Moving On…

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We have really enjoyed our time here in Madang province.  We arrived in January 2017 and, except for 6 weeks in bush orientation, we have been able to live here ever since.  We learned Pidgin here, made citizen friends, helped with two more e2 orientations after ours and helped with the Interface program for college age students this summer.  We even had a short stint as the center managers.  We were able to do a lot of our team talks here.  We have made a lot of friends and memories here, but we are excited to be moving on into the “allocation” phase of church planting.  It is time to move to the Central Region Center which is the center for all church planting missionaries in our region.  The men will be building our house, Sam will be getting used to the NTM school, which he will continue to attend as a boarding student when we move into the tribe.  We are thankful he can live with us for the first few months as he acclimates.  Ellen will homeschool the other 3 kids and continue prepping for moving into the bush this fall.  So, this week we say goodbye for now to friends down here in Madang province and say hello to the highlands for a while.  However, we look forward to hopefully visiting Madang province once a year to catch up with friends.

Keeping up with Hazen and Wesson (the guard dog in training)

Tanguat…Paul, Sam and our coworker, Derek, were able to have an adventure together this week.  They went to Tanguat to talk about our coming and house building.  First, they flew to the Inapang language group to meet up with Promise and the elders there to talk about the trip.  Then they rounded in Tanguat with Promise and a small group from the Inapang church for two days, stopping to have meetings along the way.  They were well received.  The village where we are building is very excited to have us and help build.  They had already marked out two plots for our houses and have offered to cut our house posts ahead of the build.  They even offered to tear down some structures to make enough room for our two houses and a helicopter landing pad.  Then some of the people from the young church there joined the hiking group to go on the 17 mile hike around the language group.  The guys found out that the helicopter was grounded for maintenance and decided to take an adventurous route out of Inapang.  A 24-hour boat and PMV (public motor vehicle) ride.  We are thankful that they are home and excited about our next steps.  Derek and Paul go back in late August to start cutting trees and milling lumber.  The men of the Inapang and Tanguat language groups will be helping them build as well as at least one more missionary who has house building skills.  See a video at Facebook: Swenson Tribe

Part one of the ride home: motor canoe

What else have we been up to?   We had a blast helping with Interface.  There were plenty of missionary kids for our kids to play with and jobs for everyone.  It was like summer camp and we had a great group of young people, many of whom left PNG determined to come back or help with the great commission in other places/ways.  Our boys were challenged too.

Building Fund Update:  We have about $53,230 of the expected $60,000 for the house build/ air transportation costs associated with a house build in a helicopter location.  This build will be starting within a week!  Would you pray about helping us with this one-time expense?  Here is the information on that: https://swensontribe.wordpress.com/house-building/

 Revamping our Privacy:  We will continue to send our newsletter updates via RSS with “mailchimp” through our website for now, but for more sensitive information, please see our closed Facebook group: Swenson Tribe.  We may start bypassing our website in the future so if you read our updates directly from our website, e-mail us and we will add you to our newsletter list.

 Praises: 

  • Safety during the survey trip and a great reception by Tanguat.
  • Many commitments to missions during Interface by the students.
  • Continued provision for house building.

 Prayer Requests:

  • Our move and goodbyes from Madang province to Goroka.
  • Sam’s transition to school.
  • Our family as we spend long periods this fall without Paul, starting in late August.
  • For the time of house building which will be physically demanding during dry season in an area with very limited access to water.
  • That God would continue to prepare the hearts of the Tanguat people.

For updated prayer requests see: prayer update

New Address:  This should be our address from now on in PNG.  Check out our website under the “contact info” tab for more info.

Paul and Ellen Swenson     

c/o New Tribes Mission     

PO Box 1079   

Goroka, EHP 441

Papua New Guinea

More Photos

Sam writes about the survey trip