My interest in Wycliffe really started back in 1997/1998 when I first began going to Wycliffe Associates banquets with Julie. What really got me going emotionally and motivationally was seeing people holding a portion of God’s word in their heart language in their hands for the first time. Many of the videos viewed at the banquets showed the tremendous joy of the people during the dedication of their New Testament and I would literally get tears in my eyes.
Experiencing these events, from a banquet hall, was life changing. It moved me so much closer to joining Wycliffe to be a part of the Bible translation team. As a member of Wycliffe but working in North Carolina for JAARS (the technical arm of Wycliffe, for those unfamiliar with this) for the past two years, we frequently heard stories and saw videos about other scripture dedications. Wow!
And now Julie and I are about to experience a dream come true: being at a dedication of the Malê New Testament, seeing God’s Word placed in the hands of people for the first time in their heart language.
The Malê language group is in the mountains southwest of Lae, the 2nd largest city in PNG (which isn’t saying much). A number of people from other countries are arriving in Lae. We and about 12 others from Ukarumpa will ride to Lae early Friday and rendezvous at a helicopter pad. The SIL helicopter will make many trips, loaded to capacity, ferrying all of the guests (Papua New Guineans and "waitskins") into the village of Yemli, elevation 3100’. We will be housed and fed by the villagers. They so appreciate guests who want to come so far to celebrate with them.
I will try to capture it all in an obviously inadequate way with words, pictures and videos.
About 20 guests have chosen to spend two days hiking from Yemli to Lae, 20 mountainous miles away. It will be rugged terrain, hot and buggy (mosquitoes carrying malaria?), with a number of streams to wade across. A very few of us are not in as good a shape as we ought to be. When we near Lae, we will catch a hired van back home to Ukarumpa, arriving Wednesday evening.
You can be praying for us at many different levels and many different ways. You can also be singing praise to the Lord, for He is so good.
Julie and I thought we’d close this “letter” by quoting the latest email we got from the translators, John and Amy Lindstrom, who are already in the village, helping the people prepare for this coming weekend.
_________________________________________________________________
Dear friends,
We are in the village with limited email access getting ready for the dedication. I wanted to share the following with you to encourage you in your prayers for the Malê New Testament dedication.
We are seeing major signs of God at work here. The worship services here have always been good Lutheran services, but now are much more intense and very focused on God. Prayer has a far bigger role than ever before. Yesterday there was a time of sharing from the Word after the service and people whom we had never seen as spiritual leaders strongly encouraged people to follow God with their whole hearts. One of the young men who shared mentioned 2008 as the time when this spiritual awakening had started. That’s the time that a new prayer initiative was began in the village started by Elisa and others in the village here, but it’s probably more accurate to say it was started by God.
We also see signs that evil spirits are at work opposing the work God is doing here. Yesterday we learned that a rumor started up a few months ago that Elisa and us were not doing this translation work by God’s power, but were doing it by the power of evil spirits. Elisa spoke to two retired pastors and asked them to help fight this rumor. Those pastors actively supported Elisa and smashed the rumor. And on Sunday, during the morning service there was a time of confession and apology with tears by the village people who had started the rumor. One of the key men in that group told us that he had been influenced by evil spirits to say those things because of a connection he had to a stone that had been used by the ancestors to worship demons. There was a special prayer service after the morning service where the power of that stone was actively rebuked. After that the man who had previously been under the spirits power came to us and said he was free now and told us that stone and its spirits no longer had control over him. Pretty amazing things to be happening just a few days before the dedication. (And we knew nothing of any of it until the Sunday service yesterday.)
Please continue to pray that God would use the dedication to powerfully encourage people to seek him through His Word.
Blessings,
John
Experiencing these events, from a banquet hall, was life changing. It moved me so much closer to joining Wycliffe to be a part of the Bible translation team. As a member of Wycliffe but working in North Carolina for JAARS (the technical arm of Wycliffe, for those unfamiliar with this) for the past two years, we frequently heard stories and saw videos about other scripture dedications. Wow!
And now Julie and I are about to experience a dream come true: being at a dedication of the Malê New Testament, seeing God’s Word placed in the hands of people for the first time in their heart language.
The Malê language group is in the mountains southwest of Lae, the 2nd largest city in PNG (which isn’t saying much). A number of people from other countries are arriving in Lae. We and about 12 others from Ukarumpa will ride to Lae early Friday and rendezvous at a helicopter pad. The SIL helicopter will make many trips, loaded to capacity, ferrying all of the guests (Papua New Guineans and "waitskins") into the village of Yemli, elevation 3100’. We will be housed and fed by the villagers. They so appreciate guests who want to come so far to celebrate with them.
I will try to capture it all in an obviously inadequate way with words, pictures and videos.
About 20 guests have chosen to spend two days hiking from Yemli to Lae, 20 mountainous miles away. It will be rugged terrain, hot and buggy (mosquitoes carrying malaria?), with a number of streams to wade across. A very few of us are not in as good a shape as we ought to be. When we near Lae, we will catch a hired van back home to Ukarumpa, arriving Wednesday evening.
You can be praying for us at many different levels and many different ways. You can also be singing praise to the Lord, for He is so good.
Julie and I thought we’d close this “letter” by quoting the latest email we got from the translators, John and Amy Lindstrom, who are already in the village, helping the people prepare for this coming weekend.
_________________________________________________________________
Dear friends,
We are in the village with limited email access getting ready for the dedication. I wanted to share the following with you to encourage you in your prayers for the Malê New Testament dedication.
We are seeing major signs of God at work here. The worship services here have always been good Lutheran services, but now are much more intense and very focused on God. Prayer has a far bigger role than ever before. Yesterday there was a time of sharing from the Word after the service and people whom we had never seen as spiritual leaders strongly encouraged people to follow God with their whole hearts. One of the young men who shared mentioned 2008 as the time when this spiritual awakening had started. That’s the time that a new prayer initiative was began in the village started by Elisa and others in the village here, but it’s probably more accurate to say it was started by God.
We also see signs that evil spirits are at work opposing the work God is doing here. Yesterday we learned that a rumor started up a few months ago that Elisa and us were not doing this translation work by God’s power, but were doing it by the power of evil spirits. Elisa spoke to two retired pastors and asked them to help fight this rumor. Those pastors actively supported Elisa and smashed the rumor. And on Sunday, during the morning service there was a time of confession and apology with tears by the village people who had started the rumor. One of the key men in that group told us that he had been influenced by evil spirits to say those things because of a connection he had to a stone that had been used by the ancestors to worship demons. There was a special prayer service after the morning service where the power of that stone was actively rebuked. After that the man who had previously been under the spirits power came to us and said he was free now and told us that stone and its spirits no longer had control over him. Pretty amazing things to be happening just a few days before the dedication. (And we knew nothing of any of it until the Sunday service yesterday.)
Please continue to pray that God would use the dedication to powerfully encourage people to seek him through His Word.
Blessings,
John
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