Graduate Updates

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 was nothing but meaningless noise to our foreign ears. This local, tribal language called Lugbara was one that we were warned would not be an option for a foreigner to grasp. No language school exists [although Lugbara is spoken by 1.7 million people]. Because it is tonal, the most subtle change in one’s tone profoundly alters the expressed meaning.
God called us to these people, therefore we felt it prudent to take whatever steps necessary to understand their culture and communicate in their heart language. For months we would go out every single day, notebook in hand, and use the language acquisition tools we were given at BBTI. Under the shade of a mango or avocado tree while our three-year-old and one-year-old played on a papyrus mat with the African children, we carefully transcribed words and phrases to commit to memory afterwards.

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 and served the Lord with her family. She learned Pidgin English and Fulfulde, the language of the Fulani Muslim people, as well as sign language. Elizabeth was homeschooled and was saved at age six. At age twelve at summer camp, she was memorizing the words to the hymn their group was about to sing. “All to Jesus I surrender. All to him I freely give.” She realized that it was not true of her, but she immediately surrendered all! Suddenly she had a burden to reach the lost.

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 they are least welcome, and we rejoice that they are declaring the Gospel in places controlled by atheists or religious fanatics. Because many of these countries have laws against proselytizing or even distributing Christian literature, missionaries must operate under the radar. We must be especially careful not to expose them as missionaries; our carelessness with social media or the internet could cause them to be expelled from their country or worse.

Darkness and Death

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 is usually a shaman or witch doctor who is the expert in communicating with the spirits. The spirits tell him or her what remedy is needed for healing or who is guilty of placing the curse that caused the sickness.

This is the world that a missionary comes to and the culture that he must understand and contend with. The following narrative was written by Mary Beth Snyder, who serves with her husband, Sam, in the remote mountains of Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG).

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 many missionaries are taking advantage of the opportunity to preach the Gospel of Christ to its people. Among these are Joshua and Rebecca Florence, 2012 graduates of Baptist Bible Translators Institute (BBTI). On an eight-week survey trip in 2010, God broke their hearts for this dark place and showed them that Papua New Guinea was their place of service.

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. I started them both in primer one and left to visit some other villages. When I came back several hours later, they were still reading. They made it to primer three before they headed home.

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 at the Player’s Lounge where Linda was a bartender. The church ladies considered skipping this house, but they didn’t. Instead they won Bob and Linda to Christ!

Bob was born and raised in Oregon. He served as a Korean language specialist in the United States Air Force and was also trained in data processing. Linda, born and raised in Dallas, Texas, was a high school dropout but later earned her GED at Baptist Bible College (BBC) in Springfield, Missouri, where she and Bob prepared to serve the Lord on the foreign field. While a student at BBC, Bob began Maranatha Baptist Church in nearby Richland. Some of the missionary students from the nearby linguistic training school of New Tribes Mission (NTM) attended their services. The NTM people told the Huddlestons about the many unreached, Bibleless tribal people of the world, and God began to burden their hearts to reach them. At NTM, they met Baptist missionaries George and Sharon Anderson. The Andersons had left Mexico to attend the NTM Boot Camp and Language School with the stated purpose of learning all they could from NTM so they could begin a similar school to train Baptist missionaries.

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 church. It took Tina several months to understand her need of salvation, but when she saw herself as a lost sinner, she trusted Christ.

Nathan became interested in various countries through his hobby as a philatelist. His church supported many missionaries, including the Mumfords in France. (They served there for fifty years!) Brother Mumford, Nathan’s pen pal, sent stamps from various places, among which was a place unknown to Nathan, Cape Verde. He had no idea where this country was, but he made it a point to find out. Nathan learned that Cape Verde is a group of fifteen islands located off the western point of Africa. He now wonders why the Portuguese explorer, Dinis Dias, called it “Verde” (green). Maybe it was green in 1445, but today, with only ten inches of annual rainfall, it is anything but green. Although it is located nearly four hundred miles from the African continent, the sandstorms from the Sahara Desert cause many problems for the people of Cape Verde. As Nathan’s interest in the country grew, so did his burden for the people. Their lives are dominated by African and Roman Catholic superstitions. Several of the islands have no gospel witness.

Nat Williams FamilyNathaniel ‘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 on his behalf.

When Nat was a young child, his parents became serious about serving God. The family worked together in neighborhood children’s clubs and Vacation Bible Schools. All of this was on-the-job training for foreign missionary service. Nat taught English in Taiwan, took part in literature distribution at the Asian Games, and traveled for two years with the Institute In Basic Life Principles. He planned to serve in foreign missions, but in reality, he was a missionary already. He worked while he waited.

The Jason Ottosen Family—serving faithfully in the mountains of Papua New Guinea since 2012Ten 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 help reach the Kamea tribe in the mountains of Gulf Province. Today, there are six Ottosens ministering there in the village of Komako! The newest missionary is nine-month old Josiah. In March 2012, Jason and Cherith went to PNG with their first daughter, Grace Elisabeth, who joined their team in September 2011. Melody Joy followed in September 2013. Their third daughter, Hannah Faith, arrived the last day of September 2016 and soon began helping to win the hearts of the Kamea people. A lot can happen in ten years!

Katie always serves with a smile.It is common for a young missionary to leave his parents and take his children to the foreign mission field. In doing so, he is taking the grandchildren away from their grandparents. Occasionally, a middle-aged missionary will leave his grown children at home and go to the mission field. It is rare, however, for a grandparent to leave both children and grandchildren and go to the mission field. Many grandmothers have watched their grandchildren leave, but Kathryn Walker did it in reverse. Her grandchildren watched her leave. No doubt, this widowed grandmother loves her grandchildren as much as any grandmother could, but she felt God leading her to Africa. She left her own grandchildren safe in the care of their parents and went to help African children come to Christ.

The Hernandez family can be described as cheerful people. How appropriate for them to serve God in the Land of Smiles! Ahmet received Christ as his Savior at the age of seven. Unfortunately, as many young people do, he drifted away from the Lord, wasting precious years in the world. Rachael always believed in God. As a child, she would look at the clouds and imagine seeing Jesus coming—on a surfboard! (She lived in Pensacola, Florida, where surfing is a big sport.) It wasn’t until after she married Ahmet that she understood the Gospel and was saved.

Ahmet served in the United States Navy. While stationed in Guam, the family attended a church that was started and pastored by a missionary. Rachael remembers thinking, “I could never be a missionary!” (Strange, isn’t it, that men and women serve overseas in the military in difficult or dangerous places but going to the mission field scares them to death!) Today, Rachael feels very much at home raising her family in a foreign culture and speaking another language.