Hi Friends,
We are the Flanagan family, Simon, Annika, Nya (5), Noah (4) and Karis (born Aug 2013). We are full time missionaries with NTM and are working in the islands region of Papua New Guinea. We have been in Papua New Guinea since 2007 and are working in a church planting ministry with the Mengen people group.
The Mengen people were an unreached people group with an aural language that was not written down. NTM was invited by one village to start a church planting work. This consists of building an orthography for the language, through learning and documenting the Mengen language and culture. We then develop and teach literacy so people can read and write, enabling them to stand upon the word of God alone as we move forward. Translation is a massive part of the work and without it there would be no sustaining power; Gods word is our only foundation, we have around 50% of the New testament translated. We taught the gospel chronologically from creation to Christ and saw about 50 adults confess faith from a village of about 200 adults and children. Some have been added to the number of the church as we continue to disciple and teach our believers through the New Testament. We are currently (Aug 2013) teaching through 1 Cor and 1 Tim.
We are hoping to see many more churches planted in unreached Mengen villages. We have around 25,000 Mengen speakers still without a clear message of the gospel. In the coming months we hope to start teaching Literacy and then present the Gospel in another village. After this new church plant we have another 3-4 villages who are requesting us to come! God is good.
There is no pictures of our daughter Karis as she has spent the first month of her life in a hospital. She had “transposition of the great arteries”. Her arteries going into the heart were the wrong way around and had to be switched with open heart surgery. Karis is now on the mend but still in hospital (Aug 13), we hope to have her home soon by Gods grace. We hope and trust she will be healthy enough to go with us to work with the Mengen people in due time.
There is a big difference from Karis’s post op picture to where she is now, almost 4 weeks afterwards. We are so thankful to God for His grace and goodness.
Here are a few pictures of our new brothers and sisters in Christ from the Mengen tribe.
