JUST ONE MESSAGE

Posted on December 30, 2025 by John Allen

TRAVELS
Since our last update, we traveled to the USA for Lena’s medical appointments via the Philippines to visit our dear Selly. She is learning the ropes as a freshman at L.D. Woosley/Bethany Baptist College in Manila, and is involved in many ministries in addition to her studies. It was good to see her!

In the following weeks we were in missions conferences and churches in Florida and Texas. We were especially encouraged (and spoiled!) at Capitol City Baptist in Austin, TX. Another blessing was being back at Victory Baptist in Milton, FL, which has been behind us in our translation project from the time it was just a dream. It was good to spend time with Pastor Fellure and the print shop men to talk through the next steps toward printing our Kamea John/Romans and the entire New Testament!

In December we enjoyed the wonderful wedding of our granddaughter Beth in Montana. Praise the Lord for the time with family in such a beautiful setting!

MEDICAL UPDATE
We are thankful for the medical appointments and tests that Lena has been able to get. She has three more long-awaited MRIs scheduled right after the New Year, and then (hopefully) a final appointment with her primary care doctor. Some treatments have been rough, but those of late have been helpful. She came to the USA on a cane, but now is able to move around well without it. We are grateful to those who have offered all sorts of help and advice along the way. Most of all, we are grateful for all who have kept this a matter of prayer. Please keep it up! If things continue to go well, we plan to return to PNG in January in time to begin our next Bible college semester.

TRANSLATION REVIEW
Between meetings and medical appointments, I have been able to complete final reviews of John and Romans. All that remains is to type in the corrections and to lay out the text. Please pray we can see this in print and delivered to PNG for distribution soon!

JUST ONE MESSAGE
On a weekend visit with our friend (and former co-worker) Missionary Sarah Glover, we dropped in to visit a supporting church. The pastor introduced me to Brother Joe Marshall, and I mentioned that I remembered a Joe Marshall who was a missionary to Australia back in the day. Joe confirmed that he indeed was that missionary.

Why did this mean so much to me? When Brother Joe visited our church in 1983, I was still in Bible college and had just come full-time on staff at our church. I don’t remember what his topic was, but that night changed my devotional life from that time until now. He quoted so many Scripture verses in context and gave us such a challenge that I went home and promised the Lord, by His grace and His strength, I would be consistent in my morning devotions at a specific time every day, spending real time in the Word seeking to know my Lord Jesus better. Brother Joe had no idea about it, until our providential meeting on a Sunday in November 2025, almost 43 years later.

How many times in how many contexts have I shared that story over the years! One preacher, on one Wednesday evening, with one message affected one young preacher for the rest of his life. We never know the impact the Lord will make through us, nor do we know the ripple effect of one life lived for the glory of God. For those of you who serve the Lord, take heart! It is God who works through you. Stay faithful in the Word and prayer. Keep seeking the Lord, to know Him and to enjoy His presence. Keep witnessing, keep sharing stories of His goodness. Who knows whom you might affect?

Praising God for His Grace and Goodness,

John & Lena Allen
Psalm 71:18

THE WEEKEND BOYS

Posted on October 30, 2025 by John Allen

THE “WEEKEND BOYS”
We have a group of young men in the church who call themselves the “Weekend Boys.” These young men (ranging in age from 18 through 30) come for youth ministry on Friday night, stay overnight for Saturday morning outreach at Hanuabada Village, and a few of them meet with me for Bible college classes on Saturday afternoon. Then all of them join Lena and me for dinner and translation checks on Saturday evening, and on Sunday morning, they all serve in various ministries in the church. Most of them stay on through Sunday afternoon for our Goilala Camp outreach…and they do this every weekend! It is a good place for them to mature spiritually, and it helps them learn to focus on serving the Lord in various ministries with their varied abilities.

This has been going on now (and growing) for almost three years. The last few weeks have seen fruit in the lives of two of them who express a desire to be involved in full-time ministry, and two others beginning to take turns preaching in public ministry. Praise the Lord for His working in these young men’s lives!

GOILALA CAMP OUTREACH
It’s been nearly a year since our campus was attacked by 21 armed men—and since we began a weekly outreach to their village. A few months after we began holding weekly gospel meetings with them, the police came in and moved them out to a displaced persons’ camp on the edge of the city. Their village at the city dump, called “Swimming Pool,” was then completely destroyed by excavators and bulldozers.

In spite of this, the village leaders asked us to continue preaching every week. Over the last eight months at the camp, we have continued preaching and teaching the Word, taking them from Creation to Christ. Our ministry team has had the privilege of leading several to Christ, and when I was able to give a public invitation at the end of September, several more raised their hands that they had already put their faith in Christ. The village leader told me that the old men of the group want us to continue, because as they said, “these people preach the Word of God clearly, and we can understand it.” The Word of God preached in the power of the Spirit of God will always do the work of God!

TRANSLATION
My current project is preparing a John & Romans in Kamea and Tok Pisin, with the goal of distributing them next year among our people. One of our young men (who is Kamea) was back in the Kamea villages recently, and he took a printed copy of John’s Gospel with him to read and to share. He tells me he got a great response from those who heard it. I can only imagine—hearing the Word of God in your own heart language for the first time ever!

TEACHING
Last Monday I finished teaching my Bible school course on Practical Ministry. Other local pastors and church members attended some of the classes to learn about accountability and integrity in church ministry and leadership. At the end of the course, we had a testimony time for our graduates and present students. It was so good to hear of what the Lord has been doing through them—so much more is happening than we knew. I wish you could have heard their stories of the Lord’s working in places from the coast to the highlands. I never dreamed we could have such a great partnership with the local churches in Port Moresby. Thank you for the part you have in investing in the training of these preachers and teachers!

MEDICAL FURLOUGH
After counseling with our home church pastoral staff, our co-workers, and our family, we decided to return to the USA for Lena to get much-needed medical testing and treatment. We tried pressing on when we returned to the field in August, but things did not get better. The plan is for us to be here through January, when I will need to return for our next Bible college term. Please pray we can get answers and help that will enable us to stay on the field where God put us nearly 18 years ago. God knows!

Praising God for His Grace and Goodness,

John & Lena Allen
Psalm 71:18

GRADUATION x 2

Posted on July 30, 2025 by John Allen

EVER HAVE A BUSY SUMMER?

We ended the month of May with our 3^rd graduation exercises for Baptist Bible Institute of Port Moresby. Acacia, Selly, Enoch, and Alex finished three years of study with both BBIPOM and Faith Bible Institute.

It was also a great blessing for us to have Pastor Buddy Smith from Malanda, Australia as our commencement speaker. He and his wife Susan have been dear friends of ours for years, and they were such an encouragement to the churches and students here.

SUMMER SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

The Lord has opened many doors of service for all our graduates. Following their recent graduation, Enoch and Alex went to Kerema to serve at Charity Baptist Church, while Missionaries John and Melissa Gray were away in the US for a short furlough. Acacia continues her work as a Christian school teacher, as well as do several of our other graduates. Two graduates are pastors, some are on staff in local ministries, and other men help their local church pastors. Recently one was working with a PNG missionary pastor in Australia, while another was serving in his home town across the country. Another is serving with Missionaries Josh and Rebecca Florence in their ministries as the financial administrator, plus teaching Sunday school and high school religious instruction.

EMPTY NEST

Selly (Pastor Ben’s daughter, who has lived with us for the last three years) graduated from both Bible school and high school in May. She traveled with us to the US for meetings, and is now settled in at Bethany Baptist College in Makati (Manila), Philippines, to study for her BS in Education. Lena and I are now “empty nesters” for the second time!

Most of Selly’s life has been around ministry, and her desire to serve the Lord has really blossomed. In the last few months, she has felt a great desire to serve the Lord in missions, and she publicly surrendered at Capital City Baptist Church in Port Moresby to do just that. We’re glad that Bethany Baptist College will fuel her desire even more, as they have a tremendous emphasis not just on talking about missions, but in doing it!

PREACHING, TEACHING, MARRYING

We had 17 opportunities to share about missions and ministry in the last 10 weeks. Our hearts were encouraged and refreshed by so many friends and prayer partners along the way!

This weekend will be the wedding of our oldest grandson, Ben, and it will be my honor to officiate for him and his bride Elise. And it will be the first time in years that our whole family has been together at one time!

By the time many of you get this, Lena and I will be back in PNG, ready to start our second term at Baptist Bible Institute of Port Moresby.

ONE MORE THING, PLEASE

Could I ask you again to pray with us for my wife’s health? Between our meetings, she had several tests and doctor’s appointments. She is in need of serious lower back surgery sometime in the near future. Would you pray with us that God would make a way for her to avoid having to have the surgery? The pain is constant, but she is working on ways to live with it without being heavily dependent on pain medicines.

Praising God for His Grace and Goodness,
John & Lena Allen
Psalm 71:18

THE MILESTONE

Featured

Posted on April 29, 2025 by John Allen

Nkoto’ona’ma na’anqa häva fangoti, inä gloringa Jisas Kräisi’ointäna’ma
qunaminqina qunaminqinäna wenanqati. Amen. (Rom 16:27, Kamea)

To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.
(Romans 16:27)

THE MILESTONE

In December 2005, Lena and I visited Matt and Becky Allen (and our dear granddaughters, Ariel and Hannah) to see the mission work they were doing among the Kamea people in the remote mountains of Papua New Guinea. It was both a pastoral and personal trip, as I was both pastor and dad; but we had no idea God intended it to be a survey trip.

Matt said they needed two things desperately among the Kamea people, besides the evangelism and church planting that had just begun: medical care, and the Scriptures in their heart language. The Lord touched our hearts with these needs, and we went back to the US, assured that we were to serve the Lord in PNG.

In March 2008, we returned to Kotidanga to begin ministry there. Soon, Lena started what would become Kunai Health Centre, which served over 130,000 patients in the next 13 years.

On the translation project side, our team of missionaries and Kamea speakers began putting the unwritten Kamea language into writing. With help from long-time missionaries and workers among the Hamtai people (our neighbor language), we began producing literacy material in Kamea in 2009.

In January 2014, Ben Samauyo and I began translating portions of Scripture for “The Jesus Film.” By the end of that year, we had translated and checked hundreds of verses in Luke and Mark, and had recorded the first ever video in the Kamea language, crafted almost entirely from Scripture. We made copies of the audio and the video, and to this day those copies continue to circulate among the Kamea.

With that project done, we realized that we were well on our way to translating the New Testament, so we went back through the Gospel of Luke and translated the rest of the text. Yali Tapaqueo joined us as our back translator, reading the Kamea translation and translating it back into Tok Pisin so we could check the meanings.

From January 2014 until April 2025, we worked on translating and checking the New Testament in Kamea. We worked to create a translation that was: 1. Accurate; 2. Clear; 3. Readable (hearable), in that it must sound natural to a Kamea speaker; and 4. Rich in choosing the finest words to convey the meaning.

On April 18, 2025, Ben and I finished checking the last book of our labors. The first draft of the entire Kamea New Testament is now complete! For the first time in the history of the world, the Kamea people have the Scriptures in their heart language!

Going forward, we still have formatting and more checking to do. We hope to print some preliminary copies of Mark to give away to Kamea friends, to try to get feedback. We also plan to record the entire New Testament in audio form, and that alone will take a lot of time and a lot of work. My personal hope is that we can have the text ready for print in the next couple of years. Much work remains to be done—but let us praise the Lord together, as you celebrate this milestone with us!

Many of you have had a part in this ministry over the years in prayer and support. May this fruit abound to your account. Thank you for your faithful partnership!

We had intentionally left the Book of Romans for last, but we had not thought of how appropriately the final verse of our translation would express how we feel at the end of this glorious project.

To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.
(Romans 16:27)

Praising God for His Grace and Goodness,
John & Lena Allen
Psalm 71:18

For your own copy of the Gospel of Mark in Kamea and Tok Pisin, click here.

Translating, Teaching, and Training

Posted on June 21, 2022 by John Allen

June 2022 Click here for printable copy

Bible Translation Read-Through

Three weeks ago, Pastor Ben, Yali, and I spent several days reading the Kamea translation of the Book of Revelation aloud.

Yali, Pastor Ben, Papa John doing a read-through of Revelation in the Kamea language

Our Bible translation process involves multiple steps. First, I prepare a front translation in Tok Pisin with notes regarding meanings in the text. Then Pastor Ben translates it into Kamea. When he finishes a section, he gives it to Yali, who translates it back into Tok Pisin to see if anything was missed or could be misunderstood. The final step is reading the text out loud together to see how it sounds. We’ve done that with every book we’ve translated.

Last verse in the Kamea translation of Revelation

This was our final draft check of this book, and we catch a lot more when there are three of us listening to it being read. Sorry to say, we didn’t get any special insights into the interpretation of the book, but we did deliberate over terminology. A translator’s work is to translate with as little interpretation as is possible. A hard part in Revelation is describing the things John sees. Just as we English readers find it hard to imagine some of these beasts, it is just as hard to figure out how to describe it without putting an interpretation on it.

Bible College Students

A few weeks ago, we finished another term of Bible college. These students are such a blessing! As part of their Bible college training, their home church pastors mentor them as much as is possible. I am grateful for the opportunities the men get to preach and teach, both in the marketplace and in the pulpit.

To attend BBIPOM, our students must have their pastor’s recommendation, and he must agree to train them…plus, our new students have to pay up front. We already have 30 students paid and registered for our next term! Pray for this ministry, and for these great servants of God.

Bible Training Materials

A pet project of ours for a while now has been a Tok Pisin Study Bible. The idea was born out of our translation work in the village, as our men shared how they would like to learn the Book of Proverbs better. Many Baptist preachers in Papua New Guinea like to use a King James Bible, but like their American counterparts (that’s us, folks!) they have difficulty with some words, phrases, and idioms. It turned out that other pastors from our region and up in the Highlands had the same desire, so I began revising some Tok Pisin text and editing notes.

Draft copy of our Tok Pisin Study Bible: Proverbs

A couple months ago we printed Proverbs, our first book of the study bible project. It has been distributed selectively so far in order to get more feedback on the notes and the text. It has been good to have nationals and missionaries working with us on it. My wife and some friends have helped type up more notes for other Bible books, and some notes have already been translated. This is a long-term project, but we hope it will be a good tool for anyone interested in learning the Word.

The ministries here in Port Moresby have seen souls saved and more commitment among the saints of late. Pray for God to continue to do His mighty work among us!

Thank you for your continued prayers for us, and for helping us stay in the work.

Gratefully yours in Christ Jesus,
John & Lena Allen
2 Thessalonians 3:1

Enjoy some more photos from the last couple of months here in Port Moresby:

These are some of our students doing ministry–proud of them all! All three of these young men are preachers, and Brianna is one of the Christian School teachers in our son’s ministry in Port Moresby.