Joe and Lindsay Risinger are 2019 BBTI graduates. Their children are Joseph (6), Abbie (4), and Titus (1).
It was August of 2019 when we began living in a village in northern Uganda where we could not understand a single word of our neighbors’ heart language. The language they spoke during their growing up years is the same language they use to ponder deep thoughts, and it […]
Elisabeth on her last birthday
Tom and Barbara Needham were farmers, and they went to Cameroon, Africa, to teach the people better farming methods. There a missionary led them to Christ. They returned to Iowa, sold the farm, went back to Cameroon as missionaries in 1991. Their daughter Elizabeth, the fifth of seven children was two years old at the time. There she grew up […]
The 10/40 window covers Africa and Asia between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator. The world’s most unevangelized countries are located in this rectangular area. Because it includes the majority of the world’s Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, it has also been called the “Resistant Belt.”
Several BBTI graduates that we must not identify serve in countries of the 10/40 window. Missionaries are most needed where […]
Sam & Mary Beth Snyder (BBTI 2015 graduates) Tommy (age 10)
Leland (age 7)
Bethany (age 5)
To many in our world, sickness and death are never due to natural causes but always to some evil activity of spirits. People make sacrifices to protect themselves from sickness, to insure the fertility of the land and the women, or to bring the rain. There […]
Josh and Rebecca Florence with Abigail, Ruth, Titus, and Josiah
Papua New Guinea is the world’s second largest island and the home of over 850 languages and people groups. In many ways it is a very beautiful country, but with its superstitions, witchcraft, vengeance, violence, and religious confusion, it is also a very spiritually dark place. Fortunately, it is considered a Christian nation with complete religious freedom, and […]
Cherith began literacy work among the Kamea in 2009 as a single woman. Today, she continues that ministry along with her husband, Jason Ottosen. She wrote the following report of their ministry during the early days.
The four Kamea primers were finished, and I, Cherith, was introducing and testing them in local villages where they had never seen their language written. Two men, Nicodemus and Lazarus, immediately became immersed in the excitement of reading the primers. […]
On May 10, 1968, the pastor’s wife and another lady from Beacon Hill Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, were visiting new arrivals in their area. The house they planned to visit had whiskey bottles in the front window. The intended message was “Bad people live here; don’t mess with them.” The residents, Robert and Linda Huddleston, had bought the house and recently moved in. They had met […]
Nathan Fritz Family
Nathan Fritz was born into a Christian family. At age six, his father, Rocky, became pastor of First Baptist Church in Amboy, IL. Even though he heard the Gospel over and over, it was not until age twelve that Nathan truly believed on Christ as his Saviour. Tina knew nothing about Jesus until age eight when her mother first took her to […]
Nat Williams Family
Nathaniel ‘Nat’ Williams was born into a Christian family in 1978 and grew up near Rochester, New York. At age five, he prayed a prayer, asking God to take him to Heaven when he died. That was his hope for the next eight years. Finally, he realized that salvation was not in a prayer or in living right, but in the sacrifice of Christ […]
The Jason Ottosen Family—serving faithfully in the mountains of Papua New Guinea since 2012
Ten years ago, we featured the Ottosens in the Winter 2009 issue of Lift Up Your Eyes. Cherith Stevens spent ten months in Papua New Guinea, and then, rather unexpectedly, God gave her a husband worth waiting for. She became Mrs. Jason Ottosen, and the two were on their way to PNG to […]