It’s been one year now for us serving in Asia Pacific learning the national language. It’s been a challenging experience adjusting, but the Lord has been so good to us providing all we need and finding our joy and peace in Him.
Since our visas were good for one year, we had to exit the country last week. We went to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to apply for new visas at the Ind0nesian Embassy there. Everything went smoothly with that and we got back to our house on Saturday.
We are currently at a place in our language progress where we are encouraged to move into the region we’d like to serve permanently. We are planning on moving to either Papua or the Moluku islands very soon!
However, we recently we found out that Bethany is pregnant! And that changed our plans just a bit…
At the end of July we will be flying home to California to have the baby (due in October). And in December we will return to Asia Pacific where we will continue our language study in our region of service. Lord willing, after that phase we, along with another 2 or 3 couples will move into a tribe and begin learning that language with the goal of teaching God’s word and translating the Scriptures.
We have received a great amount of encouragement and are so thankful. Truly seeing God’s good hand in providing us with the encouragement we needed at just the right time. Thank you so much to each of you who have prayed, supported and encouraged us through letters and care packages.
It will be very difficult to leave our home here as we have made many close friendships with our neighbors. We pray the Lord will continue to work in their lives as we move on.
We look forward to seeing many of you during our short trip home in the fall. Please be praying for the pregnancy and our trip home. Also, please be praying for our continued progress in language study and for meaningful relationships with our neighbors.
With Love,
-Josh, Bethany, Nicole, and Ella
p.s. If you haven’t seen this yet, here is a link to some pictures Bethany posted from our time here.
http://diariesofatribalmom.blogspot.com/2014/05/one-year-in-black-and-white.html