MICHEALS’ MEMOIRS November 2013 Update
Dear Friends and Family, There are lots of good things to report regarding the work of Bible translation, especially in Papua New Guinea (PNG) where we served for 15 years.
New Bible Translation Training Center, Ukarumpa, PNG
Students - Bible Translation Training Center, Ukarumpa, PNG
The photo above is the Training Center at Ukarumpa, PNG (where we lived). It is now fully operational and being used for training Papua New Guineans in the work of Bible translation! However, it has been a long time coming.
Eventually, after many years funding did come in and the center is now built! Training courses are now being held in a wide variety of areas including Biblical Greek, as a new generation of Biblical scholars and translators from PNG take their place in the worldwide work of Bible translation.
Back when we lived in PNG, Chuck served on the Executive Committee which helped oversee the work of Bible translation in the country. The Training Center had been built in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was getting old, had limited space for participants and wouldn’t meet the needs for future work. So, in the 1990s, the Executive Committee began to pray that funds would be found to build a new Training Center. In anticipation of a new center, plans for the buildings were drawn up as well as plans for funding. However, for many years the funding did not come in. That meant many training courses just could not be held or they were held in less than ideal conditions. The work of Bible translation was being held up.
If you had asked us when we arrived in PNG in 1985 if we would live to see the day that PNG men were learning Biblical Greek, we would not have thought it possible. It had only been 30 years earlier (1956) that the territory had been open to the work of missions as people had only recently been discovered living primitively in the highlands. Now the work of the Executive Committee in the mid-1990s is bearing fruit. The church in PNG is flourishing and God’s Word is being translated to even more people in PNG. We praise the Lord for this work and also thank you for your faithful financial and prayer support. Watch a short video of the Training Center here: Training Center Video