Some years ago, the missionary team ventured into the Wana people group’s location in the Asia-Pacific Region. Ed and Jeanne Casteel were there to see the church established and have watched as the church has grown and matured.

The Wana church has decided to send missionaries to three other people groups near them in order to follow Christ’s command to go and teach all nations. These are not Westerners; even so, as Ed said, “The Wana missionaries who are reaching into other language groups are going through the whole culture and language acquisition (CLA)  process just like we all had to do – only with all the updated techniques.”

The Writing Begins

The groups into which the Wana are heading are the Banggai, the Da’a and the Lauje peoples. 

“The original Ethnos missionaries (among the Lauje people) have either retired or are now working in other ministries. Because the church was not ready to be left on its own, it was decided that we needed to put another missionary team (consisting of one Wana family) in there. The New Testament translation has been completed, but there is Old Testament translation that needs being done, plus the chronological lessons need a revision. Along with this, the team will be working on leadership discipleship.

“All three of these teams are about at the same place in ministry, which is finishing up their culture and language study and getting ready to enter into Scripture translation and Bible lesson development,” Ed said. “As we met with the teams, they all felt that, if they had practice developing lessons in their own Wana language first, it would be a big help to them in developing lessons in the language groups they are working in.

… And They’re Off!

“They will be using the 70-lesson series of the Building on Firm Foundation books and developing these lessons into each respective language they are working with. We are asking that they at least come up with a rough draft of all the [initial] lessons before they begin teaching. Of course, as they begin to develop these lessons, they will be working with language helpers so those helpers will also get taught through [the evangelism phase] in the process.”

Pray for the Wana missionaries as they step into their roles as teachers. Pray that they will be bold and clear in their speaking.