Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

With another year of God's faithfulness behind us, we wish all of you a Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year. Though our trials have been many, so have our blessings. We remain focused on providing efficient and affordable land transportation to meet the needs of Bible translation worldwide. We look forward to sharing with you the many facets of the ministry here. As ever, we thank you for your faithful prayer and financial support.

In addition, we'd like to share with you the following short video from our President, Bob Creson. It is a message specifically for you. This next year Wycliffe will see the number of language groups needing Bible translation drop below 2000. We remember when we first joined it was around 3500. You can look at our previous blogs and see the way Bible translation, with the help of new technology,  has rapidly increased.

http://www.wycliffe.org/Give/ChristmasGreeting.aspx

We encourage you to follow us on Facebook. Click the link on the sidebar which reads "Join Us on Facebook" and click "Like" at the top of the Facebook page. We usually post a quick update every one or two weeks. We have found this to be effective in keeping you posted on the details of life at JAARS. So much is going on here that new news quickly becomes old news. The Facebook page gives a smaller slice of life around here. We think you'll like it.

So again, we wish you a blessed year ahead. May the miracle of the Christ child and His reconciliation stay with you every day.

Rejoice and be at peace,

Mike & Kathy

This Week at JAARS: VSAT Communication

Kathy sang at JAARS Vespers service yesterday and we enjoyed hearing about a trip to a tiny nation. Our JAARS Network Communications Department arrived to set up VSAT for the SIL Center there. This will provide high speed and more dependable Internet.

They worked up until the evening when it was time to go to the airport. Finally finished and time to leave, they prayed, and flipped on the two power switches. Wow, everything turned on just fine. They did a quick test and were off to the airport. When does THAT ever happen on any project? What a demonstration of God's faithfulness!

Cross-Cultural Driving

Some driving habits around the world may surprise you. Many Bible translators and others can recount amazing stories about travel in foreign lands. But next time you hear such stories, think about their very real safety implications. The World Health Organization reports that “of all the systems that people have to deal with on a daily basis, road transport is the most complex and the most dangerous.”

Here are just a few examples of driving practices around the world:

• In Ethiopia, a left-turn signal indicates that someone is turning left. But it can also signal that it is safe to pass. The driver following must decide which signal is intended. Wrong guesses lead to many accidents.
• In Australia, kangaroos and wallabies are among the primary causes of accidents on rural roads. The country has an estimated 200,000 kangaroo-related accidents a year—a figure which some dispute as significantly low.
• In some countries, if a vehicle breaks down, the driver stops in the traffic lane and places a large object, such as a rock or log, several hundred meters behind so that he can “safely” make repairs. Often, once the repairs are completed, the rock or log is left in the roadway.
• In one African country, flashing headlights at an intersection means the driver is going to yield to oncoming traffic. In another African country, this same signal means the driver is going to proceed regardless of oncoming traffic.
• In the mountains of Peru, roads can be covered quickly by landslides. In other cases, the slide moves slowly, and drivers must judge whether they can drive to the other side of the slide before it carries them sideways off the edge of the mountain.
• In many remote areas, taxis are small cars that normally seat five adults. They often carry eight or more people in the interior, plus more on the roof. If the vehicle gets stuck, all the passengers will serve as a “pit crew” and hop out to push.

These are some of the challenges faced by our missionaries. We are constantly researching and assisting them in the numerous problems they face everyday. Our goal is to keep them driving safe, reliable vehicles. We thank you for your faithful prayer and financial support to make it possible.

Mike and Kathy

Thank You's

We certainly don't ask for it but we are blessed to have missionaries express appreciation in many ways for the work done on their cars. Sometimes it's with baked goods or a gift card to a restaurant or a real nice thank you card or letter. We even received a beautiful hand-written colorful thank you from the children of one family.

The baked goods are consumed and the restaurant gift cards are gone. But we did take the time to type up some of the letters received recently. We thought it would be nice to share a few with you. Many of you are the reason we are able to serve our missionaries. Through your prayers and financial gifts we are able to use our skills to keep many of our missionaries on the road.

We hope you will be blessed in reading these. After all, they are to you as well!

Dear Auto Shop Mechanics,
You have certainly been a blessing to me. You have fixed my Chevy van many times since I began living near JAARS in 2005 after being a Bible translator in PNG (Papua New Guinea) for 43 years. I don't have to worry about my van because I know it is in real good hands with you. God bless you and give you strength and joy as you serve Him by keeping many of us safely on the road for Christ.
Thank you in Jesus' Name,
Helen Marten

Bless y’all, bless y’all.
You have bailed the Barkey family out of deep waters the last few weeks.

Ron Barkey

Thanks for your commitment to our Lord as you continue to serve Him by enabling us to come and go where He has assigned us to travel.

Sharing in HIS Care,
Evelyn Davis 

We have great admiration and thanks for all that your team does down there.  I do a reasonable amount of maintenance on my cars myself, but without your expertise, advise, knowledge and help I could not do the amount I do. You have helped many times when I have been in other parts of the world to keep the vehicles going. 

Blessings to the team,
Daryl and Marlene Bussert – Director and Assistant Aviation Safety – JAARS Inc.

Ever since Jan and I arrived at JAARS in 1997, the Auto Shop has been a tremendous blessing to us.  Since we drive Ford products, Mike Smith’s experience with the idiosyncrasies of Crown Vic’s, Grand Marquis’s, and Mustangs has been invaluable to us.  Mike has bailed us out of many jams, and saved us lots of money in the process!  Blessings on Mike and the other Auto Shop guys, indeed!

Mike Rogers

Thanks Mike, Greg, Don, and Andy for your commitment to Bible translation, JAARS and individual missionaries(member, volunteer and employee) in helping to keep our vehicles running efficiently and safely. You are all very gifted individuals and the Lord is using that giftedness to help advance His kingdom on earth------bringing His Good News to those who have never heard it in their own heart language before.

Have a blessed day and year in the Lord,
Phil  for the McBride’s, JAARS and “Wycliffe”

I hope this shows many of you how real and tangible your partnership with us is. We can't overemphasize this enough. You are, indeed, a vital part of Bible translation. Our thanks goes out to you.

Be blessed,
Mike & Kathy

Institute for Affordable Transportation and the BUV Overview

In addition to teaching two rounds of classes to new missionaries, Mike has been working on something very new and different.There’s a "new kid" in town, so to speak. It’s called a Basic Utility Vehicle, a.k.a the BUV.

It's a bit involved so we thought we'd first show you the photos. And then, to save a lot of explaining in written form, we have a five minute video to share below.

The BUV is a new type vehicle for the rugged terrain of the overseas countries in which our missionaries operate. It is a rugged three wheel vehicle with a diesel engine that is capable of carrying up to 1200 pounds of cargo or personnel. It can also be used for pulling a disc or other gardening attachments.

Mike, along with John Pepper, the director of Land Transportation, directed the modifications to adapt it to JAARS’ specific application in an overseas environment. The vehicle is designed specifically for overseas mission work.

The photos above are of Mike and John testing the BUV. The modifications were done at the JAARS Center under Mike and John's supervision. This specific BUV was then shipped to Cameroon. To refresh your memory, John and Mike traveled to Ethiopia several years ago to teach four-wheel drive classes to translators. They taught driving and maintenance. They are collaborating more and becoming a great team. John wrote an article for the winter issue of JAARS quarterly magazine, Rev7. There is an online version of this wonderful magazine available: http://www.jaars.org/multimedia/publications/rev7 
If you would like a hard copy mailed to you, let us know.   

The BUV actually has a dedicated website and it is quite interesting to explore. www.drivebuv.org
 
The following video is from the website and tells about their Institute for Affordable Transportation. We encourage you to watch it. The great thing about the BUV, in addition to its versatility, is its cost, which is about $4000. Plus, it is hopeful the manufacturing can take place in "micro-factories" in the different countries to provide jobs. We hope you will take the time to watch it. It’s very well done and explains so much more than we can. Mike has been invited to attend the event spoken of in Indianapolis in April.

Here is the video: 

We will leave you with the following story. May it encourage you as you partner with us in this ministry.

A Day in the Sepik, from a translator in Papua New Guinea

I was in a remote village in the Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea. We had had a rainy weekend and the footpaths were more slippery than I realized. As I walked near the house, I fell flat on my back and hit my head on the ground.  Later I had a nagging headache and pain in my body. During my morning devotions after my fall, I prayed “Lord, let me be a tool in your hands.” 

Later that day we were working on Colossians 1:27 when one of the Kukwo translators truly realized that the gospel of Jesus belongs to Papua New Guineans, too.  Our translation goes like this:  God before promised he will preach (make open) that good hidden things in Christ are also for people who are not Jews. 

He stared at the computer screen and kept saying: “Here it is, here it is: the gospel of Jesus is also for us. It is for all people, black and white alike.”  He also thanked Joyce and me several times for coming to bring God's Word in this language to them. He said he never understood this from the Bible in Tok Pisin, the national language.  We spent a good 15 minutes discussing this truth. This day was certainly worth living! 

Did I feel God’s strength? No, what I felt was a nagging headache and pain all over my body after the fall in the morning.  But…I felt that the Lord did answer my prayer – I had the privilege of witnessing this wonderful realization of a man who lives deep in the tropical rain forest of Papua New Guinea. 

Be Blessed.
Mike and Kathy