2009: The Year of Ministry Urgency

Looking at Tony, I realize we have indeed been with the Mesem for nearly 16 years. He was born our first furlough, and was six months old when he began a Mesem. Our friends tell us that he is fully Mesem since he grew up there, while Neil and I must settle for being "part Mesem", having worked in another region in PNG prior to moving to Samanzing, and of course, we were both well into our thirties when we began working there. I think if it were not for the amazing changes in our son, it would be hard to believe so many years have passed, but they have indeed.

As we reported in our last newsletter, the Mesem are very excited to have a date of 2011 for completion of the New Testament and we are really asking people to pray for this that there are no more obstacles, hindrances, hassles, or setbacks as we bring this part of the work to completion. We need God's Spirit to enable us, and protect us, as well as to enlighten and empower the Mesem people who read the Word and work along side us.

As in any ministry, without some plan of how to go from A to B, a work with the best of intentions can flounder. There is a clear plan in place, which we believe the Lord has given. Likewise, it can be a terrible mistake in any ministry, but more so in missions, to assume you will always have an open door. We really believe that time is limited and there is great urgency to complete the translation that the church might be equipped to move forward.

This week I put together my CV and passport sized photo and Neil is sending them off to the church leadership in PNG who will write to request our visas for return. January is a slow month because many Papua New Guineans travel home for the holidays and as travel is quite challenging (in other words, it takes a long time), a Hilda that would be brief here, takes longer over there because the amount of work involved just to get home and back again is considerable. We don't expect to hear for several weeks, but are confident that the Lord, who has guided this transition will expedite our visas.

We've been asked many questions about our timing for return. Tony is 16, so he is a sophomore in high school. He has faced extraordinary pressures for the last five years and he asked that he not change schools in the middle of the year. Our lease ends in June, and given that we don't yet have our visas in hand, and our living and education plans are not finalized, we will remain in the US till Tony finishes the school year. This does not delay completing the scriptures. At this point when so much of the scripture is already drafted and being revised we can really make as much progress here as we can overseas by concentrating on computer related tasks that don't require we have Mesem speakers with us. In fact, since we are not in PNG some of this work we can do more efficiently since we always have power and have fewer interruptions during the day.

Neil is developing a spell checker. The language didn't have a written form when we started and people wrote words as they thought they should be spelled. Of course, not everyone wrote them the same way so for any given word there are numerous spellings. Neil is standardizing the spelling and then the entire New Testament will be spell checked for consistency. The same will be done for "key terms" like "baptism" and "grace" which have also changed over the years. While Neil works on that, I have continued with the book of Acts, which has been moving very quickly or very slowly depending on our schedule. I am pleased with what we have so far: a draft of the entire book and the first six chapters completed with the seventh to be started today. Luke was a rather prolific writer, so his chapters are long and he has a lot of them. Neil will tackle Luke, and I will be completing Acts.

So it is with some humour that I am nicknaming 2009 "The Year of Urgency". In reality, we always live in urgent times: we don't really know how long we have to live or how long the doors will remain open in Papua or anywhere for that matter. So we ask that you pray for us, and we for you as well, that we would live "redeeming the time". This is the mindset with which all believers are to live, and our prayer is that all of us will have a sense of expectation for the great things God will do through us in this coming year.

Pray for the Mesem. Please pray this work all the way home.