Dennis Cochrane "Mission to the Stone Age"
 Dennis Cochrane preaching at a Baptist church mission service in Clinton, Missouri, March 2007. Photo by Bill Ganzel. |
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"We are humble ambassadors of God to this needy land," Dennis said. "We can't think of anything we'd rather be doing." Photo by Leonard Nadel. |
In 1967, Cochrane's daughter Cathy was adored by the Dunas. Now, Cathy and her own young family are in mission in a country so dangerous that Dennis can't tell anyone where they are. |
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"I've known I was coming here ever since I was a sophomore at Columbia Bible College in South Carolina," Dennis Cochrane told Evelyn Nadel in 1967. Yet, when Cochrane talked with us in 2005, he admitted that before his sophomore year, he was not even sure about his faith. Then, he says, God came into his life and he began preparation for his mission. He and his wife Nancy had two children, Cathy and Paul. In fact, they began their mission when Paul was less than a year old because they could save on airfare to New Guinea if he was that young. Eventually, this page will have the same type of Flash animation that is on the Ted Sorensen page, complete with several oral history interview videotape segments. In those segments, Dennis talks about his faith journey, how primitive living conditions were for the Duna people, how his family befriended them and about the process of finding culturally appropriate translations for key religious concepts. He also answers critics of the mission field by suggesting that a written language will help indigenous people cope with the inevitable onslaught of 21st century cultures. |
