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Back in June we the Tanguat church Bible teachers and Derek and myself began our Creation to Christ teaching to two different villages who had never heard the Gospel. Here’s our latest update (from November) related to the outreach and what is happening in our lives and in the Tanguat ministry.
“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” John 3:17-18 (ESV)
This week marks the start of phase 2 of our outreach teaching in A & M villages. In phase 2 we will circle back through teaching beginning in Genesis and will be building on that by showing how the OT stories that they heard in phase 1 point to Christ. Also, we will start differentiating between “those of you who have believed that Jesus’ work has saved you” and “those of you who do not believe that Jesus’ work has saved you”; explaining repeatedly that there are two groups in the audience now. We are praying for people to not just understand what Christ did for them, but that they would put their hope and trust in Him alone. We will be teaching phase 2 for 7 weeks 2 days a week. This will also be a time when Derek, Paul and our Bible teachers will be asking people one-on-one more pointed questions and finding out where a lot of the audience is belief-wise, or at least what their answer is.
What is planned for the end of December? As we’ve said, phase 2 of outreach starts this week. That will go into January. The “fast literacy class” will be finishing up in the next few weeks. This is an abbreviated class for students who can already read fluently in the trade language. We will do literacy 2 with those students in January to continue to increase their fluency once they have learned all of the syllables in the language. We are mostly overseeing and the teachers here are teaching! We will take Ella for one more trip to Brisbane at Christmas time for a few health check ups. We are hoping this is the most medical travel we’ll ever have to do in a year😊 The bad news is that her knee isn’t completely healed yet, although it is much better. Her specialist wants an MRI now. We had already planned to have her get other appointments in December and meet up with Hazen and Noah for Christmas, so this was already in the works for a while now (except for the MRI). Noah actually finishes at Word of Life Bible Institute in December, so he’ll be coming back to the bush with us for all of January!
Pray:
- For the people of A & M that they will recognize their sin and believe that Christ paid their sin debt and provided the only way for them to be declared right before God. And that as they believe they will know the joy that comes from being God’s child.
- For Ella’s MRI, other medical appointments and for healing of her knee.
- For our translation check of Luke. It is now scheduled for February. This is our 4th attempt at getting it checked, so please pray that can happen!
- For teachers, doctors and others to come and use their skills to support the church planting work here in PNG. And wisdom for leadership here as many missionaries are “stretched pretty thin.”
Praise:
- For the believers here in our village getting to hear 1 Corinthians for the first time and that they are thinking through how they can show love to each other and encourage each other as they serve Christ together.
- For the faithfulness of the Tanguat Bible teachers as they continue to teach at the outreach.
- Getting to see all of our boys this fall/winter!