Christmas 2004

Dear Praying Friends,

We wish you all a blessed Christmas time, as blessed as our Kashinawa brothers and sisters will be having with their newly published New Testaments. To the right is our co-translator Waldemar reading his long awaited New Testament, God's precious Word in the language of his heart.

And now another very wonderful chapter of our translation work has been completed. The second New Testament edition has been prepared by the Brazilian Bible Society in São Paulo, Brazil for the "Kaxinawá" of Brazil. I spent September 24 through October 9 in São Paulo working on the final layout of our adaptation, which is now also being prepared for publication for those in Brazil. Rejoice with us as this, another very big landmark, has been reached. There are a number of mission groups in addition to the national churches of Brazil that are awaiting being able to order copies of this New Testament and begin making it available to the "Kaxinawá" (yes, a different spelling) on rivers that have never heard of God's Word before.

My time in Brazil was an adventure to be sure. Getting along without knowing Portuguese was not as hard as I thought it would be. Everyone tried to understand me and there were quite a few people at the Brazilian Bible Society who spoke enough English or Spanish to try to talk with me. And we all just "coped"! They were friendly and helped me in any way they could.

As this letter arrives, we are in Nueva Luz, working toward translating a selected 40% of the Old Testament, to be completed before we leave Peru at the end of 2006. Dick is working on the books of Moses and the historical books, and a number of these are ready for the final check with a translation consultant, I am working on the books of poetry and prophesy, currently on Psalms. Is it hard? YES, and only the Lord's daily allotment of strength keeps us going. We often sing the song, "Because He lives, I can face tomorrow", and we have many times like that. There is no down time in sight, and the Lord has given us His blessed strength to just keep on keeping on joyfully, to His honor and glory. I often remind our co-translators that they are part of those who are actively suffering for Christ, for their part in the work is also very demanding and tiring.

We expect to be in Nueva Luz until after New Years Day, and will be going to our annual Mission to the World Conference in the Lima area from January 10-14. That will be a nice change for us. We are looking forward to a special speaker who will be coming from Tennessee to be with us for the conference.

• Please pray with us that there will be a translation consultant able to work with us shortly after the conference in Lima and we can have two of our co-translators come in to work on the checking. It would be a good break for us and it is really hard to get many books ready to check all at once. This would give us a way to estimate how much more we can expect to get done in our time left in Peru and plan accordingly with the translation consultants.
• Pray for the Lord's continued fencing us in against the attacks of Satan.
• And pray that the co-translators and we both will be provided with the Lord's strength and joy to keep at the task that is set before us.

May God bless you, one and all.
In Christ's love,

Sue for Dick and Sue Montag
Phone in Pucallpa: 011-51-64-59-6942

If you would like to have a part in the financial part of our ongoing ministry, send your contribution and/or monthly pledge to our mission address at the top of the letter, with the check made out to Mission to the World, and indicate on a note that it is for our ministry expenses. We thank you for whatever you can do to help.

Write to us at:
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Montag
ILV, Apartado 52
Pucallpa, Peru, SA
RMontag@mtwla.org or dick-sue_montag@sil.org