We’ve been back on the field for 5 months already, and we have been pretty busy at times. Some highlights have been finishing homeschooling the kids, traveling to another island to get new visas back in June, helping host a group of younger people interested in missions as well as doing different things with our ‘students’ here in town.
Dezi is twice as old now as he was when we got back here in March. He has started crawling in the last couple weeks and has two teeth and more coming. He likes to leave his mark on our coffee table. Davie has been a bit bored this summer waiting for school to start back up, although he has also had chances to make new friends as well at times.
Elroy and Scout have worked on a little bit of school over the summer, but will be ready to go back to school with all their friends in a week or so. Many of the families with kids in the international school here leave for the summer, so our older kids have missed their friends these last few months.
Our visa trip in June went well- no problems getting our visas and we were able to make a trip to a nearby island in that area to see some of our former ‘students’ who are hoping to move into an interior location there soon with the goal of planting a church. It was encouraging for us to see people who have been through our language/culture learning program getting ready to move towards that goal of planting a church. Sometimes we need that reminder.
In July, we had our 18th anniversary, and had two groups of people stay in our guest rooms at different times. We usually have guests here about once a month. One of the groups (two people) that stayed here was part of a larger group (nine people) who came to see what ministry is like in this country and if they would be interested in missions themselves. That was a different experience for us because we are so used to working with people who have been through years of our specific missions training, whereas most of this group had much less knowledge of how Ethnos works.
Meanwhile, we have had our students in town who are doing our language/culture learning program. There are four separate groups of these students, so they all are at different points in their studies. We do orientations, meetings where we explain how to study language and culture, language evaluations, Bible studies, praise and worship times as well as just spending time with them as individuals and families as we get to know them and help them get acclimated for a life of ministry here in Asia-Pacific.
Praise:
-finishing homeschool work for the kids and them getting to go back to school here
-we got our new visas without a problem
Prayer:
-Elroy and Scout will be taking some more challenging classes this year
-That Davie is able to make friends with the kids in his grade at school
-That God will keep working in us and in the students we work with to get them ready for ministry here
Thank you all for your continued prayers and support!
The McIlroys
P.S.- As I mentioned before, we have started a chat group where we share more frequent updates/pictures/prayer requests. If you use Facebook/Messenger and would like to join the group, let one of us know and we will add you.
