What does a PNG "walkabout" look like?

News from John and Bonnie Nystrom -- December 11, 2020
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Decision time for several language communities

During last week's "Awareness Walkabout," our partner, Willem van de Bruinhost addressed a group of people in Mafoka village, explaining the opportunity they have to take the first step toward translating the Bible into their language by attending some training courses in Oral Bible Storying (OBS) next year.

In Amsuku village, one of the Papua New Guinean trainers for next year's workshops explained what it's all about. I'm sorry, but I don't know his name. That's one disadvantage of only getting to PNG once a year--we don't get to meet everybody involved in all the various aspects of the translation project.

The Lord's perfect timing. Willem was able to address a big crowd in Romei-Barera because our team arrived just in time for a school graduation ceremony.

In Ramo, these family members listened from their windows to our team's presentation.

Praise and Prayer

Praise the Lord with us for

* A safe trip for our team to many villages.
* The Lord's perfect timing in every encounter along the way.
* Our team now has a 4-wheel-drive Toyota Land Cruiser, which helped make this walkabout possible.
* At least one village has already appointed people to attend the Oral Bible Storying training next year.

Please pray for

* The people in these villages, especially church and community leaders, as they make decisions that could lead to their eventually translating the Bible into their languages.
* Our team leaders as they navigate through all the linguistic, social, and political potholes on the road to helping people to eventually produce Bible translations in these languages.

Partnership

If you would like to partner with us financially, we have two options below.

Give to our Wycliffe ministry online

If you prefer to send a check, Wycliffe contributions should go to:
Wycliffe Bible Translators
PO Box 628200
Orlando, FL 32862-8200
(Please include a separate note expressing your preference for the Wycliffe ministry of John and Bonnie Nystrom #221253)

What we do
Since 1987 we have been training local Papua New Guinean church leaders to translate the Bible into their own languages and coaching them through the process from first draft to publication.

We serve in the Aitape West Translation Project, which is producing and distributing Bible translations in 11 languages in print, electronic, audio, and video form; training local people to use the translations; and training the local translators to help other translators do the same in still more languages.

To learn more
We have written about how a tsunami changed the face of Bible translation in Papua New Guinea in our book, Sleeping Coconuts. It is available here on Kindle or here in paperback.

Click here to hear us speaking on this topic at a partner church.

Wycliffe has released a short film called "Arop" about this amazing story. The one-minute book trailer is here.

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