Dear Praying Friends,

SURPRISES

Surprises seem to be raining upon us these days. As we were in Nueva Luz working along on our New Testament revision, Dick lost a crown from a molar. This meant a round trip to Esperanza, where there is a dentist who could glue the crown back on (actually an orthodontist from Lima in a little frontier town! He only works after dark when the generator for electricity is on!) Then right after Dick got back, our co-translator Tufí was called home (just upriver from Esperanza) to care for a gravely ill grandson, who recovered well in about 4 days. Then I realized that I had a strange looking lesion on my face, just below my left eye, and, after watching it for about 5 days, we decided that the four more months we were to be in Nueva Luz was too long a time to wait for a biopsy, so Dick and I and our co-translators Roberto and Waldemar headed down river AGAIN to Esperanza to await a plane to Pucallpa. We arrived in Esperanza on Sunday afternoon, May 25 and I was able to fly to Pucallpa on a mission plane that was to go overhead on Monday the 26th. Unfortunately the men had to wait until the following Sunday until there was a cargo flight that took passengers. Yes, we are way, way out! Oh, the joys of jungle commuting!

My facial lesion was quickly biopsied and was not cancerous, so we were very pleased. The surgeon said, "Sunscreen and a hat!" I fortunately have been very careful of the sun since returning to Peru.

HOME SWEET HOME

By the time the men arrived from their "vacation" in Esperanza, I had caught up with the mail, worked on typing up the history of the Kashinawa church, and enjoyed visiting with friends at Yarinacocha. And Roberto, Waldemar and I were rested and all ready to get back to the revision. Dick was able to begin working full-time on getting a little house, which we had moved in March to the town of Yarinacocha, ready for us to move in. We spent almost two weeks staying at the Wycliffe Center at Yarinacocha before we began camping at our new house. After 10 days, we are almost unpacked but still have no sink in the kitchen. I still wash dishes in a laundry basin….

NEW TESTAMENT REVISION

Yesterday we finished revising Hebrews and today began James. That only leaves through Jude to go. We are now scheduled to all go to Esperanza on Saturday, June 28. Well, Roberto, Waldemar and Waldemar's mother (who just completed about 5 months of cancer treatment) were scheduled to go today, but as is often the case, the flight was cancelled and they were rescheduled to go on Saturday with us. Lest one take any travel plans for granted….

In Nueva Luz we will continue the revision and also do a read through with Kashinawas who have not been involved in the translation. Then we hope to be able to begin a final read through of the gospels, for they have already been checked by a translation consultant.

We praise the Lord that while we have been in Yarinacocha, a technician from the Bolivian Bible Society was able to come and spend two days helping me improve my formatting of the NT and teaching me more about the Paratext program which we use for the revision. It was a great help. We will eventually go to Bolivia to have the manuscript lay out done, and this is the technician who will continue to work with us. This will hopefully be in about February of 2004.

PRAY WITHOUT CEASING

We thank you very much for your faithful prayers for us and the Kashinawas (changed spelling from Cashinahua). God has blessed us richly as we have worked together as a very happy team. We also thank you for your financial gifts either personally or through your churches. Your prayers and gifts keep us here and we are deeply grateful for your part in this. Please continue to pray:

• For the Lord's spiritual blessing on co-translators Roberto, Waldemar and Tufí and their families. They all sacrifice a great deal as they work with us for long periods of time with very little time or opportunity to get away.
• For good health for our team and their families.
• For the army of the Lord to wall us in from the attacks of the devil. He doesn't want the NT finished but our Lord is our protection and refuge.
• For our own financial support to be adequate and for the funds to be provided for the publication of the New Testament.

As our revision of the Peruvian Kashinawa New Testament is now in the final checking and editorial stages prior to publication by the Peruvian Bible Society in 2004, we would like to ask you to prayerfully consider if you can help with these costs. We anticipate publishing 2,500 copies at a total cost of about $23,000, or almost $10.00 per copy and these will be sold at a subsidized price. Please give generously and sacrificially, as the Lord leads, knowing that your gift will be greatly appreciated by those who wait to have their own New Testament in their hands. These funds are entirely separate from our own financial support and we ask that your gift toward the New Testament publication not replace your gifts to us, for our expenses go on and will increase as we do more and more traveling.

Because of the difficulty of receipting your gifts through the Peruvian Bible Society, Mission to the World has agreed to receipt your gifts and channel them to the Peruvian Bible Society at the time of publication. So if you feel you are able to help with this New Testament publication, please clip off the bottom of this letter (or copy the information on a note) and use it to send in your gift. (For those of you who get our mailings, this is a repetition and I am sorry for that, but many folks only get e-mail letters from us, so this is especially for them.)

We will be very grateful for your help.

Sincerely in Christ,

Dick and Sue Montag