{"id":309,"date":"2012-05-02T06:56:37","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T20:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/?p=309"},"modified":"2012-05-02T07:27:19","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T21:27:19","slug":"how-are-things-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/2012\/05\/02\/how-are-things-going\/","title":{"rendered":"How are things going?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Our corworkers (the Schlegels) are currently out of the country on medical. So far it’s nothing serious, just needed to get some testing done. Yesterday I wrote them some quick points on what was going on here and it occured to me later that perhaps others would enjoy reading this. So here you go…<\/p>\n

1.\tThe Bible Teachers (BT\u2019s) have taken it upon themselves to meet on Saturday mornings to discuss church business. They say they need time themselves to talk through things and weigh things, then for things they aren\u2019t sure on they would bring them to our Monday meetings. How cool is that?<\/p>\n

2.\tAnother language group is still knocking on the door and really wanting us to come. Felix said that he would be willing to move there and work alongside a missionary family as coworkers! Everyone was really excited about this and said they would support this. This is obviously way down the road, but just exciting to see the guys opening themselves up to God using them in the Great commission! A few days after this, a guy who I met at MTC back in 2009 wrote me and asked if I had any allocation ideas for him as his family wants to come to the Madang Region and work with us! So I told him about this idea and he is praying about it. WOW!<\/p>\n

3.\tVillage M \u2013 all the guys decided it\u2019s time to stop messing around. They are going to do a community service day in village M to build the literacy house. So we will speak to the church about this and set a Monday for as many as possible to go to village M and do this together with our sister church in village T! Another WOW!<\/p>\n

4.\tBoth T and S (sorry I’m not allowed to put village names on our blog) are going to (hold on to your hat for this one) tear down the old church buildings!!!!! They so for too long we\u2019ve been sitting scattered around and after seeing how other churches meet they feel it\u2019s time to build a similar structure!!! Another WOW! We need to discuss this further as we wonder if it might be wise to wait until after teaching in village M since an act like this may just drive a bigger wedge.<\/p>\n

5.\tMore people in T and S are ready to get baptized. (Sorry I can\u2019t remember the names of people in T, but here it\u2019s Wamane and wife and someone else, I forget now. Pray for this, b\/c Erike and Jimingke are discouraging them big time from doing this.<\/p>\n

6.\tConcerning the withholding of charging their batteries until the find the theif who stole from us. We asked the BT\u2019s about what they thought and they were unusally quiet and only said, \u201cIt’s up to you guys.\u201d So when we told them that we were thinking that we’ve handled it incorrectly and read Luke 6:30 they were extremely happy and said it was right to lift the ban. So we have done that. The good part about this is that it has made the talk about it come up again pretty big. They seemed to really appreciate seeing us respond to God\u2019s word this way. <\/p>\n

7.\tIn church this Sunday Jinongke got up after the teaching and confessed his sin of gossiping and asked for forgiveness. Also about church there was probably about 20 people already there waiting for us! Another Sunday thing is that they changed the prayer time. Whoever has a prayer request then will actually say a prayer during prayer time. This is working well and last week a woman actually prayed! (Epepe)<\/p>\n

8.\tThere seems to be a different spirit among the BT\u2019s especially since the Citizen Teacher Training Seminar (CTTS). They seem more committed and excited about serving. <\/p>\n

9.\tI am going to another tribe with Nathan on Thursday for the weekend to help another missionary do a comprehension check on his lessons. The BT\u2019s were very happy about this as they have developed a real heart for this place since having Ambox here and being with him at the CTTS. Jaspa even brought it up as a prayer point this Sunday b\/f he knew about me going. Also they are concerned about and praying for Manam. <\/p>\n

10.\tThe day after I returned there was a community bung led by the elementary workshop people with Boomy and Rafael. They did a big talk about how to raise children! Lots of it was really good, like scheduling, and helping kids to succeed in their God given talents. But one thing was a little off. They said you should never spank your children. The heart of it was good because abuse and disrespect is rampant in this country, but still not consistent with Scripture about how to discipline children so we had a long talk about it with the BT\u2019s yesterday and it was great! It\u2019s nice to be finally teaching them these kind of practical things. <\/p>\n

Ok, that\u2019s enough for now. That\u2019s some big stuff going on! God is moving. And it\u2019s encouraging how people are responding, for the most part. I mean there is still those on the periphery. Sorry this is so long, but I figured this stuff would encourage you as you sit there waiting on reports.<\/p>\n

Love you guys! <\/p>\n

———————————–
\nGary & Esther Smith
\nNTM \u2013 Private Mailbag
\nMadang Province, M.P. 511
\nPAPUA NEW GUINEA
\nweb: www.ntm.org\/gary_smith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our corworkers (the Schlegels) are currently out of the country on medical. So far it’s nothing serious, just needed to get some testing done. Yesterday I wrote them some quick points on what was going on here and it occured to me later that perhaps others would enjoy reading this. So here you go… 1. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-ministry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}