Because prayer is the strategy of Pioneer Bible Translators, our worldwide team intentionally sets aside a day of fasting and prayer every month. On this day, we join in unified prayer, offering up to our Father praises and requests collected especially for this day....
Baby Steps A Bible translator in Papua New Guinea spends his or her early years becoming a child again. Or so it seems. Most of us arrive here having spent the better part of our lives getting an education. When we move to a rural village, though, we essentially...
It was Friday afternoon at the end of a long week. The air was deadly calm, so thick you could cut it with a knife, as the seven of us sat in a tiny room in a village house in Papua New Guinea. Every day, from early morning until late afternoon and even some evenings,...
I was sitting on a woven mat in a bamboo-walled house with other people who were talking in a language I did not know. I had no idea what they were talking about, so not surprisingly, I felt a bit lonely. Another time I was conversing with people in a language we all...
Urgent Recruitment Needs In Luke 10, before Jesus sent out the 72 disciples, He told them that the harvest was plentiful, but the workers were few. Then He instructed them to ask the Lord of the Harvest to send out more workers. God wants us to ask Him to send out...
Fibi has had a hard life. As an Apal-speaking woman living in a small village tucked deep inside Papua New Guinea’s tropical rainforest, she is accustomed to the challenges of daily life. Yet it seems that she has experienced more than her share of hardship. Fibi...
2011 I had just arrived in the village of Angguna to work alongside my teammate Martha Wade for several weeks. During my first night there, panicked people brought a child to Martha’s house. He was slumped over, and his head was bleeding. In the cacophony of...
What is holiness? Is it purity? Being set apart? Or is it being chosen, dedicated, or sanctified? Holiness is all of these, and how these aspects interconnect can be illustrated with a story about a peanut butter jar. In Papua New Guinea we used lots of matches....
Checks and Balances The air conditioner gently hummed behind me, making a valiant effort to cool the room and remove some of the 95% humidity of Madang, Papua New Guinea. I sat at one corner of a conference table, staring into my laptop screen, comparing what I was...
“She gave birth to her first son, wrapped him in cloths, and laid him in a manger — there was no room for them to stay in the inn.” (Luke 2:7 GNT) The Christmas story from Luke 2 seemed to be a reasonable place to begin translating God’s Word into the Apal language....
It was Christmas Eve. I wasn’t in much of a holiday mood, though. The selection of potential gifts for our children had seemed pretty sparse in the local shops. Our artificial Christmas tree looked so pathetic cowering in its corner, and the abundant ornaments hanging...
“Where did this happen?” “Near Bethlehem.” “What kind of place is Bethlehem?” “A small village.” “What appeared in the sky?” “An angel.” Christmas was approaching, and the Apal people were about to hear Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth in their own language for the...