While you can read about our current goals with the people group we serve here, this is a look at our goals as they have developed over the years:
Pre-entry Goals: 1976
1. Study up all you can on this particular people group
2. Visit those who may have had contact with them
3. Do both a land and aerial survey to determine precisely where these folks live, what the conditions are, and see if they would be open to us living among them
4. Contact a bilingual who could travel with us
Entry Goals: 1977 Jan-April
1. Once we have permission from the chiefs and determined the best location, we move in
2. Quickly build a temporary palm hut along with an outhouse and water well
3. Visit the people and begin to get to know them
4. Begin and finish the mud and pole house for more permanent housing
5. Build an airstrip 300 meters long with decent open space on both ends
Beginning Goals: 1977 May
1. Ramp up the time with the people
2. Focus on establishing friendships with them
3. Push very hard to make a huge investment in learning the language and doing the linguistic analysis
4. Always keep eyes wide open and be alert to observe their culture as it is happening all around us all the time. What does their world look like to them? Be faithful in filing everything from material culture to their worldview!
5. Start the dictionary
6. Keep an eye open in regards to who would be the best helpers for us to learn both their language and culture
7. Get and memorize 3 new Practical Expressions (PEs) each day and put them on review
Goals 1981
1. Continue to grow the relationships with the people
2. Learn to make a bow and arrow, and go hunting with them
3. Accompany them to their gardens
4. Work toward tentative conclusions on the culture file
5. Maintain the dictionary
6. Tape more stories from the people and transcribe them, learning the new material and memorizing idioms that surface
7. Finish the linguistic analysis and start preparing reading books
8. Keep up the search for vocabulary that will work for communicating God’s message to them
9. Get and memorize 5 new PEs each day and put them on a review schedule
Goals 1983
1. Begin translation in Genesis 1 with the best helpers
2. Begin developing Bible lessons from Genesis 1
3. Firm up the culture conclusions, themes, values, and core beliefs
4. Continue to gather info on their worldview to better contextualize the message
5. Keep maintaining the dictionary
6. Begin pre-evangelism, that is ask them a lot of questions about life, death, creation, spirits, the heavens, etc. and then ask them how we can really know that what we believe is true
7. Continue to keep eyes open for spiritual vocab possibilities
8. Begin teaching those interested to read and write in their own language
9. Keep learning new PEs
Goals 1984
1. Finish off pre-evangelism
2, Get permission once again to teach them from the chief. Begin to teach them five days a week at the time that suits them best. Hang with them before and after the teaching from about 5-8 PM
3. Maximize each opportunity with those who are listening to the teaching to see if they are really getting it. (If they haven’t got it, then I haven’t properly taught!!) Spend extra time with them in their homes as well
4. Keep up with Bible Translation staying ahead of where the teaching is. Push to get all the needed portions done from the OT and the Gospels that correspond to phase 1, that is from Creation to Christ’s Ascension
5. Finish preparing the 80 Bible lessons from Creation till Christ’s Ascension
6. Continue to teach literacy, and start passing on the baton on to them
7. Maintain the dictionary
8. Keep up with PEs and listening to narratives by them
Goals 1986-1994
1. Meet with the believers and review from the creation story to Christ’s ascension, making the finished work of Christ on the cross and their security in Him the focus. Highlight the work of the Holy Spirit in the OT too as we prepare them for the book of Acts
2. Translate Acts, Romans, Ephesians, and 1 Corinthians
3. Prepare Bible lessons for those same books
4. Continue to train school teachers and give more and more of the teaching responsibility to them
5. Begin evangelism with the other 8 villages that are asking for teaching
6. Train and have the believers do more and more of the teaching
7. Begin a class for those who would like to help others spiritually each Thursday afternoon
8. Maintain the dictionary
Goals 1995-2002 (this is when we permanently moved out of the village)
1. Continue to train pastors/shepherds/teachers of the flock
2. Work with two of the villages as they evangelize Paco’s village
3. Work with those interested in evangelizing the four villages up river
4. Continue to develop more literacy materials like a health book, animals of the earth, etc.
5. Maintain the dictionary
6. Continue on with translating 1 Timothy, Titus, 1 Thessalonians, Revelation, Philippians, Galatians
7. Develop Bibles lessons for 1 Timothy and Titus
8. Teach the pastor/shepherds more about the local bodies of believers and what these churches built of living stones should look like according to 1 Timothy, Titus, Acts, Romans, and Ephesians
9. Teach people to care and shepherd one another and reproduce themselves spiritually
Goals 2002-2016
1. Finish the translation of the NT as well as Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, Jonah, and many other portions from the OT, especially all those that have to do with key historical events of the Jews, and of all the promises of the coming Messiah
2. Continue to visit with the believers as God opens doors
3. Continue to work on finishing the dictionary
4. Keep in touch with the believers thru letters
Here is a look at some of our personal history:
