believer in her village— of dollars in debt as well as heading into the Marine Corps. After a tour in Iraq and and in spite of the persecution she having fallen into various sin addictions faces from time to time.” She’s been I began to notice how out of hand things making that hike twice a week to became in my life.” “Just a few weeks after being stateside I translate God’s Word. found myself in jail and, for the first time, Preparing for the check, Rebecca talking to God. Unsure of His existence, and wrote, “Kariang and I worked love for me, I begged Him to show me He was real.