New Tribes Weekend!

This is the weekend that we traveled to a New Tribes Mission base in Pennsylvania. This was probably my favorite thing we did over the Project. It'll be a struggle to even try and explain what we did and what we learned.

New Tribes Mission is an amazing agency. They send missionary teams into new tribes that have never had contact with the outside world. These teams spend their first 2 or so years constructing their homes, learning the language and culture, and translating the Bible into the tribe's language. 

So much linguistic training is needed for a NTM worker. They have no previous knowledge into the tribe's language so they have to begin recording the language solely by listening to the native speakers and watching their mouths when they speak. Wow. It's hard enough for me to take spanish and learn it. How about learning a language that no one on earth but that tribe knows? These missionaries are truly amazing. 

The people who taught us all weekend were NTM workers with 2 different tribes in southern Venezuela. I was so excited! Having been to Venezuela twice, I had a lot of common ground with these people. They told us everything about their time working with the Joti people and the Yano-mami people. It was so amazing to hear how these 2 guys took their families and went into the dense Venezuelan jungle to bring these newly discovered tribes the good news of Jesus. They faced things like dangerous enemy tribes, belligerent natives, sickness, heat :) , and other things associated with traveling to a vastly undiscovered place. 

One of the hardest things that NTM workers face is contextualizing the gospel into the tribes animistic worldview. Tribes are mostly all animistic, which means they believe that spirits inhabit physical things, like trees, rocks, etc. NTM workers must first grasp the tribe's worldview in order to effectively contextualize the gospel for them. 

It is amazing and truly inspiring to hear that these 2 families answered God's call and saw Him being faithful in bringing these 2 brand new tribes to faith in Christ. Wow. It moved me so much that these people would just take up their crosses and go to bring the good news to a totally foreign and dangerous place, and then see God work by bringing the tribes into faith. It is so awesome to know that I have brothers and sisters in Christ in the dense jungles of Venezuela. 

Besides their amazing presentation and the experience we gained from learning about NTM, we had a ton of fun relaxing and having some serious sporting time. These pictures are from playing volleyball, ping pong, human foosball (crazy fun), and then, my favorite, having the most fun time I've had in a while playing ultimate frisbee in the torrential rain and then swimming in the giant puddles it made. Oh joy. What an awesome weekend!

(The big splash on the left is me :D)