By Sue Montag
My husband Dick and I were Bible Translators with the Cashinahua in Peru from 1969 to 1981. Almost as soon as we got off the plane on our first trip there, Mario (the only believer in the group), told us he had been promised by our predecessors that we would help him to become a bilingual school teacher.

We were a bit overcome with the project so soon after our arrival, but set right to work on revising the school books left in a rough draft by our predecessors, and took Mario back with us to the jungle linguistic centre of Yarinacocha to begin the necessary schooling. He began teaching school after finishing his first course -- second grade!

He also preached every evening to his whole village, as well as teaching the Scriptures to his students in the bilingual school, using the Life of Christ passages left by our predecessors, and then new books as soon as they were available. They apparently hadn't heard about our Western Sunday morning and Wednesday evening custom!

In 1981, the Bible League printed 700 copies of the Kashinawa New Testament, and although there were only maybe 12 sincere believers at that time, each household had many readers, and the New Testaments were soon in all the homes, and being read.

In 1999, while Dick and I were living in the US and both teaching at a Christian college, we received letters from the Kashinawa pastors asking us to come back and help them revise their New Testament so they could have another printing. What could we say but, Yes!

After about a year of raising our financial support, we left for the jungles of Peru, and when we arrived in the Kashinawa villages, we found about 700 believers, and about 50 or 100 worn out New Testaments. When we asked pastors how many were believers in their village, the answer was, "Well, all of them!

Who can be a better missionary than one who never sleeps, doesn't take a vacation, is always there when you want to read it? God's Word has brought maybe 700 or more to Christ among the Peruvian Kashinawa and more are hearing the Gospel in Brazil from the Kashinawa missionaries. There has just been a revision printed for the Kashinawas in Peru and an adaptation for those in Brazil, and Old Testament portions are underway.

We await more of God's miracles.

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