Tayler and Lorin Norris with Eden, Deacon, and Enoch www.missions2moz.org

                                                                              By Tayler Norris

In the early 1980s, my parents were reached with the Gospel through military missions while they were stationed in Germany as young Airmen. Little did they know that they would someday have five sons, including me, who would be born in Portugal while they were involved in a military mission church. Later in life, I would go on a missions trip to Zambia, Africa, and through that trip, God would burden my heart to give my life to be a missionary to the foreign field.

My call to the mission field was a culmination of my parents keeping missions as an important part of our family life. Growing up, our family attended every service of our church’s missions conferences. My brothers and I were always the first ones at the missionaries’ display tables asking questions. There were many times that my family opened the doors of our home to house missionaries while they were presenting at our church. At a young age, I was taught to not only give my tithes but also to give to missions on a monthly basis. I remember the napkin holder that sat in our dining room, stuffed with hundreds of missionary prayer cards. These were some of the things God used to prepare my heart to surrender to take the Gospel to the lost.

I prayed for two years before God, at the end of our church’s missions conference, burdened my heart for the country of Mozambique. A year later, after talking with my wife and seeking council from our pastor, my wife and I visited Mozambique. While there, God confirmed in our hearts that Mozambique is where He is leading us.

Throughout my life, God has used missions to make His will evident for me. The involvement of others in missions has also influenced me. It is clear that He uses missions to call laborers to reach the lost. Would you pray for laborers, about missions, and what God would have you to do?

Fall 2020

Alejandro and Josefina RojasI was born in a town in Baja California, Mexico, into a Roman Catholic family. In 1984, my grandmother gave me a book in Spanish entitled All About Mexico. It told of the various Christian denominations in Mexico. I decided that when I lived in a big city with a Presbyterian Church, I would attend it. Later, when I lived in Puebla, Mexico, I found a phone number of the Presbyterian church in the yellow pages. I called and asked how I could be a member of the church. The person said I needed to accept Jesus Christ. He explained to me the plan of salvation, and I accepted Christ as my Savior.

While studying at the University in Puebla, I met Roger Reeck, an American Bible translator teaching English there.. He had translated the New Testament into an Indian language in Oaxaca, Mexico. I thought I would like to participate in this task, but also saw that it was beyond my ability. (Later at BBTI, I learned that Roger was a friend of Rex Cobb when he worked in Oaxaca, Mexico).

In 2005, my wife and I began to attend an Independent Fundamental Baptist church in Tijuana, Baja California. My pastor gave me the privilege to be in charge of the accommodations and food for missionaries that attended our missionary conferences. Also, I was the treasurer of the missionary fund. I felt that I needed to go and do something in Bible translation, but I lacked the courage.

At our 2019 missions conference, I discussed my interest in Bible translation with our church’s missionary to Chiang Mai, Thailand. He told me of the opportunity to reach Thai people and those in restricted neighboring countries. He told me of the need for Bible translation and suggested I talk with Dr. Bill Patterson, a consultant with the Trinitarian Bible Society. Bill Patterson recommended Baptist Bible Translators Institute. My pastor counseled me to ask the advice of missionary Bruce Martin, who also recommended this institute.

My dear wife, Josefina, is accepting and supportive of my involvement in this ministry and is also preparing at BBTI for missionary work in Thailand.

by Alejandro Rojas

Summer 2020

BBTI student Ben MuldoonSimeon, a deaf man in Ghanta City, Liberia, sat nearly eight hours to hear doctrine and Scriptures explained to him in Sign Language. However, he was still hungry for more. Here was a man that could honestly sing, “More about Jesus would I know.” The image of this young deaf man that was eager and hungry for truth is etched in my memory.

I grew up in a pastor’s home in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and was saved at age seven. My parents raised their children to be involved in church ministry and to have a burden for the world. My dad, Wil Muldoon, was called into overseas missions at age sixty-one, and he is still serving in Papua New Guinea at age seventy. His commitment to follow Christ has had a profound impact on my life.

In 2013, I went to Bulgaria for the Deaf Olympics with Silent Word Ministries International. During this trip, a burden for Eastern Europe and the Deaf of the world grew in my heart. During my junior and senior year of college, I worked with the Deaf at Bill Rice Ranch and was involved in a deaf ministry at a local church. My burden grew. Seeing my parents in PNG in 2015 was a highlight and after teaching in the Bible institute there, I fell in love with investing in men who are hungry to learn.

The Deaf, Eastern Europe, and training men were all swirling in my head and heart upon arriving back in the United States, but I didn’t see it as an actual possibility. God was patient with me as He showed me more and more of Himself and His burden for the Deaf. On January 1, 2016, David Bennett, my mentor, challenged me to sincerely see if God wanted me to invest my life in training deaf men in Europe. After two months of praying and receiving counsel from my parents and pastor, a conviction settled that, what had started out as a burden, was actually God’s plan for me.

The next steps were training: theological training at Seminary, deaf training in Liberia, ministry training in a nine-month apprenticeship under a pastoral staff in Tennessee, and missions training at BBTI. The next major step will be full time deputation to start a deaf church and training institute in Eastern Europe!

by Ben Muldoon

by Reese Parfitt

In Situational Language Learning, we practice a careful, orderly method that can be used to obtain language from any speaker of any foreign language. The idea is to be able to take control of our learning so we won’t need to rely on an officially-trained teacher or a language school as we venture into learning a foreign language. Our class time involves a short time of instruction about the concepts and method, but the bulk of our time is spent practicing that method by using an actual language.

We have two language informants who are fluent speakers of French and Mandarin Chinese. I am in the Chinese group. We start by asking for object-like words, and write them down in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). We methodically progress into longer utterances which we can handle better and better as we learn the sounds.

The class goal is to learn the method, not the particular language that we are practicing on. I am seeing just how helpful it is to record the speech with the exacting precision of the IPA. While a Chinese person could write down an approximation and know how to pronounce it just fine, I must listen very closely to all the subtleties of the language and record it all as accurately as possible.

Have you ever heard an Asian speak English in a manner that was very difficult to decipher? They obviously learned words and letters from our language, but they combine them with the speech patterns from their first language. In order to sound Chinese and not American, I have to reckon with the fact that their sound system is very different from that of my English. I read what I’ve written down back to the language helper to see if I got it right, or if it needs some adjustment.

I can take this learning method anywhere in the world and learn a language from any native speaker. The speaker does not have to be educated, and the only materials I need are paper and pencil. Oh yes, and a sharp set of ears, and a willing mind. With that, I am empowered to learn to my heart’s content!

The first class I faced as a student at BBTI was Articulatory Phonetics, a study of how sounds relating to language are produced by the human mouth. The amount of knowledge and enjoyment students get from this class depends on the students’ level of participation. Phonetics is a hands-on, or rather lips-on, course. As well as learning the theory behind how sounds are made, students are required to learn how to record and reproduce all the sounds that they hear. Like any skill, phonetics takes practice, so much class time is spent doing oral drills (which to the uninitiated sounds like an international market).

So what, you ask, is the point? Why should a missionary learn phonetics? The answer is that English, or any language for that matter, is limited in the sounds it utilizes. When a missionary goes to a non-English speaking country, he will often come across sounds in that language which he has never made before. The English speaker’s tendency is to replace new and difficult sounds with English sounding equivalents. The result is a missionary who speaks with a horrendous accent and constantly mispronounces even basic words. With an understanding of phonetics, however, he is able to learn to speak the language like a native regardless of how “difficult” the sounds may be to make. This kind of fluency is important if the gospel message is to be fully understood by the hearers.

If, like me, you plan to go to a non-English speaking nation, you should consider taking a phonetics course first. It’s extremely practical, it’s fun, and what other course gives you credits for successfully purring like an outboard motor?

Cara is a native of the island of New Zealand who was saved as a result of an American missionary. She is currently a student at BBTI, preparing to serve the Lord in Ukraine.