Chapter 15
A New Boush is Planted
The Lord did not abandon His work begun among the Tifalmin people. He called Al and Susan Boush to
pick up the work started by Walt and Vonnie.
Al and Susan met at Gordon College in Massachusetts where God led them both to hear a Wycliffe
couple speak about their work in Peru. They both felt the Lord calling them to serve Him as Bible
translators doing linguistic work. However, Susan wasn’t sure she was going overseas because of Al or
because the Lord was calling her. She wondered, if Al died overseas, would she be a missionary’s widow
or a missionary? As a result, while they attended an Inter-Varsity Urbana Conference, they broke off
their relationship. Several months later, Susan sensed that God was indeed calling HER to foreign
missions. Soon she and Al met again at a Campus Crusade meeting and they continued to date through
the remainder of their college years.
They were married in 1967 and in the summer of 1968 and 1969 they attended SIL, Wycliffe’s linguistic
training program, and became members of Wycliffe. Initially they had set their hearts on going to Peru,
their first place of interest. However, through three different circumstances, the Lord showed them that
He wanted them in New Guinea. They attended the same Jungle Camp program in Mexico as had the
Steinkrauses ten years earlier.
In November of 1971, before arriving in New Guinea, the Boushes travelled to New Zealand and helped
teach linguistics at SIL, Auckland. It was there on Thanksgiving Day that Susan learned she was pregnant
with their fir st child. They spent several months at the school and then travelled to New Guinea.
While they waited to allocate to a language area, they helped out in various departments at Ukarumpa.
As they served at the center, they were given the option of three different language areas where they
could live and work. One of those areas was the Tifal language group, recently vacated by the death of
the Steinkrauses. Frank and Charlotte Mecklenburg, friends from seminary days who were translating
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