Remember when we were concerned about the drought here in Papua New Guinea? Well now it’s the opposite. Too much rain! We’ve had over 8 inches in the last 48 hours. We’ve seen very little sunshine. God is the Lord of the weather so we trust Him in it. Please pray for some more sunshine. The people need it for their gardens, especially the sweet potatoes and we need it for our road. Right now we could not get out if we tried. We pray for no emergencies. With this much rain, inevidibly we get landslides. Pictured below are just two near us. There are two more on the 3 ½ mile road out to the road to town. These could be there for sometime as usually the landowner wants compensation before he will allow it to be cleared. Pray that it will be cleared as we will need supplies soon, we need to get a fridge in that we are going to borrow until ours arrives, our solar system needs to be finished, and our co-workers are returning in March. God knows all these things and knew what was coming before we did. So we are praying that the road would be fixed in a timely fashion. It does tend to give us a feeling of isolation. We are spoiled in that we normally can get out by road.
Landslide on our last stretch of road down to our house.
Broken Away From Road, Making it Narrow
Ground washed away from road
A very nasty chest cold is going around right now and keeping us busy in the afternoons in our little clinic. Judy and I have both caught it and it’s a doozy. Pray for a quick recovery if God wills. We are happy to report that the general health of the native community is good.
Judy’s literacy class is still going well even though we’ve had some drop outs. Always sad to see that but those that are hanging in there are making very good progress in their reading. Part of this literacy effort is to test a few “tweaks” we made in the spelling which we hope will make Dom easier to read. It has taken years to figure one particular orthography issue out and we believe that we have found the answer to it. Please pray that the students we do have will continue to the end.
We have one older man in literacy who is from another denomination. He already can read and write in Tok Pisin (the lingua franca of PNG). But he is excited about the New Testament being in his own language. He gets disgusted with those that come sometimes and sometimes don’t. He said that many things will come and go, but God’s Word is what is important and he wants to learn. Two of his church leaders got upset at him for coming to our literacy school as we are another ‘religion’. He said that he wants to be able to read the Bible in his own language as the Tok Pisin Bible is not clear. His leaders told him that they could clear up any questions that he had and he told them that he wanted to be able to read and understand it himself. He invited them to come and see for themselves that we were not trying to steal him from their church, that our school had nothing to do with Bible teaching, but they would not come. He is still coming to class. He was very sick for a week but he came back as soon as he was able. Wish we had more people like him. To protect his identity we will not give his name, but you can ask in an email if you want to pray for him by name.
The Dom believers continue to be an encouragement. They are a good group howbeit a small one. Many of them have grown so much lately and much of that is thanks to the reading of the New Testament in their own mother tongue. What a blessing it is to see them reading the Word in Dom. Pray that more will show interest.
The outreaches to two villages continue. A couple of them did not pan out. Right now there are too many distractions with hunger, trying to get their gardens going and soon coffee season. So pray that those who asked before will show interest again in being taught.
The Dom believers are still wanting to have a Dom New Testament dedication so we are planning for it to be August 26, 2016. Our original partner, Colin Lamb, is coming. One of his son’s Martin would still like to come and bring his family.
Our coworkers, Gerolf and Mailis Wuest and their two boys are due to return next month so we are sure that they would appreciate prayer in their last weeks at home which can be enjoyable but hectic. Pray for them as they get ready to say their goodbyes to family and friends.
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