March News!

Here are the highlights of our ministry so far in 2019.

Women’s Tuesday night Bible study

The women’s weekly Bible study has been going on for nearly ten years. For most of that time it has been Judy teaching the women every Tuesday night. However, the goal has always been to hand this over to the women themselves when the time is right. Judy has been training and mentoring three Dom Christian women on Thursday nights to teach the follow Tuesday. They take turns so each one teaches every third Tuesday. They are doing a very good job of it. These three women have already taught the other women through the Book of Philippians and now are teaching the Book of Colossians. Please pray for them.

Outreach at Anma

The outreach at Anma has not always gone smoothly for many reasons. However, one of the Dom church leaders, Martin, has been walking over there every Sunday to share the Word of God with that small group using the Chronological Creation to Christ 68 lesson Gospel teaching material (otherwise known simply as Chron). This is the second wave of Gospel outreach in this village. The first outreach by Gena resulted in a number of decisions for Christ. There are now more people in Anma who want to hear the Gospela too. Ergo, Martin has been itinerating there.

Recently the church leadership here in Yorowa and in Kakua have decided to speed things along a bit by “team teaching” with Martin. Starting Thursday afternoon, all day for three days two teachers from Yorowa and three from Kakua will go to Anma taking turns teaching the rest of the Chronological lessons along with Martin. Then the teaching of Acts and Romans teaching phase can begin.

Literacy

The latest Dom literacy class has ended somewhat sooner than expected. Some students, mostly adults, dropped out before they should have and sadly still cannot read Dom with any fluency. But others, chiefly the elementary kids in the class caught on so quickly to reading Dom that further formal class instruction proved to not be necessary. We praise the Lord for this future generation of literate believers.

In addition to all this another development involving both literacy and Anma has come up. One of the believing ladies from the first Gospel outreach in Anma has expressed a desire to teach others in her village to read. Judy has given her some literacy materials to use and hopefully this will work. There is a small local school house there with a black board for this woman to work with. This approach is a first for us so please pray that it will be successful. 

Heather’s last visit with us in the Dom

We were so happy to have Heather come to her childhood home even for just three days. The Dom people were so happy to see Heather and she got to sit in on the ladies’ Tuesday night Bible study. Jim had come down to the home office to bring Heather up on a Friday but due to bad weather they had to wait until the following Sunday. Still it was a precious time. We will miss our daughter while on home assignment (aka furlough) starting in July. We will be in the States and Heather will be here in Papua New Guinea teaching at the MK school. Next year she will be focusing more on student care and less teaching (2 classes only). This first year has been a very busy year with 5 7^th-12^th grade science classes. Thankfully she has the lesson plans from the former teachers, but preparing and correcting papers take up a huge portion of her time outside of class.  Continue to pray for her support as she was at first only planning to stay one year and some supporters committed to the one year, but we know that God will raise up the rest. 

The weather

The weather has been excessively rainy lately making traveling difficult as mentioned above. But some how by God’s grace and help we always find a way to get out of our Dom mountain and onto the highway which is our only access to our home office. Sometimes it means delaying our plans a day or more. Yet God knows and we can rest in His will.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our children

Ilai is facing new challenges in his life right now and we continue to trust the Lord for his situation. If you want to know more please contact us personally.

Brian is busy raising his two boys and working full time.

Darren and his wife, Katie are rejoicing over their first child, Gideon James born February 4th. They will soon be moving back to San Diego CA from Louisville KY to focus on a future overseas mission ministry in Thailand. We are really looking forward to meeting little Gideon!

Heather has been a blessing to the home office/school here in Papua New Guinea teaching science. She has opted to spend another year here which means that we will be apart for a year after we leave for home assignment in July this year.

Praise: for the continued spiritual growth of individual Dom Christian men, women and children.

For the growing interest among some of the Dom Christians to minister among themselves and to take the Gospel to other clans and villages.

For the impact that the Dom language translation of the New Testament has had on those who are reading it.

Prayer: for the strength and wherewithal to balance our ministry and our need to concentrate on getting ready for home assignment this July. We aren’t getting any younger and it only gets more challenging.

For our coworkers, the Wuests. They face many challenges right now in Germany on home assignment and are greatly missed by us.

For our children and grandchildren back home.

For all the Dom believers who are seriously trying to walk with the Lord and serve Him.

Thank you so much for standing with in prayer and those of you who give financially. You are a huge part of the Dom Work.

Serving Together with You,

Jim and Judy Burdett

Dom (dome) Tribe, Papua New Guinea

Partnering with Gerolf and Mailis Wuest