Dear Readers,

As the JAARS Field Projects Manager, I often have the pleasure of hearing the stories behind the gifts we receive from partners like you. I also hear the stories from the fields where the project funds are needed. It is a joy to see how God brings these stories together to get His Word to the Bibleless people groups.

A translator recently wrote us about a village that was four weeks’ walk to the nearest health facility. Can you imagine! Aviation is critical in these isolated situations.

The requests coming across my desk for flight subsidy assistance are increasing. The rising cost of flight insurance since 9/11 and the high cost of aviation gas are creating financial hardships for the translators. I pray that God’s people will be challenged to meet the need!

Trusting God for the impossible,

John Hutchinson
Field Projects Manager

by Joan Henry, Bible Translator

I began a translation project in 1987 with the Kombio people in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. To get there I would travel by plane to a mission airstrip and then hire a vehicle to take me another two hours by road to my village.

In 1993 I went to the U.S. on an extended furlough. Then when I returned I worked at the SIL center for six months. But finally I was able to make a short trip out to the village to see the condition of my house there. Accompanied by Zachary and Don, two Kombio men who were helping me at our main center, I flew to the airstrip as I had always done. But no one there would drive us to the village. Some said the road now had mud holes so deep that a vehicle passing through them would disappear entirely from sight!

A storekeeper finally agreed to drive us part way. Within the first 30 minutes on the road it began raining. The heavier the rain got, the slower the driver went until he finally stopped in a non-Kombio village. He said he could go no farther but knew someone with whom we could stay. So we piled out of the truck in the downpour and trekked to the nearest occupied house to wait until our hosts showed up.

As I sat on the veranda of this old couple’s bush house I thought, Well, Joan, this is a capital “E” Experience. Make the most of it!

Zachary braved the rain and hiked off for his home village so that he could send word to my village about what had happened to us. Don and I hooked up with our hosts and stayed the night. In the morning, we left early for the long walk ahead. As we followed the “road,” feet slid this way and that in the gook. Progress was horrendously slow and got slower as the sun began to beat down. When my sandals got sucked into deep mud, I gave them up in despair.

Respite came after five hours when we arrived at a government station. The local official was very kind. He filled my water jug and his wife fixed us some food. The meal of rice, greens and canned corned beef tasted like a gourmet feast!

We headed next for Zachary’s village where we would stay the second night. At my slow pace, it took another three hours. Part way there we met a large contingent from my village, including my village mama, Sabet. They had heard about our difficulties and had come looking for me. Not quite the way I’d imagined our reunion!

Sabet stayed with me at Zachary’s that night, and I was ever so glad to have her there! The next morning we woke up to more rain. It was nearly 2:00 P.M. before we hit the road again. It would be dark before we arrived home, and we’d be climbing mountains.

By the time we got to my village five and a half hours later, I was shoeless and stumbling along, bent over and clinging desperately to Sabet’s hand for reassurance as much as balance. My village papa, Leo, was sitting on my porch. He greeted me with a big hug and broke down in tears because he’d been so worried about me.

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This was the last time I went into my village by foot. The road has become even more unreliable and crime has escalated. Gangs habitually stop cars on the road and rob everyone in them. Now I go by helicopter from the airstrip to the village, but the stresses of that last hike will b etched forever in my mind.

Clif, Roxanne, Yvonne  and PJ Olson

All over the world many translators and literacy workers depend on air transportation to get to their villages. It's expensive. Most could not do it without extra money to help them. Joan Henry, in the previous story, depends heavily on flight subsidy. So do others, like Clif and Roxanne Olson who also work in Papua New Guinea.

The Olsons are translators on a small island in the Milne Bay Province. They reach their village by traveling 400 miles by plane to one island and then by helicopter over the open ocean to their island. The cost of getting their family of four to the village the last time was $1,445 one way. They plan on three round trips a year for a total cost of $8,670. But because of flight subsidy, they pay only $270 each way or $1,600 for the year. A big difference!

The cost of flying is great. Yet the cost of not flying is greater. Getting God's Word to the people is worth it.

Rejoice with us at what the Lord has done...and is doing.

Steve Gallagher and his wife, Carol Jean, depend on air transportation and flight subsidy as they work with the Bariai people in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. They helped start a literacy program which has presently reached every village of the language group. A close friend, who is a native speaker of Bariai, now runs the program. This allows the Gallaghers to concentrate on Bible translation. Matthew, Mark, Genesis and Exodus are finished. One leader said that reading the Scriptures in the trade language was like eating watermelon but that reading God's Word in his own language, Bariai, was like "taro," a food that fills him up and satisfies his hunger.