The Nsenga meeting took place at the grounds of the palace of His Royal Highness, Senior Chief Kalindawalo.

Representatives from the NBTP Committee were able to speak (in Nsenga!) to a large group of influential Nsenga leaders, including representatives from all 11 Nsenga chiefs, Members of Parliament, village headmen, clergy, and other leaders from all over the Nsenga-speaking area. The reception to the project was very positive, especially from those outside the Petauke area, who had not heard of our efforts before.

Recently-produced brochures about the project were distributed. Many people took extra copies to give to people in their villages and churches to raise awareness and gain support for the project. In addition, several contacts were made with promising candidates for the position of Mother-Tongue Translators (MTT), the all-important Nsengas who will put pen to paper to bring God’s Word to their own language.

We currently have 4 applications from prospective MTTs, with at least two more coming in. Eventually, through a series of tests and sample translation activities, the committee will choose three full-time MTTs to work long-term on the project. Please continue to pray that these key positions will be filled with the right people!

HRH Senior Chief Kalindwalo (seated in chair) during a meeting of the Nsenga people on 11 Feb 2012

One humourous story from the meeting: At one point, some dissatisfaction with the way the Tuŵimba ceremony has been run of late caused the entire sitting committee (about 12 people) to be dissolved by the gathered delegates. But with the entire committee out, who was to run the elections for the replacement committee? Some enterprising soul nominated Chris, the only mzungu at the meeting, who obviously would be a neutral (if slightly confused) party. So Chris spent the better part of 45 minutes calling for nominations, asking for hands to be raised, and getting heckled in Nsenga for his lack of proper parliamentary procedure. But in the end, and a new committee was elected. And then we all ate a nice meal of goat meat and nshima and laughed about it afterward.

Work continues to progress in Africa, slowly but surely, in large part thanks to the prayers and support of so many of you in the U.S. Thank you for being a part of this with us!

Your life on earth is merely a pilgrimage. God allows you to live in this body and walk on this earth so you can help other people and bring them to heaven. Therefore, we must use all things on earth in no other way than as guests who travel across the country and come to an inn. They spend the night there and take only food and lodging from the innkeeper. They don’t claim that the innkeeper’s property now belongs to them. This is how we must deal with material possessions – as if they do not belong to us. We should enjoy only as much as necessary for us to maintain our bodies and use the rest to help our neighbors. Similarly, the Christian life is like being an overnight guest. “For we do not have an enduring city” (Hebrews 13:14), but we must go to our Father in heaven. (Luther)

When a baby is born, the witchdoctor is consulted. Through various incantations, spells, and animal sacrifices, the witchdoctor contacts the Ancestors and asks them about the spirit that has recently come to the earth in the newborn child.

This tells the family something of what to expect from the child as he or she grows up, and it also tells them what to name the child – a particular Ancestor might want the child to be named for them in order to protect it (or at least, not be angry with it).

In certain rare instances, the witchdoctor is able to discern that this particular child is very special. There will be a prophesy about the child. He or she might grow up to be a chief or a witchdoctor, or perhaps a teacher, president, or other important person. In these cases, a special kind of sacrifice is needed.

If the baby is marked as special, the witchdoctor and other important elders take it out into the bush. Using the promise of food or some other gift, another child from the village is lured out to the place where the gathering is. When that second child reaches the group, it is caught, bound, and killed as a sacrifice. Now the new baby’s future is secure; the good future prophesied for it will come true.

When Jesus Christ was born, his birth was also marked as special. His birth in Bethlehem, of the royal line of David, was foretold by prophesy. Many prophesies were made also about his life; even his mother received a prophesy about his future directly from an aged seer. His birth and his identity was announced by messengers from heaven, and many people came to pay homage.

His future destiny was certain, and it even contained a sacrifice.

But it was not the anonymous, unwilling sacrifice of some other child that guaranteed the Christ Child’s future. Rather, it was the willing sacrifice of the Christ Child that was God’s guarantee that all of his children – past and present, Jew and Gentile, black and white – would someday inherit the best future possible as brothers and sisters of Jesus, the Son of God.

As the writer to the Hebrews said, “Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers… he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:11-15).

There seems to be a lot of emphasis on sacrifice and suffering in the traditional religious beliefs of Zambia. There is slavery to the fear of death. But the good news of the Gospel is that Jesus, by his own suffering and sacrifice, frees all humanity from that fear of death by becoming one of us, by going through death for us, and by destroying Satan with the power of his victorious resurrection.

God shares this good news with us in the pages of Scripture. Thank you for your prayers for us as we work to bring that same good news to the Nsenga people in their own language – the language of their old traditional beliefs, and by God’s grace the language of their newfound freedom in the Gospel.

The first was our long-awaited truck. It finally cleared customs, passed its import inspections, paid its road tax, was approved by INTERPOL, granted a license number, and released to us. Missionary Dan Sargent drove it to Petauke for us from Lusaka, and we were happy to return his old Land Cruiser for the spiffy new Ford Ranger.

We are very blessed to have a vehicle of our own. In a country where almost everyone walks almost everywhere, having a vehicle gives us the ability to go where we need to, when we need to, regardless of the weather or the distance. In addition,  a four-wheel-drive truck lets us go to the isolated, out-of-the-way places where “deep” Nsenga is spoken, to do our preliminary research, reach isolated pockets of Nsenga with the Word, and eventually to test the comprehensibility of our translation with all Nsenga people. (Of course, it’s also really nice for the two-hour drive to Chipata to visit the Western-style grocery store there and visit Sean’s homeschool friends!)

Last school year, the National Honor Society at Wisconsin Lutheran High School made the “Pluger Project” their mission fundraiser for the year. Through their dedicated efforts, and the generosity of hundreds, if not thousands, of members of the Wisco family, over ten thousand dollars were raised for this vehicle. In many ways, then, every trip we make here in Africa in our truck is a “Wisco mission trip.” Thank you!

The remainder of the money was donated by other supporters in the US – especially one major donor who has never met us in person, but was nonetheless compelled to participate in our small part in bringing God’s Word to every language. We give thanks to God for so many partners who support us in so many ways.

Our other early Christmas gift was quite a bit smaller.

One of the missionaries in Lusaka found a little lost kitten, walking along the top of the wall fence trying to avoid the guard dogs. After several unsuccessful attempts to find it a home among the mission family in Lusaka, she called Janine (who had asked Chris for a kitten for Christmas, of all things). The kitten came out in the new truck with Pastor Sargent.

So now Riley is settling in to life in Petauke, and we’re adjusting to him as well. Right now, like all kittens, he likes eating, sleeping, and roughhousing best. He also really enjoys attacking our mosquito nets at night. We are very happy to have a new addition to our Africa house.

May our gracious God grant you love, mercy and peace as your early Christmas presents this year, as we wait with eager expectation for the greatest gift of all, our Savior Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas from

The Plugers

The congregation is in the process of gathering funds and materials to build their church building. In the meantime, they worship in the parsonage. The thing is, the parsonage isn’t completed yet, either. Right now it’s just brick walls made into the shapes of the rooms – no floor, no roof.

So, we got sunburned sitting in church on the Second Sunday in Advent.

Before the English service, the pastor gathered some loose bricks and fashioned them into a makeshift altar about 12 inches high. He laid some planks (leftover ends from the rafter installation) across them, carefully laid out the elements for Holy Communion, covered them with a cloth, and then secured the cloth with stones so it wouldn’t blow away. He joked with me that he was like Abraham, building an altar so he could call on the name of the Lord. We sat on small piles of bricks and wooden stools.

There were about 9 people in the English service. We sang Silent Night (a cappella) twice, because that was the only Christmas/Advent hymn the congregation knew in English. Then came a Bible study time while the Chewa crowd gathered. By the time the Chewa service was underway, there were about 25 souls gathered in the pastor’s future living room.

We sang. We prayed. We confessed, and were assured of God’s love and forgiveness. We listened to the Word. We heard a sermon on Mark 1 and the message of John the Baptizer. We received Jesus’ true Body and Blood together with our fellow members of the one, holy, Christian, and apostolic Church. We heard God’s blessing pronounced on us. We shook everybody’s hand. We learned a few Chewa words. We went home and had bacon and eggs. We decorated the house for Christmas. Chris took a nap.

May your Advent, wherever you are celebrating it, be filled with the same blessings.

But things never go completely as planned or scheduled. We tried using the various tracking tools on the UN website to find out where our vehicle was and what was happening to it, but it spent about two-and-a-half months with the Mozabique delivery “pending.” At least the boat didn’t register as “sunk.”

To make a long story short, late last week we got a call from the mission coordinator that our truck was in Lusaka! Somehow, it went from not-officially-offloaded in Mozambique to delivered-in-Lusaka without being recorded on the website. (This is not unlike following your order on Amazon…)

All of a sudden, it really made sense for us to come to Lusaka for Thanksgiving. We hadn’t been planning to come, but now with the excuse of our truck, the turkey seemed to be calling us.

So we give thanks to God for the chance to enjoy a very traditional American Thanksgiving dinner with the mission family here in Lusaka. We give thanks for the arrival of our truck (still waiting for final clearance from INTERPOL before we can drive it home). We give thanks for the research we are able to start at various government offices here in the Capital while we wait (census data, orthographic research at the Ministry of Education, linguistic research at the University of Zambia, etc.) And we give thanks for all of the blessings – safe travel, a home, loving supportive family, strong partnerships, a clear vision of our project, and so many others – with which God is blessing us these last few months.

Happy Thanksgiving!

November/December 2011

We’ve spent a while unpacking and sorting (kind of a trick with little furniture and no kitchen cabinets), as well as getting the appliances up and running. We can now cook, shower, wash dishes, and do laundry. The fridge works with the help of a “voltage stabilizer” – a little box that boosts our typically low voltage by 25% so that the fridge always has a steady 220V supply. We have a makeshift table made out of a door. Our hot water heater (or “geyser” [rhymes with ‘weezer’]) works well. Sean is making friends with the neighborhood boys – he says he feels like the new toy at Christmas, since everyone wants to play with him.

From here on, our house progress will be slow-but-steady. There are many things to do – paint, cabinets, furniture, and more – but it is a big step to just get here. Thanks to all of you for your prayers for our housing and settling-in.

Along with our arrival in Petuake is the beginning of some serious activity with the Nsenga Bible Translation Committee. Last week the Translation Consulatant from the Bible Society and another colleague came out from Lusaka to spell out step-by-step the things the Committee needs to do to start and support their project. This Saturday, the Committee is meeting again to formulate an Action Plan for 2012, taking into account the recommendations of Bible Society.

Big items on their list are fundraising, publicity (“sensitisation”), translator interviewing and hiring, the establishment of review teams in various Nsenga regions, and some basic sociolinguistic research, as well as making sure their Translation Advisor learns some Nsenga. It is very important to figure out how much time these activities will take, and then at what time it would be realistic to plan on starting the actual translation work. Please pray for wisdom and guidance at this meeting on Saturday November 12.

Thank you for all your emails and notes. We love to hear from you. You can see some new house pictures at:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150346116877006.339272.748382005&type=1&l=83665d7aa2

You can also write to us at: The Plugers, Box 560135, Petauke Zambia.

God’s blessings!

The story is that one year there was a severe drought, and the rains that usually come in October or November did not arrive. Since there was no rain to soften the ground, no planting could occur, and no food could be grown. This was a serious problem. So the Chief led all of the Nsenga people into the deep bush. There they found a huge special tree. They prayed to the spirits at this tree and made offerings (tuwimba). Before the tribe even got back to their homes, it had started to rain.

The Nsenga people bring their gifts to Paramount Chief Kalindawalo during the 2011 Tuwimba Ceremony.

Now every year on October 15^th the Nsenga celebrate the Tuwimba Ceremony near the start of the rainy season. Nowadays it is characterized by lots of typical Nsenga music and dancing. Groups of choirs and dance troupes come from all over the Nsenga-speaking areas. Political leaders from Lusaka come and give speeches about the importance of cultural heritage, about development plans they have for Eastern Province, and the need to work together to be “One Zambia, One Nation.” And people still bring traditional (and modern!) gifts to the Paramount Chief Kalindawalo, who makes an “offering” on behalf of his people in a traditional shrine.

There were many people at this year’s Tuwimba ceremony, perhaps as many as 10,000 before the day was over. Most stood for hours in the hot sun watching the performers and the events of the day, but Chris was glad for a chair in the shade!

You can see more pictures of the Tuwimba Ceremony at this link: Tuwimba Ceremony 2011.

One interesting thing was that the Nsenga Bible Translation Project got a lot of free publicity at the ceremony. One of the ceremony planners is a member of the Bible Translation Committee, and another committee member was Master of Ceremonies. He took many opportunities to point out the new work of translating the Bible into Nsenga, and asked people for contributions to the project via a special box.

It took several hours to upload the photos to Facebook, and we’re not going to go through the same process again to put them here. But you can click the blue words above, or cut-and-paste the link below into your browser, to see a public album of the photos. Or better yet, “Friend” us on Facebook!

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150308529012006.331576.748382005&l=56639e1782&type=1

Please pray that we will be able to post some very nice “after” photos quite soon! Thanks for all your prayers to get us this far!