“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8
It’s been two full months now since we’ve moved out of the village, and we are blessed and so thankful to be able to tell you whole heartedly, that we are doing well! Thank you so much to all of you who have been faithfully holding our family before the Lord in prayer as we work through this major transition in our lives, we know you have been a huge part in helping us get settled in our new home and in many ways, our new lives. Everything is different. New house, new school, new friends, new coworkers, new jobs, new everything. Yet, there are a few constants, a few aspects of our lives that have not changed, One in particular, and because of this, we can go on, living and serving in joy and peace, no matter what. What is the constant? Actually, the constant is a WHO… “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today and forever.” Geography is of little consequence when you’re walking with the Lord, following Him who holds the universe in His hands, and not only that, but holds all of our yesterdays, all of our todays, and all of our tomorrows in His hands as well.
Jeremiah has a new office! It has been wonderful for him to be able to go over to the office building and work away without having the constant rolling of chairs, dropping of books, and all the other fun noise that came from his office being right underneath the homeschool room when we were in Dinangat! He continues to work steadily on translation while preparing the curriculum for our new missionaries in the E2 program (Equipping/ phase 2 of assisting missionaries get into their new ministries, the first phase being the training the receive in their home countries.) One of his new coworkers is Aute, a young believer from a village near our mission center who carries the bulk of the responsibility of the language side of the orientation program. Having a national speaker to listen to and gain insight from is an invaluable part of orientation, and Jeremiah has loved getting to know and work with this enthusiastic teacher! At the moment, there are no orientees here as their arrival dates continue to be pushed back for various reasons, a large one being lack of support. Pray for our Jehovah Jireh to send us those new missionaries, as the work is plentiful and the laborers truly are few!!
Mark- CHECK!! This month Jeremiah was able to get the whole book of Mark officially checked by a translation consultant! Our consultant flew over from the Philippines (since we are very short on consultants in PNG) to assist as and several others in getting their translated Scripture portions checked. This is a huge process, one that took several days, and we flew out 3 of our Dinangat Bible teachers to help. Jaspa, Lukas and Basa joined us on the center here for a week to help us prepare for and work though the check, as well as work with Gary on Bible lessons for the church. Overall, the check went very well. It did reveal some areas that need more attention as they didn’t seem to be communicating as clearly as they could, and we are so thankful for this process that gives us direction on how to make an even more accurate and meaningful translation. We’re dealing with God’s Word, it is a fearful task, and we praise the Lord for all these checks in place that help us to keep it as faithful a translation to the true text as possible! Please continue to pray for this daunting task of translation, we need His wisdom every step of the way! It was also a WONDERFUL time to be together with our friends from Dinangat, to fellowship with them, give them a glimpse what our lives look like out here, and hear the stories and catch up on how things are going in Dinangat. The HF radio we’d left with them wasn’t working properly, and so we hadn’t had any news since we’d moved out in January. We are excited to hear how the teachers are remaining faithful and burdened to see the church grow, they’re meeting regularly every week for prayer and planning, and we’re hearing stories of some friends who had previously been “on the fence” that are now coming to the teaching! Our hearts were blessed and encouraged by this news! This is what we wanted to hear!
The Kids are doing very well in school and have risen to the challenge of this transition. They’re in school from 8 until 2:45 (they come home for lunch) and then usually have a couple hours of homework as well. It has been a delight for us to see how the classroom environment (not to mention their wonderful NCA teachers!) really motivates them and pushes them to achieve more than they thought they could. I can’t tell you how thankful we are for such a compassionate bunch of excellent teachers who have been such a huge blessing in our kids’ transition! Alayna loves her first grade teacher, and her reading skills have really taken off in the classroom! For Jordan and Judah, another part of what keeps them motivated is the after school sports programs. They have both discovered a new love for basketball, and have been faithfully plugging away at their homework and then enjoying sports a couple of evenings a week. HOWEVER, in our enthusiasm to get out there and enjoy these facilities, we must confess that we have had not one, but TWO sprained ankles since we’ve been here! Jeremiah sprained his ankle pretty badly and was on crutches for about a week, and the day we were ready to return his crutches, Jordan sprained his ankle in a soccer incident, and spent a few days on crutches as well! They’ve both enjoyed a steady diet of ibuprofen and humility! 🙂 Please continue to pray for wisdom for them and for us, as we seek to train them up in the love and knowledge of the Lord!
Dinangat Trip Next week, term 3 will end for the kids and shortly after that we will take a 10 day trip as a team back into the tribe. Our goals: Reconnect with the Dinangat church for a time of encouragement and discipleship, work with translation helpers to further many portions along in the process, and help implement a new children’s Bible program. I will also be working on organizing what’s left in the house that needs to get shipped out. Lofty goals for such a short amount of time, so please pray that it would be a productive trip and for the Lord’s wisdom to prioritize our time well while we’re there! I also fear that our electrical system has gravely suffered in our absence as things were starting to die before we left (namely our refrigerator and main batteries for the house!) so it will be an “interesting” task just to get ourselves back up and running!
Support As most of you know, this move was not only a huge one- time expense (moving out, setting up our new house, etc.) but also a huge increase in our regular expenses. The Lord has faithfully provided and we are NOT in debt! We are SO thankful for our wonderful support team, who sacrifice monthly for us that we might remain here, active in what the Lord is doing in PNG! We now have new housing charges, school fees, fees for renting curtains and other house hold items, security fees for living on a guarded mission center, plus the flying that Jeremiah does for his consultant trips as well as our trips back into Dinangat. We hate to talk about money, but we’re asking you to pray for us in this area as well. We are currently functioning at a deficit of about $2,000 per month. Yikes, I realize that sounds ridiculous! But when you consider the crazy prices in this country (a gallon of milk is about $10) and the amount of traveling that is a regular part of our ministry, it makes sense. We’re asking the Lord to bring new members to our support team who have a passion to see His church in Papua New Guinea coming to maturity, especially as it pertains to reaching out to those who have Never heard, and would love to be a part of it by partnering with us in a financial role. Do you know of anyone like that? Let us know!
THANK YOU so much for standing and kneeling with us! To God be the Glory! The tasks before us are often overwhelming, but we take comfort in our never-changing Lord whose grace is always sufficient!