OCTOBER 2022
Have you ever met someone kind, friendly, and fun to be around but you know they don’t believe the Truth and are living in spiritual darkness? You love them and are burdened for them to come to know Christ. To know the freedom, joy, hope, and salvation He brings. Have you ever wanted to share Truth with them, but for some reason haven’t been able to? …That’s been us with all of our friends here. Many of them are really “good people” according to the world’s standards, but they don’t understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we haven’t been capable of telling them due to our limited language abilities.
Progress & BIG NEWS –
Those language barriers and limitations have served to motivate us in our studies. We are over here praising God for His faithfulness in helping us learn and grow in our ability to communicate in this language! After two years of focusing on studying the national language and culture we are so excited to announce that we are officially DONE with this step!! Last week two of our language consultants came to visit us and administer our final evaluations. The results came back very encouraging and—in official terminology—we have “checked out” of this first phase of ministry here. God has been so gracious and faithful throughout our time here to provide us with time, energy, language helpers, friends, and just the miraculous gift of minds that are capable of learning a language and beginning to understand the way people live and think in this culture.
Even though it hasn’t fully sunk in yet, being done with official language study is very relieving. It frees us up to focus on other things like survey work to find out what the needs are for the Gospel in this little part of the world. Our sights aren’t only set on the needs in remote areas though. These two years of studies have equipped us to spread the Truth along the way as well. This doesn’t have to wait until we move into a village. We can start right now with the people God has placed around us.
We are now at a point where we can communicate the truth of Jesus with those friends of ours that we have been burdened for. In fact, during the months leading up to this final evaluation I (Tyler) have had multiple opportunities to share the Gospel with neighbors and friends, and a few chances to preach at our local church. Praise God that He can and does use even us.
Grateful for your prayers!
Thank you for all those who prayed for us on our most recent survey trip. God took care of our families while we (all the men on our team) were away and we were able to visit four villages from four different people groups. Unfortunately we didn’t find any suitable options for long term ministry. The people are generally welcoming, but for a variety of reasons (it’s a bit too complex to get into right now) they are not a good fit for us as a mission here. This is disappointing to us, but we are trusting the Father to open some other door.
Also, thank you for praying for our Regional Conference last month. It was a really encouraging time for everyone and helped us get to know a lot of our coworkers that work on other islands.
Praise
- For completing our formal language study! 🥳
- For really good results in our evaluations and the opportunity to shift focus.
- For God’s direction on our Survey.
- For the opportunities to share the hope of Jesus with those around us.
- That Lord willing we will soon be enjoying a visit from Grandpa & Grandma!
Prayer
- For God to open doors to get to a people group He wants to reach with His Gospel.
- That we would have more and more opportunities to share the Truth with others.
- For God to prepare us and our team for future ministry and the challenges that will come with it.
- For God to be preparing the hearts of the people we will one day live with.
