It is easy for me as a support worker serving itinerantly to feel disconnected from the church planting efforts among the least reached. I imagine that many of you reading this may have also felt the distance between your giving and the church in PNG. The following update is from the Malaumandan church in PNG, and I hope you are encouraged as much as I was by it. I have been a part of supporting this team educationally for a decade, and seeing a church mature, even from the distant sidelines, is why I serve in this support role.
In 2006, as the only family left from the original church planting team in Malaumanda, Eric and Judith Hedeen saw the need to jump into translation, despite a lack of confidence in that role. Eric was able to make slow steady progress until they had two other families, the Huttemans and Kennells join the team. With their help, the New Testament was finished four years later and they had their first Bible Dedication in 2015.
As the Malaumandan believers spent time reading and studying God’s Word, they were able to point out a few more spelling revisions, so that Eric was able to prepare the Malaumandan New Testament for a revised printing of 1,700. The Hedeen family hopes to take 200-300 revised New Testaments to the Malaumanda believers at the beginning of June for a Bible Dedication.
The Malaumanda church is also in the middle of an evangelistic outreach to the village Minim. The people there asked the Malaumanda church to come and teach them the Gospel. The Hewa church, in a neighboring people group also helped with this outreach and reported that the first phase of teaching went successfully and that many from Minim are now professing faith in Jesus. They shared that this outreach caused so much excitement in surrounding language groups that there are men from a neighboring people group that are now asking the Hewa believers for help in getting their own Bible translation and teaching! Please pray the Lord raises up more workers for the harvest in remote PNG villages.