We were married in 1974 and have two children, Melissa and Timothy. God first began to reveal his call to Bible translation while we were students at Manhattan Christian College in Manhattan, Kansas. Kyle had always enjoyed languages and was getting into his Greek and Hebrew studies. One day Barton McElroy, a professor at MCC who also happened to be involved in a new mission organization called Pioneer Bible Translators, handed out some brochures that opened with the question “How would you like to live in a place where the nearest road was 50 miles away?”
It was an intriguing question. We were avid backpackers and always enjoyed roughing it. Here, it seemed, was a way to combine Kyle’s gifts in languages and our love for the outdoors in a ministry through which we could make a real difference through winning the lost for Jesus. By the time Kyle graduated in 1982 it was clear that this was the ministry to which God was calling us.
So we packed up and moved the family to Texas to study linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington. UTA had a cooperative program with Summer Institute of Linguistics, the scientific and linguistic arm of Wycliffe Bible Translators. It was an awesome program. Many of the instructors were missionaries themselves who had been or were presently involved in Bible translation. Through talking with them and with some of the PBT missionaries who were on furlough at the time, we became interested in Papua New Guinea and the needs for Bible translation there. We prayed about it and decided that this was where God would have us work. Having completed the linguistics program in 1984, we raised our support and left for PNG in January of 1985.
Our first few months in the country were spent in the Pacific orientation course. There we learned about the country and became proficient in Melanesian Pidgin, the trade language in PNG. Upon completion of the course we surveyed two different languages and decided to allocate in the Nend language group. This group of people was located deep in the rain forest of the Madang Province. They were cut off from the outside world and had had little contact with Christianity. We settled among them and began the task of learning their language.
During the time we were there we learned the language, developed an alphabet and completed the grammatical analysis. We then began the translation of the Bible into the Nend language. To say that translation is a challenge is an understatement. Finding ways to express concepts across languages, cultures, and 2000 years in ways that are clear and accurate can seem almost impossible at times. But there is always a way. It may be with an idiom, or a phrase, or even just a new word that we had never heard before. We are convinced that there are no concepts that cannot be translated.
In 1993 we left the Nend program in order to serve as administrators at the Papua New Guinea branch office in Madang. Then in 1995 we came home for furlough. While in the States we served as coordinators for recruitment for PBT. Because of where the kids were in their schooling we decided not to return to PNG until they had completed High School. We felt that it would be best for them if we stayed and let them get settled into college before returning. That was going to take a few years so we resigned from PBT, got other jobs and put the translation work on hold.
In 2000, Tim graduated from High School and it appeared that the Lord was opening the door for us to return to Papua New Guinea. We contacted PBT and began the process of returning to PNG. Our preparations and support raising went very well and in October of 2001 we finally returned to PNG to begin a new work.
After working for several years on a new program involving several language groups, Kyle was asked to serve as PNG branch director again. So we left the bush and settled once more in Madang. While serving in Madang we began to hear news from the Nend language group about a movement to Christianity that was occuring there. Starting in the north of the langauge group, villages were one after another leaving behind the traditional ways and turning to the Lord. We felt a desire to assist these new Christians as much as possible so we turned again to the Nend translation work. The Gospel of Mark had been published in 2004 but that was the only scriptures the people had in their language. Currently we are working on Luke and Acts with the goal of seeing these books published as quickly as possible.
In addition to our work with the Nend translation, Kyle was recently asked to serve as Regional Area Director for the Asia and Pacific regions. In that role he will be providing assistance to missionaries serving in countries throughout Asia and the Pacific Islands. He started this new job in April 2010.