Dear Family and Friends,

At long last we can write some news about the most precious of all cargos that has been on its way to Papua New Guinea. We received confirmation today that the ship with the container containing the revised Hamtai New Testaments arrived in Lae City port on the 5th of September. You, our dear family and friends, have been praying for us, and wondering how we fared in our journey to these parts.

Praise the Lord: After various delays with paper work and the lack of a container, the Revised Hamtai New Testaments are now aboard a ship heading for Papua New Guinea. Global Ministry Supply told us the estimated arrival date in Lae is August 26th. Since we will be entering PNG on 2-month visitors’ visas that may be extended for a 3rd month, we wanted to arrive at about the same time. So we waited to buy our tickets until we knew that date, because arrival and departure dates need to included on our visas. The Lord enabled us to buy our tickets last week with some gifts and by dipping into our savings. So we are now applying for visas, to leave here August 23rd via Hong Kong, and return November 20, 2013.

Now, for a note updating you on our prayer requests sent out two weeks ago.  Jon Frazier and I had a good trip up and back on an airline I had never heard of, Allegiant Air. They are very reasonable and give good service. As for the airports, they were not so good – a little inconsistent. Orlando / Sanford let us take water bottles and small liquids and in my case a very small pocket knife in our carryons. However, the Youngstown airport disallowed water bottles, and took away my knife. We had heard the regulations were relaxed, but they tightened up recently, everyone except Orlando / Sanford. Son Joel and Ruthi picked us up and we stayed with them overnight. Hadn’t seen the family for 5 years, and was sorry Corinne missed out on that this time. Joel took Jon and me on up to the Yarnells’ and then to the Global Ministry Supply warehouse. What a sight for us to see – the 10 palates of New Testaments lined  up and ready for inspection and repacking!  I’ll send more details and photos later.

Dear Friends and Family,

Well, it is finally a book, and we are pleased with the result. A sample copy of the newly printed revised Hamtai New Testament was sent to Jon Frazier in the NTM Communications office.  We all rejoiced as Jon handed me the sample copy sent to him so that the balance of the bill could be paid off for the 6,000 copies. They are on their way to Pennsylvania to the Yarnells’, our friends who are going to put them on a container and ship them to Papua New Guinea.

My oh my, it’s March already. You have not heard from Corinne and me before now because we just kept pushing with our final editing and proof reading of the manuscript of the revised Hamtai New Testament until we finished it. We just decided to wait until some good news could be shared with you all, something more final. So here it is.

Just this morning we met with our men at the New Tribes Mission Communications Department and made a final decision on what type of binding and paper to be used in the New Testaments. They had obtained printing quotations on the various types available, and it was up to us to decide which one we would go with. We had thought a hard cover would be good, but our Hamtai church leaders said they prefer the soft vinyl covers. So that is what we decided to order. Some advantages of that type of cover are that the 1094 page volumes will not cost so much and they will be lighter weight.

Progress? Yes, after submitting all the text and cross references and pictures to Doug Lotz in our NTM publishing department, Tom finished editing all the introductions to each book, then the glossary, and all the Hamtai names in the maps. As Doug finished editing each book, he would pass the book to Jack Abbott, a retiree in the Homes, to check his work of transferring the text into the final format of the New Testament. Jack checked formatting, chapter and verse numbers, paragraphing, picture placements, etc. Then he would pass the book on to Edna Trigg (pictured here) to proof the manuscript again. They would each stick a little yellow “post-it” on pages with notes telling what needed to be corrected. Edna is also a retiree here from the Yagaria tribe in Papua New Guinea, but she keeps very busy with proof reading and doing typing of translations for the PNG Field.

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, this is the day we have been looking and working toward for the past nearly two years. We started submitting the completed manuscript of the Hamtai New Testament to our New Tribes Mission Publications Department in the headquarters, which is only 1½  miles from the NTM Homes where we live. It is good being this close so that we can communicate freely with Doug Lotz as he starts to format the New Testament and get it ready for printing. Otherwise we would have to do it all via Email and phone. Here we are in his office discussing the formatting: