| May 12, 2020 |
| “But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus– the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God… I declare today that I have been faithful.” – Acts. 20:24, 26a My heart’s desire is to be faithful to share Jesus with everyone that I can. My greatest regrets are of times when I had the chance to share about Christ with someone, and I didn’t. My greatest fear is that I won’t use my life well, sharing with everyone I can that Jesus died for them. I know that God is sovereign even over the mistakes I have made and will continue to make. However, I am convinced to my core that sharing with people how they can be saved through Christ matters more than anything else I could do. Therefore, I have endeavored to spend my life trying to make the gospel known. We thought that the best way we could do that would be to go to a tribe that has never heard about Jesus and tell them. However, after 3 1/2 years of trying to get there, it is easy to wonder what we’ve been doing. However, we know that God also has different roles for the people of His church. 1 Corinthians 12:5 says, “There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord.” We are convinced that God wants us working to reach unreached people groups with His Word. However, maybe instead of doing that in the role of church planters, He wants us to do that in the roles of teachers/ support missionaries. What is cool about support ministries with New Tribes is that it directly enables missionaries to plant churches in unreached tribes. So, what is it that we have been supporting the past few years? Why has it mattered that we have been here? Well, in the last 3 1/2 years, because of the partnership of you supporting us, us supporting missionaries in the bush, and the missionaries in the bush working, one new tribe now has a Bible in their language, and four new tribes have heard or are in the process of hearing the gospel for the first time! Wow, we are so thankful to be a part of that! Thank you for those of you who have been praying that God would help us to be content in support ministry until we get to a tribe ourselves. He has answered that prayer! In fact, we are wondering if God is leading us to be content in support ministry until He calls us elsewhere. We will always be willing to go wherever God leads us, but what we mean by this is shifting our focus from, “our goal is to be church planters but we will do support ministry while we wait,” to, “our goal is to support tribal church planting by working at the center and we will do that until God leads us differently.” We have not made this decision yet, but we are praying about it. We have just seen the need for support missionaries, especially teachers, here, and we are wondering if God wants us to continue to be a part of that. Please pray for us about this! It’s never something we thought we would consider, but then, God has a way of leading us places we never thought we’d go, doesn’t He? As a song by For King and Country says, “What great adventure ever plays out just the way you’ve planned?” Thank you for praying for us. Thank you for supporting us. Thank you for taking this adventure with us. Till all know, Matt, Karissa, Ty, and Wyck |
| Praise God: – We have been thankful to be part of the team here lately, even as it has been a bit of a skeleton crew – He is growing contentment in us – He is doing a work to help us heal from some hard things this past year – Wyck’s eyesight seems to be getting better (He has a lazy eye we have been patching for) Please Pray: – For God’s guidance for our future – For God’s protection for us and for the country of PNG during this pandemic – For wisdom for Matt and the rest of the Crisis Management Team – That we can travel to see an eye doctor for Wyck when we need to |
