“Rome wasn’t built in a day.”  It’s an old adage reminding us that great things take time.  I would also add that Rome wasn’t built alone.  Great things take a team.

Planting a mature, indigenous church among an unreached people group is our goal, and it is one that takes time, and takes a team.
We are now about 6 months into our time in PNG.  We are continuing to work on learning the national language.  We have reached level 6 out of 9 levels we need to achieve.  It is starting to get tiring learning language.  Please pray for perseverance for us, as well as for a great language helper for Matt.
We don’t have a team yet.  We are starting to talk with different people about the possibility of teaming up, but please pray for God’s wisdom in this.  We know that our team will greatly affect the next 20 years of our lives, as well as our ministry and future church.  So, we don’t want to enter into anything hastily, but wait on God to bring the perfect team together.
 (Where we are staying is just 1 1/2 hours from where we had our bush orientation.  So, we got to go and visit Tracie, our host missionary, for her birthday.  It made us miss being there!)

So, as we are learning language and waiting for teammates, Matt also has taken on a role to support the other missionaries in our region.  He is doing all of the airport drop offs and pick ups, which has turned out to be quite a job!  There are so many people on the team that it takes to support tribal missionaries- there’s supply buyers, pilots, language consultants, accountants, teachers, maintenance workers, and so many more.  We are so thankful for those who support tribal church planters in this way.  So, while we are waiting to be tribal church planters, we are excited to be a small part of this support team.

(We went to Port Moresby for a follow up MRI for Karissa’s cyst, and we got to have some fun while we were there!)

Karissa is preparing to homeschool Ty in his second year of preschool this year, and chasing around our now very active Wyck.  Wyck’s vocabulary now includes, asking “why?” and “what?” about everything.  Ty is very into being a robot.  He wears his robot costume, mimics being a robot, and asks lots of questions about robots.  I don’t know much about robots, but I do know this- to build one, like a tribal church, takes time, and takes a team.

Till All Know,
Matt, Karissa, Ty, and Wyck Long
(Tribal Church Planters in Papua New Guinea)

Founded in 1942 as New Tribes Mission

Please Pray:
– For great language helpers for us
– That we will continue to make progress in language
– That God will provide the right partners for us and that He will give us wisdom
– Karissa has started having daily headaches again.  Please pray for relief, and for wisdom about anything that could help.

Praise God:
– Ty is enjoying having lots of other MK (missionary kid) friends to play with
– Matt is enjoying doing airport runs
– Wyck seems like he’s finally starting to adjust to our new home
– There is a national lady who has been coming to visit with Karissa every day, so she’s getting good practice in Pidgin