Here it is, again. Time to produce a missionary newsletter. Actually, it is more properly called a prayer letter, because we want you to pray for us when you get it. Prayer letters are great things, because they help keep us connected with our partners, serve as reminders that we are still doing the work of the Lord that He has called us and our partners to do. I say us and our partners, of course, because there is no way we can do all of this ourselves. One, we couldn’t afford it, financially. Two, we probably could not stand the heat of the spiritual battle without prayer backup. We were, in fact, partially self-supporting when we first started in full-time Christian ministry, but once our savings were depleted in about 2001, that stopped being the case. Now, we have just the Lord to rely on for our physical needs. Fortunately, He is faithful, and He has called some wonderful friends to partner with us and keep us going. Praise the Lord!

Now, what do I write about in our prayer letter? Lori and I have, since the beginning of our missionary journey in 2000, tried to keep our official prayer letters under 2 pages. We figure that one 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper, written on both sides, using pictures liberally, and without resorting to itty-bitty type, is about the attention span of most of the busy people we send these to. That may or may not be true. We get, and read, longer newsletters, but it is also true that the really long ones tend to pile up somewhere to be read later. They may or may not actually get fully read, even if they are from dear friends. The space limit forces us to focus. It is hard, though. So much is going on in our lives and our ministry that it is hard to condense it all. In this journal, I allow myself the luxury of rambling on longer with no set space limit, but I also know that much fewer people will read it. That is OK. I feel better sometimes for having written it.

If you were to ask Rachel what our biggest news is, lately, she would probably tell you that we now have a kitten. His name is Puma. Rachel named him. Mostly, she calls him “kitty.” Rodents beware! This animal will be a mighty hunter in our house.

We were asked by one church to provide them with a 1-2 minute video presentation that they could use to promote missions during a Sunday service. Many of my friends asked me what we could do to condense our lives serving the Lord here down to two minutes or less. Good question. I tried, anyway. The result of my effort in that respect is posted at http://kahunapule.org/kmpj2008-03-24.mpg for your viewing pleasure. It is a huge (109,199,360 bytes) file, so great patience is required in downloading it, but I wanted to keep it high enough resolution that it would look good projected on a screen in front of a church. I even put the slide show in a format you can create a video DVD from, if you are familiar with zip files, ISO images, and burning DVDs. That file is huge (86,037,612 bytes), too. Fortunately, I managed to upload these files just before the rates went up for Internet usage, here. Internet access in Ukarumpa is outrageously expensive. It is actually about $9000/month for the satellite connection, which gives us about 200 kbps download capacity. We share the bandwidth and the cost among 262 users. Instead of just dividing the monthly cost per user evenly, which would result in a charge of about $34.35/month, the SIL PNG Branch powers that be have decided to divide the cost proportional to usage in megabytes. It used to be, up through March, that the only bytes metered for billing were HTTP downloads on ports 80 and 443 (regular and secure web browsing). Those bytes were charged at $0.25 per megabyte. Starting in April, all FTP and HTTP uploads and downloads are now billed at $0.225 per megabyte. That means that it would have cost me $43.92 to upload those two files to our web site. I probably would not have done that. Our budget is too tight. This billing scheme obviously keeps our usage down and our bills high– especially at a time when we are doing college search work for Ben and trying to find bargain air fares for Nate and Ben. I hope you enjoy the show, and can download it for free (even if it takes a while).

Speaking of money, someone asked how we were doing financially. Since we computed our fundraising requirements for living here, the U. S. dollar has dropped 11.8% against the PNG kina. Our support has dropped by 2.6%. We have had some unexpected extra expenses and price increases. Our savings are depleted. And it will cost about $4760 to get Nate here and back for a visit/mission trip, and Ben back to the USA for college, just in air fare alone, not counting stuff like food and lodging on the way. Then there is the matter of college tuition at the Christian college Ben has chosen to attend. In other words, if the Lord moves on you to help with any of this, please do. If not, you can still pray for our needs to be met. Don’t worry, though. God is faithful, and will not let us down.

One thing I always want to know when I support missionaries is what they are actually doing, and if they are still doing it. I still have my 40-hour-per-week job at SIL PNG Branch Aviation, doing computer support work, plus various other “side” ministries, like leading Bible studies, working on the World English Bible, etc. Lori still has her teaching and HIV/AIDS task force chair jobs, and still takes care of our children. Household tasks always seem to take longer, here. Stuff like having no automatic dishwasher (and not being able to afford one at the outrageous prices they cost, here) make a difference. There is no ordering out for pizza or anything like that. We do eat pizza, but it is a lot of work to make them. Naturally, Rachel keeps us busy, as you would expect from an active 3-year-old. The adoption paperwork saga continues. How long do you think it should take for the Social Services office in Port Moresby to fax a copy of a letter of consent to finalize the adoption to us? An hour? A day? A month? They got it in January, and it is now May, and I’m still waiting, and still calling periodically and getting new excuses. A friend of mine, also working on an adoption, spent a week in Port Moresby, in person, trying to get some papers moved about one block. It did finally work. Rachel, however, is still blissfully unaware of her precarious legal status. She knows that beyond the shadow of a doubt, she has a mommy, a daddy, and three big brothers that really love her. She knows that her name is Rachel Brianna Joy Johnson. We will keep at it until we get the required court decree to make that her legal status as well, opening the door to get her USA citizenship.

Also on the subject of waiting for the PNG government, all of our resident visas expired on the 31st of January. The PNG government has had our passports and visa renewal applications since December 2007, and still hasn’t finished processing them. Apparently, it is OK for us to stay here as long as the government is working on them, but if we try to leave without a valid visa, it is a crime. This has caused excessive stress to many people in this community. Of course, if the government should deny any of our visa applications, we would have to leave immediately. That would also be stressful, of course. I don’t think that will happen, but please pray that Ben’s visa gets processed by June and the rest of ours by November, at the latest.

Lori would like to go to a teacher’s conference in Hong Kong in November. That requires a visa. That also will require money for air fare, etc. Professional development for teachers is still important, here, but not very available in PNG.

We certainly have challenges, here, and I haven’t listed them all. I don’t intend to. Instead, I want to focus on some progress. I just started leading an inductive Bible Study for the current Translators’ Training Course. This is for about 49 people from 15 language groups. It is a joy to see how they pick up the Bible study techniques, and want to go back to their villages and show others how to do it. I got a little choked up, though, listening to one man lamenting how his grandparents didn’t know any of this. You see, the Gospel didn’t get to his village until after they had died. What can I say? We are working to fulfill the Great Commission, but I don’t think all of us fully realize how urgent the task is. At least the Gospel is going out to his village, now, and he is working on a Bible translation for his own language.

Translating a New Testament is a long task. It can take years, often decades. This year, the task finished for the Kube language in March, with a Bible dedication for those people. More dedications are coming up in June and August. Praise God!

Now, for my next trick, I’ll condense this to a few bullets, add some pictures and an article Lori wrote, and produce a proper prayer letter. It will lack many details, but it will probably be read by more people than this article.

We could really use some prayer, right now. There is an overabundance of circumstances that point to the likelihood of the enemy trying to cut off our supply lines in some sort of spiritual war turned physical. There is no way the Good News of Jesus Christ can be stopped by this, but I believe that we need to be active in prayer and in standing firm in the authority and responsibility granted to us by Jesus Christ to overcome these things. Some help agreeing with us in prayer and holding onto the promises of God on our behalf would be greatly appreciated. Here are a few concerns:

• Heavy rains and flooding have caused a bridge to be closed between us and Kainantu (where we could get on the Highlands Highway). There is no alternate bridge. There is no real alternate road (but there is a long motorcycle trail and a 4WD trail that goes through the river (not over it). This makes it harder to get supplies (like fuel and food) that are normally trucked in. The government has been informed of the outage on this national road, but higher priority road disasters (land slips on Daulo Pass and Kassam Pass), coupled with depleted funds from earlier repairs due to floods in other provinces make it unlikely that this will be fixed quickly.
• A man named Yanis Manki claims that because the creek that our community draws water from gets water drained from his land (with a valid government permit), he wants more money in compensation for that water. He got tired of waiting for the courts to act, so this morning, he took a mob of people past our guards to disable our water intake, in violation of a court order. Remember, this is in the rainy season, with about 29 inches of water in the last month falling out of the sky for free, and the issue has nothing to do with him needing more water. He clearly doesn’t. It would just run down the stream, into the river, past the eroding foundations of the afore-mention bridge. He just wants more money from the “rich” missionaries that what they offered him. Much more. We get plenty of drinking water from our roof, but this is the water we use to flush toilets with and do much of our washing.
• Our Internet access via satellite has been in a slow, intermittent, degraded state for about 3 weeks. In addition, our ISP just cut off access to the port I needed most to manage the web/ftp/mail server that hosts eBible.org and 40 other domains. Shortly after that, the server went down.
• There is more, like the still-missing engine on the airplane in the picture, the PNG visa situation, and adoption paperwork hassles, but I don’t want to whine, just motivate you to pray.

Now, it is a good time to remind ourselves of the GOOD NEWS.

• We win! Jesus Christ always causes us to triumph!
• We have eternal life.
• We get to live with God in Paradise.
• We will accomplish what Jesus sent us to accomplish, including getting the Word of God to more people in their own languages.
• We still have supplies, communications, etc.

Praise God!

The best place in the world to be is where God wants us to be, when He wants us to be there.
In 2007,

• We moved twice (once within Colorado, once back to Papua New Guinea).
• Lori renewed her teacher’s certificate.
• I continued Bible translation software development while in Colorado.
• Upon return to Papua New Guinea, Lori returned to teaching, and I started a new job doing custom database programming for the SIL PNG Aviation Department.
• Two of Rachel’s post-placement home study reports were mailed to oblivion while we were in the USA, and never received by the Social Services office in Port Moresby. There were no backup copies anywhere. It took us being physically present in Papua New Guinea to recover from that mess. The process still has a long way to go, but at least the paperwork is moving, now.
• We distributed about 1,000 fix-tuned radios that are permanently tuned to Wantok Radio Light.
• I repaired the Wantok Radio Light station in Kainantu twice.
• I have been leading a Bible study for 10th grade boys.

In 2008, our plans and goals are to:

• Continue with our present jobs (teaching and Aviation Department Computer support).
• Continue helping with Christian radio ministry as practical.
• Continue leading a Bible study for Evan’s class.
• Have a family vacation, including Nate.
• Get Ben enrolled in college in the USA.
• Complete Rachel’s legal adoption.
• Attempt to participate in some Bible translation software global open source programming projects.

Long-term missions have long-lasting benefits. We don’t plan to retire before Jesus comes back, as long as we are able to keep serving Him on Earth.

Alas, I just lost over a hundred photos and a camera, all in one loud “pop!” My Sony DSC-S600 camera, the one that I used to take the Asaro Mud Man photo, here, self-destructed. I had just shot a picture of a yellow-lapped honeyeater dining on hibiscus nectar, turned the camera off, and set it on the table next to me. Suddenly, it made a loud popping noise as the camera destroyed itself and the 4 GB memory card that was in it, without any apparent provocation. Sigh. That was annoying. Also lost were some really neat pictures I took on a recent trip to Goroka and back.

If that wasn’t enough, the same day, I found out that my old dog, Mandy, was so old and sick that my sister took her to the vet to be put down in the USA. And today, the first day of 2008, my elderly dog, Dallas, seems to be so sick that after several days of not eating, she just wants to lay down in a ditch and die. I didn’t know what to do, so I asked God to take care of it. He did.

You know, even when trouble comes, and it does that a lot on planet Earth, God is good. His mercy and loving kindness last forever. Keep smiling. Jesus has overcome the world. The glory of His reward far outshines the annoyances along the way. Blessed be the Name of the Lord!

The year just rolled over to 2008. What do I see? I see a more intense year in the battle between God’s light and dark enemies. Battles rage, and many people are so distracted that they don’t even see the conflict.

Have you noticed the drop in missions funding, and the trend away from long term (career) missions to short-term missions? There is, of course, a place for both long-term and short-term missions, and the important thing is to make sure you go the way the Lord leads. Don’t substitute one for the other when God calls you– do what He says if you want to be fruitful. I am concerned that more people are being called to long term missions than are going, however. You see, there are things you can do long term that are impossible short term. You can truly learn new languages and cultures and understand what it takes to truly impact people and cultures with the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a way that sticks and bears fruit far beyond what you see initially. Take a moment and ask yourself if you are one of those people called to go into a career as a Christian missionary. You can have all kinds of vocations within such a career– pastor, evangelist, administrator, aircraft mechanic, pilot, motorcycle mechanic, rocket scientist, custodian, doctor, nurse, teacher… whatever it takes to get the Word of God to people. There are also a lot of different organizations and movements that need help. Do some research, and listen to the Lord.

Is there a cost to long term missions. Yes. It costs you your life, really. You end up losing your life to gain it back again. The Lord may lead you outside of your comfort zone. OK, I’m pretty sure He does that for everyone who follows Him, at least once. There are dangers to going into another place and culture, but safety can’t be guaranteed anywhere this side of Heaven, really. When we get to Heaven, I plan to have lots of friends there worshiping the Father with us– friends I helped find the way there: Jesus Christ.

Think about it.

Ben’s auto mechanics project in the picture isn’t exactly what I’m talking about, although I’m thankful for that. Ben is making good progress on it, and it should soon be able to pass a safety inspection and be street legal.

What we really need is a reliable, rugged, 4-wheel-drive vehicle that we can drive along the Highlands Highway and lesser roads without fear of breakdown or getting stuck. Cars and trucks cost a lot in Papua New Guinea, because none are made here, there is a high import duty, and transportation charges are high. Nevertheless, I believe that the Lord will provide both an affordable vehicle and the money to buy it debt-free. If He puts it on your heart to help us with this need, please do.

In a land where only about 10% of the people have electrical power in their houses, you might wonder what good such technology as electronics, satellites, radio, and cell phones might be. Actually, such technology is very useful, indeed. Technology is no substitute for living and proclaiming the Word of God. It can, however, make it easier to reach people with the Word of God and make the logistics of getting the Word of God to new people groups much easier.

We rely heavily on communication satellites. All of our telephone calls from Ukarumpa to anywhere farther than Kainantu are carried by satellite, no matter which way we make them. The Papua New Guinea Christian Broadcasting Network (also known as Wantok Radio Light) uses a satellite channel to distribute its programming to FM radio stations scattered all over the country. Our Internet connection is via satellite. In a country consisting of about 600 islands, including the very large and mountainous island of New Guinea, satellite links are the most practical way to communicate in many cases. Running cables all over the place is way too expensive, and far to vulnerable to damage by vandals, earthquakes, and other problems. We also make heavy use of HF and UHF radio links.

A few weeks ago, the local Wantok Radio Light station in Kainantu stopped working. Its receiver (shown in the picture) apparently suffered damage to its RF front end in a lightning storm. The station manager sent a replacement up via an SIL flight, and I put the new one in place. Many people were happy to be able to hear their favorite Christian programming, again.

Although few people have electrical power in their houses in Papua New Guinea, there are many battery-operated radios listening in. We have distributed about 700 fix-tuned, solar powered radios to people in Wantok Radio Light’s service area, so far.

Yes, the Good News of Jesus Christ is simple enough for a child to believe. Rocket science can help deliver that good news.

Our last field term in Ukarumpa, there was no mobile phone service at all in Ukarumpa, except for bulky and expensive hand-held satellite phones. Now, there is service from two different companies! One of those (B-Mobile) has excellent signal strength in Ukarumpa but high airtime prices. The other (Digicel) has better coverage most places in PNG and better prices, but weak signal strength in Ukarumpa. It is interesting to watch the culture changes that happen when technology like this comes to where it wasn’t available, before. The introduction of competition for telephone service has been resisted by the existing telephone company (Telikom and B-Mobile) and some people in government. Therefore, the newer and larger mobile phone network (Digicel) has been blocked from interconnecting with the existing telephone company, so far. Because of this political state of affairs, it takes two telephones to be able to talk to anyone with a telephone in the country. Both networks connect internationally, but there is a significant price difference ($1.97/minute for Telikom vs. $0.36/minute for Digicel). Fortunately, accepting inbound calls is free on both networks. I hope that Telikom wakes up, lowers prices, and makes an interconnect agreement with Digicel and Green Communications (the other licensed mobile phone service provider) before everyone cancels their B-Mobile and Telikom service and just goes with Digicel because of better service and lower prices.

Having these additional telephone services has significantly increased our communication reliability from Ukarumpa. In the last week or so, the “land line” service of Telikom from Ukarumpa to the outside world has gone out of service twice for about a day at a time, but mobile phone service was available at those times. (Telikom has had significant difficulties maintaining service due to theft and vandalism of their lines and equipment.)

The expansion of mobile telephone service in Papua New Guinea is a valuable additional communication option for many people, including Bible translators.

A helicopter is a wonderful but expensive machine. With it, we save lives. We do that by moving Bible translators into places they can’t get with fixed wing aircraft or wheeled vehicles to bring the Word of God to people so that they can be saved. Eternal life is the greatest gift we can get from God. God, in His great wisdom, has tasked us, His children, with sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with people so that they can believe in Him and gain eternal life with Him.

Of course, we also save lives with this machine in the more common sense, too. SIL Aviation recently made national news by saving the life of a pregnant mother in distress. It is good to show Jesus’ compassion in practical ways. See http://www.thenational.com.pg/100207/nation12.htm for that article.

So, how do we pay for this expensive machine? With a combination of donations and commercial work done with that machine in between Bible translation and life-saving runs.

When doing Christian mission work, it is often necessary to consider the effects of email and the Internet when going into areas with opposition. Much mission work goes on in technologically advanced, developed countries. (That isn’t a good description of where I work, but I did take this picture within about 200 meters of a mobile phone sales booth.) Although I work in a country where I can be open about what I do, some don’t. One brother asked me for advice on email security in his country, which is less friendly than mine to Christians. Here is my answer to him and brothers and sisters like him:

* Be like Jesus. He doesn’t lie, but He doesn’t tell everyone everything, and often uses parables. Choose wisely what you reveal to whom and how.

Don’t say things that attract terrorist attention. Avoid saying things that sound like blasphemy or illegal activities. Avoid using religious key words that a terrorist might look for, or at least be very careful of the context of that use. Keeping the text clear of incendiary comments and personally identifying information and exact locations is a good practice when operating in some areas, but that should never be all that you do. It isn’t enough.

Be anonymous. Don’t get real specific about identifying information of individuals and locations. Maybe a common first name, pseudonym, or initial is enough to talk about a person. Use large geographic units (like “Southeast Asia” or “North Africa”) instead of precise addresses. Use of a specific country name may or may not be OK, depending on the country. Consider carefully what pictures to send, and how to crop or selectively blur them. If someone with murder in his heart intercepted your email and decided that he hated you and what you do, but couldn’t identify or find you or your brothers and sisters, then that email leak did no actual harm.

Use generic email addresses. There should be nothing to capture unwanted attention or reveal too much identity in either the user name part of an email address or in the domain name. There should be nothing incendiary that pops up if you visit http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp with the domain name or surf to the corresponding web site. Something like imaketents@gmail.com or languagestudent@yahoo.com is much better than something like Joseph_David_Smith@name-of-disliked-organization-here.org.

* Use link encryption. For most people, that means requiring TLS or SSL connections between their email server and their email client. Galacticomm.org addresses and FirstClass mail clients automatically use link encryption, but they aren’t the cheapest solution, and not as easy to integrate with GnuPG. With standard email clients, like Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc., there is usually a little non-default setup that needs to be done. Link encryption is supported by all good email providers and email programs. If yours doesn’t, get another one that does. You can get free email accounts supporting encryption at gmail.com and other places, and high-quality free email software that supports encryption, so this need not cost money. Exactly how you set it up depends on your ISP and your email program. Thunderbird, in the account settings box, the “SSL” or “TLS” radio buttons should be checked, depending on what your ISP supports. Another option is to use SSH or VPN tunneling instead of or in addition to SSL or TLS, but that most likely requires some expert help to set up. Note that link encryption just protects the privacy of the email from your computer to the server and back, and does nothing to protect it on the server, on your local computer, in transit between the server and your correspondents, or on their computers. That might not seem like it is worth much, until you consider that it probably covers the portion of the email route where the worst threats are.

* Use a mail server in friendly territory, preferably in the country where most of your email correspondents live. There is no guarantee that email between your server and others will not pass through an enemy’s server, but the odds of that happening are lower than if you choose a mail server in a land populated primarily by the kinds of people you would least like reading your email.

* Use secure web mail. Web mail access is great on the road. Make sure the connection is secure, however, with https, not http. Don’t use web mail from untrusted cybercafes and stranger’s computers. Using your own notebook computer at a wireless hotspot is better.

* Use GnuPG where practical. Unfortunately, that isn’t in very many cases, unless you set it up for people… but if you really want to pour your heart out in an email, it may be just the thing if your intended recipient also is set up to handle GnuPG mail. This takes planning ahead, and it probably means having at least one GnuPG expert per working group. Once set up, it is really easy to use, if you use GnuPG with Enigmail and Thunderbird. (If you are using an email solution that doesn’t have OpenPGP integration, you should consider getting another account and email client for this task.) There are some other similar combinations that work, too, but I like Thunderbird + Enigmail + GnuPG, because it works for me on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, and because it is really easy to use once set up. GnuPG is not a realistic thing to expect all of your partners to use, though.

* Practice safe computing. Enable a firewall. Protect yourself from viruses. Don’t install unnecessary software on your working computer. Don’t leave sensitive information unencrypted on your computer. Sensitive information is anything that would cause you significant concern if your computer was stolen and you were thinking about the thieves looking at it, like maybe bank account information and passwords, personal correspondence, etc. Scan for spyware and viruses regularly. Your email can be perfectly secure, but if you have a keystroke logger reporting your passwords and email contents to someone else, someone else can get it all, anyway.

* Encrypt the email (and other sensitive documents) stored on your disk. The easiest way I have found to do that is to use TrueCrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org) to create an encrypted volume, then install the PortableApps version of Thunderbird in that volume. The encrypted volume can be on a large capacity USB memory stick, if you like. See http://portableapps.com/ for more about portable applications. All of the care protecting the transmission of your email isn’t worth much if your computer (or memory stick) is suddenly stolen, and the data isn’t encrypted. Do this before you need to do it. (In other words, shut the barn door before the cattle stampede across the highway, even if you don’t see the kid with firecrackers hiding in the barn.) Some versions of Microsoft Windows allow you to encrypt certain directories with your login credentials. This feature is easier to use than Truecrypt, but I prefer to use Truecrypt for several practical reasons, including the ability to backup and recover from disk disasters in a more straight-forward manner. (There are other disk encryption programs, but Truecrypt is free, uses sound cryptography, and I know how to use it.)

* Separate your sensitive and non-sensitive data. Make a habit of keeping your sensitive data in an encrypted volume on your computer, and backing it up to an encrypted volume on a memory stick that you keep in a separate place. Most of your non-sensitive data is also probably worth backing up, but you don’t have to keep it encrypted.

* Use good passwords/passphrases. Don’t use things that are easy to guess, things that are in any dictionary, etc. Use first letters of a long phrase. Throw in some special characters. Make it long. Make it easy for you to remember and very hard for others to guess, even if they have automated help guessing. Longer passwords are usually better (as long as you don’t forget them). Even long passwords that you use regularly aren’t all that hard to remember.

* Keep remote backups in a safe place. If you have some really important data, make sure you back it up and store it in a separate place, preferably in another country. If it is sensitive data and you have any doubts about if it will be intercepted in transit or stolen from its destination, encrypt it. Remember the password to decrypt it.

Ask correspondents not to forward or post newsletters. There are things you might like to tell your partners in your home country that might not be appropriate to share with all of your neighbors. One forward to a mailing list with a public list archive that gets indexed by search engines could drastically increase the potential readership of your newsletter.

* Protect home and office networks. Use encryption (WPA or WPA2) on wireless networks. Don’t share more than you intend to via network. Turn off file sharing if you don’t need it. If you do, only share specific directories for specific purposes.

* Be careful what you publish to the world via the Internet. Make sure what you say is appropriate for your current situation, especially if you have a personal web site, blog, or photo-sharing site. Consider carefully how your near neighbors may view what they find out about you on the World-Wide Web. Google finds some amazing things.

*Items marked with an asterisk are good advice for missionaries even if they are not in places where terrorist attacks are likely.