Camping!!

This past weekend Pete and I were able to get away with seven of our friends to spend some time enjoying God's creation and relaxing...because honestly, we do not get to do alot of that here, even on the weekends.

We headed 2 hours north east of Camdenton, MO to a little town called Sullivan, which is where Meramac State Park is located. We arrived Friday afternoon and set up camp, enjoyed a dinner of chicken and brats, and some interesting fellowship with a few guys from the campsite across the road from us.

A few of us actually got the chance to talk with two of them a little about the Lord so that was exciting.

We had a campfire every night and every morning, not only because it was cold, but because fires are such an essential to camping, and we just so happened to bring ALOT of wood with us.

Our fire master, Sam started the fires...well most of the time, Doug was our early morning fire guy.

Most of the weekend we spent talking and laughing around meals or the fire, but there was definitely some time for hiking, exploring, playing frisbee and bocce ball, and reading all those books we don't get to read during class because of other homework.

Kathryn and Melanie were catching up on their leisurely reading!

We brought all of our own food to make it the most cost effective as we possibly could, and everyone pitched in to help cook.

Here is Liesl cooking the taco meat over the fire

Sam made a jack-o-lantern out of the tomato he was supposed to be chopping for tacos

It was just a fantastic weekend to relax and be in the company of other Christian brothers and sisters learning from and laughing with one another.

Pete and Liesl cuddle up for a picture together.

Focus Your Vision

A warm Monday morning brought 160 students, some of their children, and 137 staff members together singing in praise to the Lord. "All creatures of our God and king, lift up your voice and with us sing, Oh praise Him..." Looking around the room we saw brothers and sisters in Christ and we were all worshipping together. My mind brought alive Revelation 7:9-10:

"After these things I looked and behold a great multitude which no one could count, from every tribe, nation, people, and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb."

Wow, what a joy it is to be preparing for tribal ministry, but what an urgency was felt to take the gospel to those who have never had a chance to hear of the glorious grace of Christ, and who have not had the chance to praise Him sheerly because of His glory and who He is.

As the singing ended we were challenged as an entire group to "Focus Our Vision." There are 2,500 language groups in the world still without the gospel; there is much work to be done.

For Pete and I it was more of a re-focusing of our vision, a refresher that yes, this is what we are here for, God has brought us this far through the New Tribes Mission training, and He will be faithful to take us the rest of the way, with our prayer warriors and support partners to reach those without hope in the tribal regions of Mexico.

We are thrilled to be embarking on our last year of training here in Missouri, and have open hearts and minds to all we know the Lord wants to teach us during our time here. He has taught us about relationships, the importance of being in a culture and experiencing it to enhance our language learning, and how to be before Him in prayer about all of our needs. He has shown us what we can do to be an encouragement to our brothers and sisters here in the training with us, and has shown us the power of His Spirit as He works in our marriage...and we are only finishing up our first week!!

I have made it a goal to update our blog each week this year to keep you in the loop of what God is teaching us and this incredible journey He continues to lead us on. We hope you enjoy it, and as always feel free to contact us anytime!

Adios!

"Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I, send me.

These where the words of the Lord to Isaiah, and his response to the Lord's call, as documented in chapter 6 of Isaiah. This man knew not what this would mean for his life at that time, yet he was willing to go wherever the Lord would send him, and he was willing to be an obedient servant.

I must regret we have been a little lax in updating this blog regularly and hope to do a better job of that in the coming months. However, as we have been going through the missionary training here in Missouri we have been seeking the Lord as to where He would send us.

Through God's direction in prayer and communication with other missionary leadership we see God moving us in the way of serving with New Tribes Mission in Mexico. We applied to the Mexico field in January and are happy and excited to report that we heard back from the New Tribes Mission (NTM) Mexico leadership team in early February say that they had accepted our application!!

Some of you may be wondering, what does this mean? Essentially it means we are now considered as "Missionary Training students enroute to Mexico." So, once we complete our training here in Missouri at the MTC and raise the necessary financial support we will travel down to Chihuahua, Mexico to begin learning Spanish, and becoming accustomed to the Mexican culture.

This is all very exciting for us, and hopefully for you all too as you pray for us and God's ministry through us. We are planning to be done with all of our training, including Pete's extensive linguistics training here in Missouri around October of 2009 and Lord-willing with enough financial and prayer support we will be able to head to Mexico early 2010!!

Another exciting happening in the life of the Hypkis regarding Mexico is that Pete was able to take a trip to visit the NTM base, boarding school, and meet with the leadership down in Mexico this past February. The planning for the trip came up quickly, and Pete and a fellow student flew down on the 12th and stayed for 8 days. It was an amazing experience, Pete was able to see and get a feel first hand for the NTM field of Mexico, and was also able to visit a tribal location, meet the people, and experience life out there. After seeing the pictures when he returned we were even more convinced together that our hearts are burdened for this place, and yes, here we are Lord, send us!

If you would like to know more about Pete's trip a more lengthy article is posted on our NTM website www.ntm.org/peter_hypki

To finish up I have posted a few pictures below of Pete's adventures in Mexico, hope you enjoy and catch the vision with us for what God is doing and wants us to be apart of as we follow His leading to this wonderful country.

God bless!!

Pete & Liesl

A view of a city street in Chihuahua, Mexico

One of the classrooms at the Bible School in Chihuahua

One of the buildings designed with solar power energy out at the ranch where they do Missionary Training such as we are receiving here, but for Mexican nationals.

Pete enjoying the gorgeous scenery at a mountain stream high in the Sierra Madres. This was taken on their 11 hour trip out to the tribal location.

Arrival in the tribal location.

The stream and bridge behind some of the missionary homes.

Some of the tribal people outside of the church building

A little Tepehuan tribal boy

Pete and the guys hiked a deep canyon near the tribal village

Pete and Matt say goodbye as they get ready to board the plane to fly out of the tribal village back to Chihuahua to catch a bus that would take them to their flight in El Paso, TX.

Fall may be in full swing back home in Wisconsin, but here in Missouri, it's only just begun. The trees are still green, the air is just beginning to get cold, and just five days ago we were cooling off in the lake! Here's a few pictures from our fall so far...

Ha Ha Tonka State Park is one of the top state parks in Missouri, and is only a 10 minute drive from campus. There are caves, natural bridges, one of the largest natural springs in Missouri, and the ruins of a mansion that was built, but never finished, around the turn of the twentieth century.

Liesl and I with our friends Jerry, Faith, and Sam outside the ruins of the mansion at Ha Ha Tonka State Park.

Pete going off the rope swing at the lakefront here on campus. The landing on this one wasn't pretty.

Our friend Doug, who is going to Thailand with his wife Kellee when they are done with the training, made sticky rice with red curry for dinner one night...yum!

Pete and Sam wait for the sticky rice to be done...

On the road to Kansas City, where Liesl judged a gymnastics meet and we stayed with Liesl's best friend Sarah and her husband Ryan.

Our friends Ryan and Sarah took us to the Kansas City Royals game while we were visiting them. The home team lost to C.C. Sabathia and the Cleveland Indians, but it was dollar night (all hot dogs, peanuts, and sodas were only $1!) so we were happy anyway!


That's the brief picture tour of our fall so far...hope you all are enjoying yours as well!

And His Faithfulness...

"For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His faithfulness endures to all generations." Ps. 100:5

Step by step, day by day, the Lord is showing Himself faithful in every area of our lives. Each day brings new challenges and opportunities to trust in Him, trials to bring us closer to Him, and the opportunity to become more diligent in prayer.

The Lord has shown us that just as He was a faithful God for Israel in the Old Testament, so He is the same for us today. As we have never been accepted by God on the basis of how often we attend church, or how much money we have or do not have, or how well we do in class, but on our faith in what He did for each of us on the cross.

So as the moments of worry, doubt, or frustration come in our daily lives we remember He is so much more for us than our simple minds can comprehend. He knows about our tomorrow, and cares for us as we go through today. He is faithful!

A Day in the Life

It’s Tuesday morning. The alarm goes off at 6:35 a.m. Liesl gets up, grabs her towel and shower carrier and heads out the door to the washhouse 50 yards down the gravel road from our apartment. I fall back asleep. The alarm goes off at 6:45 a.m. I snooze until Liesl walks in just before 6:55 a.m., then spring out of bed and hit the washhouse myself, narrowly beating the 7:00 a.m. rush. This is how our days begin.

We’ve been here at the Missionary Training Center for just over three weeks now, and while it’s not Wisconsin, we’re beginning to feel at home, and even have something of a routine. Classes begin at 8:00 a.m. and end at 12:00 p.m. each day, but this past week we had a special afternoon session from 1:20-2:20 p.m. In this session, George Walker, an expert on worldviews and a fine speaker who served with New Tribes in Papua New Guinea for 18 years, elaborates on and adds to his morning classes. For two days we also had a special class on the history of New Tribes, taught by Paul Wyma, one of the members of the NTM Executive Committee. As Liesl mentioned previously, the founders’ faith and vision was challenging. Their firm belief in “God plus nothing” still shapes NTM today, as business and ministerial decisions are based firmly in faith in God’s provision, direction, and perfect Word.

Speaking of challenging, Liesl and I also have campus ministry from 2:30-5:00 p.m. Monday through Wednesday each week. Campus ministry, also known as work detail, gives us practical training in skills we may need on the field – and also keeps cost down on campus. Liesl works at the Tech Center, often filling orders of special equipment for missionaries on the field (think special fans for use in mosquito nets, fuse boxes for use in tribal missionaries’ houses, solar panel demonstrations, etc) and organizing supplies and various pieces. Luckily, she does most of her work in an air-conditioned unit (although the barn where some of the supplies are is not air-conditioned…and occasionally has brown recluse spiders in it). I, on the other hand, am on the grounds crew. I generally work with two to three other guys on a project crew, doing various jobs from digging new runoff ditches (in 98 degree heat at times!) to putting out burn piles as thunderstorms with 50 mph winds sweep in – I did that just last week.

We will each be working at two different outreaches, which will begin this week. Liesl will be working once a week at Women 2 Women, a one-on-one women’s mentoring program. I will begin working with the Orion Center, a Biblically-based science center in Camdenton next week as well, helping them develop and promote their various programs.

Our days are busy, but we enjoy them. We find time to do other things of course (like set up our own webpage through NTM! Check out the link on the right!); the homework load is light so far, which has given us time to enjoy the company of our like-minded fellow students and build relationships with some of the staff here. We have a lot to learn, from the staff, most of whom have spent 10-20 years working overseas, from our classes, taught by the staff, and from our classmates, our surroundings, and the Lord…Who has been faithful to mold our thoughts and teach us throughout each moment of our busy days.

It’s exciting to finally be here…we’ve only just begun, but we know we’ll be leaving here in no time, taking another step of faith, moving somewhere new, and, as is our prayer, seeking the Lord’s direction wherever He might have us serve Him.

We've made the move!!

At 9:00pm on Monday night, August 13th, Pete and I accompanied by both sets of our parents rolled down the dusty, gravel road as we entered the New Tribes Mission Training Center campus.

We stopped first at the Administration Building to give a phone call to our host couple, Grant and Alana Mayer, so they could come down and show us our new apartment. Each Mission Training Center (MTC) staff couple is assigned to a few new students to show them around the campus, direct them to their new apartment, help unpack, and invite them over to get to know them a little better and make them feel welcome. Most of the staff and their families live right on campus with us so we really get the chance to build a strong relationship and have positive Christian fellowship and discipleship all the time. This is an amazing blessing!

The Mayers were great! It was late, but they made sure our air conditioning was working in our apartment since it was 105 degrees the day we arrived! We brought just a few things in, our parents headed off to their hotel in Camdenton, a nearby town, and we settled in for the night.

Eight o'clock came early the next morning, but the Mayers were at our door right on time to begin unloading our truck. We quickly learned that once other students on campus realize you are moving in they all come out to help too. Our truck was unloaded in about 20 minutes!

We then began organizing everything, putting away boxes, and figuring out the best layout for the space that we have. Our apartment here on campus includes a living room/kitchen, adjoining small bedroom, and a half bath. We have no shower in our apartment, so each morning we take about a 50 yard walk across the road in front of our building to the wash house. This is where the showers are and also the laundry facilities. Our apartment is nice and cozy, but we are already learning to be grateful to the Lord of the small things. When we moved in our apartment it was already painted with brown and a nice beige on the walls, which Liesl was very excited about! You ladies know, just the fact that we don't have to sit and stare at white walls for our two years of study here was enough to get a huge smile out of me!!

With our parents help we were able to get everything unpacked and looking as much like a home as possible in about 2 days! It was such a blessing that both of our parents were able to come, I don't know how we would have gotten everything accomplished without them.

Also in this time we were able to take a tour of the campus with some of the highlights being the gorgeous lake front, the large classroom where we will be having all of our classroom training with it's flags of many different countries, the offices of all of the academic staff that we will soon get to know, the MTC library that is available to students anytime, and the bookstore conveniently right on campus so we can easily purchase our books and other things for studying.

We also spent an afternoon at our host couple's home, just up the hill from our apartment where they introduced our parents to a South American tradition of drinking an herbal mixture called Terere' mixed with cold water. It's always a good time to talk and get to know each other as you pass the drinking instrument called a bombilla around the circle of people. Pete and I both tried the drink for the first time in Bible School, it almost tastes like a very natural iced tea, but you can also drink it hot, it's yummy!

All in all we have had quite a smooth transition into this new phase of our lives. Tomorrow is Monday and we begin our orientation where we learn the ropes of living on campus, what we will be doing for our practical ministries in the afternoons, and an overview of what our classes are going to be and what is expected of us as students in the training. We are both very excited and will update again soon to let you all know more of the specifics on what we will be studying, and how God is working in our lives. We have also included a few pictures of our move, and of the campus so you can share in what we are doing.

Thank you all for your prayers for our safe journey here, and we covet your friendship, prayers, and support as we go through this first transition into becoming involved in career missions work with New Tribes Mission. God bless you all, you are in our thoughts and prayers as well. More updates to come soon!!

My brother Mike and sister-in-law Tessa were two of many that came to help us pack up our moving truck at our apartment in Waukesha, WI.

One of the views you would see as you drive into the MTC campus. It is down in a valley surrounded by the beautiful Missouri Ozarks.

This is our apartment building, we are the very first door. There are a total of five apartments in this building alone.

The small aisle we made as the boxes came in.

With our host couple, Grant and Alana Mayer

Our finished living room, directly to the right side of this picture...

our kitchen area!

The half bathroom

Lastly, a look at our bedroom, yes, this was in the "move in" stage.

Dad & Mom Hypki

We were so grateful that both sets of our parents could make the trip with us.

Dad & Mom Muscanero

Relaxing after a days work of moving in. Praise God for all He has done!