I know we just sent out an update a few days ago, but something just happened today, Sunday, that we wanted to share with you so that you can be praying with us.
In church this morning the lesson was about Paul and Silas and how they were thrown into prison for sharing the good news of Christ and instead of feeling sorry for themselves or blaming God, they chose to focus on Him by singing and praying. You know the story about how God rescued them from prison and used them to lead the jailer and his family to faith in Christ. It was discussed how if Paul and Silas had not been imprisoned then how would the jailer and is family heard the plan of salvation? The Simbari believers were listening very attentively and when the teacher was ready to stop the lesson in the middle of the story because it was getting late, the believers said they really wanted to hear the rest of it. So church went a little long this morning but it was such an encouragement to see the believers clinging to every word and making the applications to their own lives.
While we were in church we did not realize it, but our house was being robbed (for the first time since we’ve been in PNG). As soon as we realized we had been robbed we summoned our Simbari neighbors who came running to help. We told them what had happened and they took off immediately down different trails to try and apprehend the thieves. After awhile a group came back carrying some of our things which had been dropped on the trail as the thieves panicked when they saw people chasing them. Some of the items have been returned but not the thing that concerns us most. Thankfully we rarely encounter situations like this but we found out the instigator of this is already on the run from the law and had just arrived in our area.
There was quite a large crowd of people, many of whom were unbelievers, sitting on our lawn for about two hours as many of them wanted to show their support for us and some were just here to see what would happen. After awhile the Lord laid it on our hearts to go outside with Shari’s guitar and sit on the ground with them, singing songs like Paul and Silas did. We did not want the people to think that our stuff was too important to us, but rather God’s Word and lifting up His name. First, one of the believers shared with the rest of the crowd the story we had just heard in church this morning and then we sang for quite awhile.
We would like to ask you to be praying about this situation, that God would use it to draw people to Himself and cause us and our Simbari brothers and sisters to grow closer to Him. Please pray that we would not experience too many interruptions from the work that God has called us to do here as a result of this.
Thanks so much for praying!
Joyfully in Him,
David and Shari