al eci Sp oto Ph ges Pa
MIICHE EALSS’ ME EMOIIRSS Triumph After Tragedy “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:32 (NIV)
July 2008
Inside this issue: Report on Translation Work 1 In Papua New Guinea (PNG) Our Recruitment Staff
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West Aitape Bible Translation Photos
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Finish the task & recruit 4 1000 new WBT missionaries
Special Praise Points • PRAISE! For our daughter Maria and Josh and their 2 boys, Ryan & Kody, who celebrate a new baby girl (Maya Renee Mishler) born in Germany (they work with SIL there) on July 2. Mother and baby are doing fine!
• For our daughter Jenny who is getting married in October to Kevin Struyk (a seminarian at Reformed Theological Seminary) and a Pastoral Assistant at St. Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, FL.
Jenny & Kevin
Swept Away by A Tsunami
there at the time, half were killed.
Word. They began to realize that they must work together so that all nearby languages would receive God’s Word at the same time, so that none would be lost.
In 1998 we reported The tsunami left only on a tsunami that stuck a narrow strip of sand, the coast of Papua less than 170 feet wide, New Guinea (PNG) where once the village where Americans John had stood. Hundreds of and Bonnie Nystrom gravesites dotted the were doing translation beach. As a result, the Arop work since people decided 1988 among Nystrom Family to rebuild two the Arop peomile inland from ple. At the the original comtime they were munity. Somein a traditional thing then unexlanguage propected happened gram. They when the operated as an Nystroms moved expatriate with them. They team working found they were with only one Before the Tsunami there were several hundred Arop living close to homes here, including the Nystrom’s village house vernacular lanseveral languages guage. unrelated to Arop. “Half of the people we The Nystroms thereOn July 17, 1998, came to translate for tragedy s t r u c k . died in one day,” says fore, reorganized the On that peaceful eve- Bonnie. “That com- work and today are part ning, while we and the pletely changed our of the 11 multiNystroms were at Uka- whole thinking, our language West Aitape rumpa, PNG a 7.0 whole attitude about translation program, a earthquake offshore Bible translation and the change of direction triggered three tidal project we were in- brought about by the waves, each 30-50 feet volved in.” The Arops hand of God in that high. Waves crashed began to realize too that great tsunami. onto the beach with a people from other lan- (Con’t on page 4) deafening roar. Of the guages had died and CHECK OUT OUR WEB SITE 2,400 people living they did not have God’s www.cbmicheals.com