Dear Ministry Partners,
Our last letter saw me in the final stages before departing to Asia Pacific. My how these past two months have flown by! We want to thank you so much for your prayers as I made this trip and for the six weeks while I was gone. The Lord took good care of each of us and nothing too much out of the ordinary happened while I was gone for which I was thankful.
The trip went very well and I was able to accomplish most everything on my schedule. One of the biggest projects which had to be completed was another “translation pre-check” of all the Old Testament Scripture portions from Exodus to Malachi – 740 verses in all. These are Scripture portions which coincide with our chronological teaching lessons. We finished this with a half day to spare before the beginning of our Wana Bible Conference. The Bible conference went great too as we taught from 1 Timothy chapters 4-6. There was a lot of discussion this time and we felt like it was really scratching where it itched and meeting felt needs of the churches.
After finishing the Bible conference it was time to make some church planting consultant visits to some of the other missionary teams. We missed being able to go into one missionary station as the day after our Bible conference ended our pilot’s visa entry permit expired which invalidated his pilots license too. As a result we all had to be flown out town and make other arrangements for doing our consultant visits – necessitating us traveling commercially by air and by boat. I always enjoy getting to visit with the other teams, seeing what the Lord is doing through them, and being able to offer encouragement to them.
During my time there we also held regional leadership meetings to discuss our various ministries and also to make plans and strategize for the future. We have just recently completed some surveys to some language groups on a neighboring island and it is exciting to see the possibilities that lay before us. Please pray as we seek for laborers to reach to these new people groups, as the harvest truly is plenteous but the laborers are few.
As we mentioned in our emails after 75 years in use, New Tribes Mission USA has just changed its name to “Ethnos360”. This change has been a long time in coming, the reason being that ‘New Tribes’ no longer well represents the least reached of today and the words ‘Tribe’ and ‘Mission’ has become a hindrance in many contexts. The term ‘ethnos’ is the Greek word for ‘nations’, and ‘360’ represents the global nature of His work. Along with this the Mission Headquarters also moved to a new building just down the street from the old building which makes for a small change in the address. Please rest assured that with these changes our doctrine, our vision, our ministry values, and Jeanne’s and my personal ministry all remain the same.
Jeanne and I also want to take this opportunity to tell you how much we appreciate your part on our team and to thank you for your prayers for us and the minitry with the Wana people. We consider it a privilege to partner together with you with as we work together to expand the reach of the gospel in Asia Pacific!
Blessings,
Ed & Jeanne Casteel