Jason and Nisae Williamson and family serve among the Iski people in Papua New Guinea. They have been working with the elders of the Iski church preparing for an upcoming outreach!
After nearly five years in the “M” village, the Iski church is getting ready to head across the river and start teaching the creation to Christ Bible lessons. While they have taught many individuals and groups over the years, it has all been within the general community around the “M” village. However because of the difficulty of crossing the river (a bit wider than a football field) and the lack of canoes, the people of “S” village have mostly been unable to hear or be involved in any of the teaching. They have recently given an invitation for the Iski church to go over and teach them. To that end, Jason has been working with the Bible teachers and elders over the past weeks and months to get them ready for this huge undertaking. This will be their first creation to Christ teaching to another village that they will do on their own without Jason being there.
How can you be praying?
Although there is interest, the area where the teaching will be held is near another large religious group. This group has been in the Iski area for many years. Some people are fearful and hesitant with regard to attending the teaching. The Bible teachers and Jason have decided that they should start with a short ten lesson summary of the creation to Christ teaching, then determine if there there is ample interest to continue. Monday 4th November has been chosen for the start of the teaching.
Please pray that God will remove any fear or hesitation that people may have, and that the leaders of the other religious group will not prevent anyone from attending?
The big precursor to the creation to Christ teaching is running the vernacular literacy programme. Before the missionary teams arrival, the Iski language had never been written down. This meant starting from scratch, carefully analysing sounds, word structures, and grammatical patterns to create an alphabet and a system of writing that truly reflected the language as spoken. Then they had to develop a literacy programme that carefully taught them how to read and write that language for themselve. They really wanted the Iski people to be able to read God’s message for themselves and have confidence in the written word. That was nearly nine years ago that as a team they developed these tools and trained the first group of sixteen people. Over the years, these people have taught thirteen literacy classes in two different locations.
Before agreeing to teach in “S” village, the Iski teachers taught the fourteenth Iski literacy class there. The class is sixteen weeks long and starts with recognising basic sound clusters and slowly moves into joining syllables and reading words and eventually reading sentences. In September, Jason and Nisae were able to attend the graduation of that class and hear those students (many who are full grown adults in their forties and even fifties with a 6th grade education or less) stand in front of everyone and read stories they had written. Pray that God will use this ability in their lives to help them read the written Word of God and understand more about their Creator!