Goodbye, Summer

Apparently, when your kids are in college or are playing high school sports, the summer ends in early August. Micah and Cole left for college and are settling into Liberty University as roommates, Micah for his sophomore year studying music and Cole as a freshman studying English education. Maisie and Bailey are well into their sports seasons, playing volleyball and soccer, respectively. Maisie is doing mostly PSEO this fall, and Bailey is home schooling it. It has been fun to see them growing as people through doing so many new things in the last few months.

I’ve had several people ask me about our house hunt, so I’ll include a quick update. We met with a realtor and talked to a couple mortgage lenders, and we learned a lot. The most important thing we learned is that we can’t afford the type of loan that would allow us to buy a house and rent it out while we are overseas this next year, so that has effectively shut down the house-buying process. But we feel much more knowledgeable and better-prepared for whenever God allows that process to move forward again.

As we have settled into our fall routine, Chris has returned to working more on Pal Bible translation projects. Metiu, one of the Bible teachers in the Pal tribe, has been good about reaching out to us with community news while we’ve been gone. Some is exciting: the Bible teachers from two Pal churches are planning to start a literacy course in an unreached village to pave the way for Bible teaching there in the coming years. And some news is not so exciting: a certain clan in our village is upset (again) and speaking out publicly against the Bible teachers (again). Many of them are not believers and are holding to a false gospel, but they are loud and some of them have social status, which is causing some in the church to be swayed. Please pray for the Pal believers, especially the Bible teachers, to stand strong in the truth. Ask God to remind them of what His Word says and to help them to understand it clearly. Pray that the believers would read their Bible books and seek the truth and not be tempted by the prosperity gospel that others are preaching (yes, it’s in PNG, too!).

We’ve been thinking and praying a lot about what the Pal church will need in the coming years. Should we move back in full-time? Should we just keep visiting periodically and encouraging from a distance? Right now we feel that continuing to live in town is what God has for us, which means that it’s what he has for the Pal church as well. We plan to stay in PNG even after Bailey graduates in four years, but we know that things can change quickly, and we don’t know what our ministries will look like then. So we keep moving forward in obedience to what God puts before us, even as we watch and listen for signs of new roads down which he is directing us. Thank you for praying for us and our kids as they systematically abandon us, and for the Pal church. We look forward to seeing many of you who pray for and support us as we travel this fall. If you’d like to see a schedule of where we will be and when, please get in touch!