“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.“
2.Cor.12:3
Never ever before did we need our God to be a Father of compassion and a God of all comfort than in these last two months! Over the last 15 years we have left Germany five times to go to PNG, but never has it been as hard for us as this last August. We left without our oldest daughter Naomi! The good bye was extremely hard but getting used to living without her here in PNG was even harder and still is. (Also) Naomi’s life has also changed significantly. She now lives in a country that is not her home; she is without her family; she is working, trying to make new friends, speaking only German, going to a new church, traveling by train and bike and lots of other things she is not used to. She is doing great, and we are very proud of her; but it is for truly a huge, challenging change for her. We are so thankful that she can live with my parents (where she loves it and) who help her every day with some of these new things in her life. She loves it there with them. Please pray for Naomi and for us! This new phase in our lives is very hard and new and we are clinging to God’s compassion and love and comfort. Thank you, Lord, for understanding our pain and healing our wounds!
A few days after we got here Ralf went to Dinangat with Gary and Jeremiah for 10 days. They were able to get a lot of work done on the Dinangat Bible Translation and talked a lot with people, especially with the elders and Bible teachers. The church is doing good except that they too have to be purified and tried to become better vessels for His Glory. Problems and trials come up all the time, and they too, just like us, have to cling to God’s truth and stay in His Word to not stumble but come out stronger than before. Please keep praying for the Dinangat church that they will walk by faith and get stronger in His Word even as they are going through some ups and downs!
Next week we will have one of the bigger events of our work happening. Ralf will meet with a consultant from the States to do the final checks on Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon – which are 640 verses in total! Also 4 of our Translation helpers from Dinangat will fly out to help with that. We are so excited to be at this stage in the Translation for those Bible portions. After the check we will be able to print those verses for the Dinangat believers to read and study. Please pray for this upcoming week of intense work for everybody involved!
We are excited about the month of October where we will get to spend 4 days at our annual missionary conference. After that we will fly into Dinangat as a family to spend almost two weeks with the believers there and work on the translation. We will be working on II Corinthians and Revelations. Again your prayers would be appreciated!
Thank you, thank you so much for all your prayers for us and the Dinangat church! We are so grateful for you!
Praises be to the Father of compassion and God of all comfort,
The Schlegels
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