Update on "Spirit Connection"

Today, the church meeting in Mibu (before, during, and after) was abuzz with the sad goings on in the neighboring village where we recently reported there was some strange cult activity. The small delegation who went to try to dissuade those smitten by the anti-gospel weirdness going over there had returned a day early, having actually been run off with their lives being threatened!

Before the church meeting started, quite a few people gathered and listened as Sesi told the sad story, saying they were barely given a chance to speak. They were expected, and when they arrived, Gero, the village big man, tore into them. Gero is a very vocal person who loves to speak (and to be listened to). He went on for quite a while, sharing many scary details of his organized cult that utilizes young children to prophecy in their sleep, and how God has made him 'king' and determiner of who goes to heaven or hell. He went on expressing his anger toward anyone who gets in his way. He even managed a public attempt at calling down fire from heaven to burn up the Mibu delegation right there on the spot. No joke! People watched... then waited... then waited some more... but nothing happened. Then in anger, he and a number of his followers started threatening to hurt and kill those who had come wanting to help.

The men from Mibu left, thanking God that they hadn't been hurt. They were thankful too that they'd been able to at least encourage the three families who were not supporting the strange activities. In addition to that there was one family who had been participating in the cult who were convinced that they should not continue. Those who had been run off that day, stayed in this family's house for the night before coming back to Mibu the next day. While there the host family shared how their young daughter was one of the ones who was being used, along with the other kids, to do this weird stuff. After talking with the folks from Mibu and realizing they should not be supporting this activity they went quickly to retrieve their daughter from the hut in which these young children were being housed.

So today in the church meeting back in Mibu, Sesi shared their story. The church talked a lot about what to do for their friends over there who are full on into this thing. They talked about how the teachers who had been going from Mibu to teach over there need to continue, even if just for the four families. They need to continue to be encouraged and to grow in God's word. They'll have to find another place to meet, of course. Then it was unanimous that prayer is the only thing we can really do for those wandering in the dark right now. God is the only one strong enough to do anything about what's going on over there.

We were encouraged to see how the attitude was desperate instead of offended and that the instinct was to realize their need for God's help and power in all this. Would you join them in continuing to pray for the folks in this nearby outreach area? Pray for those who are holding fast to the faith, that they'd be able to stand strong and that God would use them as a beacon of truth over there. And pray that the truth would set them free from this deception, and that they'd remember that trusting in what Jesus did for them on the cross really is the ONLY way.

"Spirit Connection" or Bad Reception?

The Mibu believers need your prayers.

There has been a lot of talk over the last month or so about some confusion in the church. We usually don't get all the information at once. It comes in waves, a little here, a little there, each time getting a fuller picture of what's going on. We have been hearing more and more about the beginnings of a cult here that refer to themselves as "Spirit Connection". The information has been building and we've been trying to do due diligence in preparing the local church leaders to be able to rightly handle God's word, and keep watch over the believing community, keeping people's eyes on Jesus. Here in Mibu, the leaders seem to have been able to get a handle on it for the most part. However, what's going down in one of our neighboring outreach villages is what's really concerning us. It seems to be on the brink of turning into a full-blown cult! Out of the believing community there, only three are reported to be standing against this movement. They've sent word for leaders and teachers from the church here to come help dissuade the many confused and to show that their activities and beliefs are strayed from what God's word teaches.

The cult identifies itself as being led by God's Spirit, hence the reference to themselves as "Spirit Connection." They consist primarily of young children and a few young adults with the full backing of the more influential folks in the village. A group of 10 young children are reputed to have died one night (all at the same time in the same house) and risen the next morning to tell of all that they saw in their death. They say they saw the road to heaven. They are foretelling the year of Jesus' return. They also claim to have seen many other dead people (in other words, their dead ancestors). They're proclaiming that those who oppose them (namely the believers in Mibu) will be turned to pillars of salt and dust. And the list of absurdities just goes on! Movements like this are not uncommon in our area, but what is really concerning is that what the young folks are reported to have seen and said directly attacks those in the church who strive to follow God's word. They have been effective at undermining the influence of the leaders in the church as well as plant much doubt as to whether or not Jesus is the ONLY way. They've gained so much rapid support from the local area residents that they've said they're going to begin organized outreaches to other areas here soon. They're presenting their own words as God's word, even writing some of it down and reading it as authoritative in the church meetings! Ughh! There's so much more that would curl your toes that we don't have space to mention. But suffice it to say your prayers are needed. Much of this has brewed for several weeks, just recently exploding into something big.

We need you to be in prayer for the church leaders as they prepare (and as we try to help prepare and encourage them) for going over to face this thing head on and make it clear that the church does not identify with this at all and to warn people against being distracted with fruitless talk which does not promote faith, a pure heart, a clear conscience and the love that God's true revealed word teaches. On the contrary, what they teach only produces confusion, arguments, and all kinds of other endless speculation. It's right out of 1 Timothy 1.3-5. Some of the leaders and teachers are planning on going over there this Thursday (Wednesday U.S. time) and staying through the weekend to try to deal with the situation.

Pray for strength of those over there who do feel the conviction but may struggle with the very strong social obligations that may keep them from acting on their convictions. The church there is young and immature, still very easily duped into chasing after things that take them away from Jesus.

Pray that the love that Jesus has shown for them would be all that holds their fascination. There are so many fruitless pursuits they can waste their time on. The love of Jesus is where it's at. Keeping their eyes on what Jesus did for them on that cross because he loves us will provide a lifetime of growth and maturing in their faith.

And then pray for the young folks that have fallen into this delusion. They are deceived and puffed up with self-promotion and, for the moment, getting exactly what they're after. Pray that they'd see the carnal nature of what they do and that trusting Jesus (a REAL trust in Jesus - because they use the phrase with very wrong connotations) is the only way.

New Booklets!

In a recent delivery of supplies brought by our helicopter, one of the boxes we opened had the long awaited booklets containing both the book of Romans and that of 1 Timothy, as well as the lessons for 1 Timothy! These aren't just any booklets. They're the end product of much hard work translating the bible and putting lessons together. It's such a thrill to get these booklets in folks' hands. Making God's word available to the Mibu people is one of the major strategic facets of furthering the development of the young church in Mibu.

We're not the only ones doing the work here. There are many of you who have been faithfully supporting this ministry by praying and giving their valuable time and resources for the sake of the Mibu church. Little milestones like this are a great time to say, "Way to go, team!" and also to remind you that there is still much to be done here. We keep plugging away with all that God has given us and are thankful for the strong support we feel from those who have sent us!

A Few Points for Prayer

We've been really encouraged the last few weeks with progress in the translation of Ephesians. Sesi and I are trying to finish up through chapter 5 by the end of the month. So far it's looking like we might make it! Please pray that we'd be able to keep our focus and be able to drive this thing forward. Then just one more chapter to go. Chapter six will take a while since Sesi, who is my main translation helper, is going to be working with some local level elections the following month. He's needing to bring in some income for his family since they've been unable to sell their coffee yet this year. The time he's away might be a good time for me to work out some of the checking process that doesn't require Sesi.

While we're excited to see translation continuing along (as well as many other great things God is doing here), we've been kind of sad to watch some of the decisions, or lack of action, of a few key church leaders (in training) recently which leaves the church in a discouraging place. We are thankful for a few who seem to be able to continue in God's amazing strength to hold things together. We long for the day when there are those qualified and willing to shepherd the church as elders. Growth can sometimes seem to happen rapidly and other times very slowly, or not at all for a while. Times like this highlight the years of work that are left to be done here, and also the fact that the work is more than just one family can do alone.

One area in particular that we would appreciate your continued prayers for is regarding the longevity of the literacy program in Mibu. While it started off with a bang years ago, two things threaten its continuation here. One is whether or not the church is willing to take the initiative, investing their own resources to keep the program going for the next generation. There are actually those who think now that they themselves are literate why should they invest for others to become literate. This is indicative of a much bigger problem than just literacy. The other is that the standard of literacy has been quite low here. Those who are literate are only moderately so. Higher literacy skills will result in leaders better equipped to lead, and also result in more encouragement about the importance of literacy and thus the need for them to continue it. Good plans have been talked about and even agreed upon regarding training to increase literacy skills. But no initiative is being taken by the church as of yet. Again, pointing to a bigger issue and hurdle that must be overcome before this can be called a truly indigenous church plant. The problem seems to primarily revolve around a mindset of 'waiting until someone else does it for us'. Undealt with, it is a church killer. But back to literacy... without it, God's word will fall back into inaccessibility for the Mibus. How can leaders teach others without being able to comfortably read God's word? How can the next generation of people ever hear God speaking to them without the ability to read his word for themselves? It's not a difficult or trick question. The simple answer is that they cannot. We've been working with leaders on this for nearly 8 months now with little to no movement. We would appreciate your prayers regarding how to move forward in this.

One other noteworthy area we'd appreciate your prayers for is that a few of the church leaders, in the name of 'diplomacy', are quietly encouraging that those who openly reject God's truth intermingle with the church. They lurk around the outskirts of the church meetings which are supposed to be about honoring and worshipping God together and fellowship and growing together. But these folks only seem to ever sow discord, anger, and confusion. It's not that these people don't need to hear about God's love too. But they openly reject His offer of grace. They're only there to throw rocks as it were. They've been getting more and more openly antagonistic as well. Please pray that the church leaders would realize together the need to maintain the sanctity of fellowship while still being able to hold out God's grace to those who do not yet see it.

There are indeed lots of exciting things that God has been and continues doing here in Mibu! But these are a couple key areas of concern for which we'd appreciate the ongoing prayer of all of you who care for the Mibu Ministry.

Failed Greetings

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ."

That sounds simple enough to translate, right? But it's worth noting that this little sentence found within the first two verses of Ephesians poses some difficult problems. The words by themselves aren't that difficult. Key terms such as 'peace' and 'grace' have already been ironed out. So what's the problem? The problem is that where Paul's purpose was to express a God oriented well wishing in the context of a greeting, it actually comes across in the Mibu translation as though he is already starting to teach or exhort. While I'm sure that Paul did want them to know about grace and peace, he certainly wasn't expounding on the ideas or even exhorting them to do anything here. It was simply a well wishing as part of a greeting. As it is now, this is not a faithful rendition of the text into the Mibu language.

Stepping back and looking at it some more, it's clear that the problem has to do with the whole of these first two verses which form the opening of the letter. You see, each language has it's own patterns and structures for communicating ideas. The Greek language had a certain pattern which clearly indicated the opening of a letter, with greetings, introductions, well wishings, etc. Well the Mibu language will have a different pattern for the same ideas to be communicated just as clearly. In the Mibu language, this will look very very different than the pattern for the same in Greek. Our job is to get these ideas restructured in a way that comes across the same way in the Mibu language that it did in Greek.

Add to the problem the fact that currently there IS NO standard letter writing genre in Mibu! It was only recently that the Mibus began to read and write in their own language. Patterns for letter openings and greetings are only just beginning to emerge. For now, we're mostly shooting in the dark here. With each attempt at translating a letter opening, and each process of checking and refining, the 'standard' gets better and better, communicating more and more clearly and effectively. Sesi and I have to 'invent' the right form to make this work! Since last week's first check for comprehension, we've revisited the section with this in mind and have what seems like the best letter opening yet, which further checking will either affirm or contradict.

Once this form takes the right shape and the letter opening and greeting come across clearly for what they're supposed to be, then the pieces within, such as, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ," will be easier to iron out so that rather than come across as an abrupt jump into teaching, it will fit in the context more appropriately as the well wishing God inspired it to be.

We find it possible to translate all the words accurately, yet put them together in a way such that the author's purpose fades into ambiguity. Yet the purpose is fundamental to every successful communication. As you can see in the above example, we find that often it's not just finding the equivalents of words and phrases and ideas, but presenting them in such a way that the purpose is kept clear that presents the biggest challenge in translation.

Ephesians in Mibu

No, while we may live at the ends of the earth, we've certainly not fallen off the face of it! While there have been inspiring things to write about, putting pen to paper, or in our case, fingers to keyboard, has been a challenge. Call it writer's block or whatever. Regardless, God continues to work here in Mibu and we are committed to keeping you updated.

Being the only expat family serving in a ministry where the workload could keep three families busy, takes some prioritizing to make things work. The big push for us has been staying in the background as much as possible as far as the church is concerned and focusing on bible translation. God's word in the Mibu people's language is foundational to all the rest of the church development efforts. It's easy to get bogged down in other details, important though they be, and see translation become one of those 'closer than they appear' objects in the rear view mirror. Our goal as the only full time family here right now is to keep the translation in the forefront of our efforts.

Since mid-January we've been working on translating Ephesians. Finishing the first half of the letter last week felt like a major accomplishment for Sesi and I. The task wasn't without it's great challenges what with seemingly impossible long sentences, difficult concepts and logical connections that seem far above my pay grade! Relief might be a word to add to how we felt when we finished; Not because we don't enjoy the work, but because of its difficulty, and because all throughout you're concerned that you're going to hit an insurmountable wall, or make a really bad mistake navigating through it all. When you do eventually finish, when you're convinced that God's word is accurately represented in the Mibu language, a sense of relief can certainly be added to that of accomplishment.

Now it's time for another step. It's time to put the text to the test. Yesterday we began checking these first 3 chapters of Ephesians for comprehension and possible misunderstanding. This involves working with several people, reading portions of the text and having them tell back what they heard, asking them questions about the main point, specific terminology used, flow of thought and other details that indicate the text is being understood. This is where we find that while the text might be accurate in the sense that it contains all the details of the original, it may not actually be communicating those things very clearly. There may be confusion or misunderstanding. The point being made may prove elusive. Or... what we really hope for is that the text is indeed communicating clearly, where large portions can be read, understood, and talked about clearly. It's a rare thing that all this comes together really well on the first check. But yesterday, when we checked the the first two chapters we found things going very smoothly with only a few places that needed corrections, and the few corrections that are needed were pretty easy to pinpoint!

Please pray as we continue the checking process, with chapter 3 today, and further checks with different people over the coming week or so. Also be in prayer as we begin to get ready to move into translating the second half of Ephesians. It's a huge and difficult process. We need your continued prayers for all the work that remains!

Can YOU Dig It?

An airstrip here in Mibu is something that the people here have dreamt of for many years now. About a year ago, the Mibu people decided they wanted to set out to finish the airstrip project they'd started so many years ago. The length of the airstrip was cleared, we measured it out, checked to see if the little strip of land allocated to the project has the appropriate length and grade and laid out the centerline. From there a map was made depicting areas that needed to be dug down and areas that need building up. It's a HUGE task requiring much labor. But the people want this airstrip, and to be honest, so do we.

The biggest and most obvious benefits of this airstrip for the Mibu community is a more consistent means of selling their coffee, and at a much fairer price. Currently the Mibus work all year on their coffee, only to be faced with the question after harvest of whether or not they'll even get paid. And if they do get paid, it's often not even half of what coffee is normally sold for. It's a rather hopeless situation, especially when faced with whether or not you want to hike over 11,000 kilograms of coffee on your backs, two days down the mountain! Other benefits include the possibility of selling their oranges (domestically available oranges are a rare find in this country and the Mibus have a huge harvest of them) and also increased ability to get seriously ill people to a hospital in town. There's no doubt an airstrip is a huge asset to the community. It's only a matter of actually building it. Again, it's a huge task.

Just the other day, we calculated that the people here have managed to move 300-400 tons of dirt in the last couple months! An astounding amount of work done with just 5 shovels, some bush knives, two heavy iron bars for digging out rock, and a whole lot of water. That's right... water! The Mibu people built two dams near the top of the area they're working right now. Each dam fills with around 3000 gallons of water or more. While it's filling with the runoff from the rain we get almost every day, people are digging and filling a ditch with loose dirt and stones. When full, the dammed up water is released, powerfully coursing it's ditched path down the mountain taking maybe 10-15 tons of dirt at a time and depositing it at the bottom, in a retaining wall. This method builds up areas quickly and with much less effort than manually lugging the stuff down.

While this airstrip, and the responsibility of building it, is entirely the Mibu people's, we support it as members of the community ourselves and are committed to providing some help while being sure not to overstep our bounds and making it our project. As part of this commitment Sun Valley Community Church has agreed to send a small team of people here to Mibu to work alongside the folks here in Mibu for about 10 days, helping carry out the plan that the Mibus have devised. It's a great chance to support their efforts, and also to be an encouragement to them. The details of the trip are still being ironed out. But so far it's looking like the trip is going to happen the last couple weeks of July.

While we may not be certain of all the details yet, there is one detail we are certain of... We need volunteers! We need people like you who want to invest some of their time and labor helping the community and the church in Mibu. Would you consider being a part of this team? It would be a great opportunity, say for a father and his capable son(s) to work together, or a single person, or a married couple. Whether you're younger, or older, maybe God has something here for you! It's a great chance not only to help with a real material need, but also to interact with the believers here with whom the people of Sun Valley Community Church have a long and fruitful partnership history. Can YOU dig it?

If you're even remotely interested be sure to take advantage of the chance this Sunday (tomorrow) to ask more questions about the trip. Look for Theresa Board and Lori Bastian out on the courtyard at the Sun Valley Community Church, Tempe campus sometime Sunday morning and get all your questions answered. Or if you're unable to make it Sunday morning, you can call Theresa at 480-299-8864.

(In the bigger picture, up toward the top of the hill is the double dam. Leading down from that is the ditch where excavated dirt is thrown. Toward the bottom are the retaining walls which fill with the dirt. In the other picture, a closer view of the retaining walls filling with dirt.)