The first month of 2022 has been a full one. There was no lack of possible topics but I will focus on a trip that John and I took into Malaumanda to spend 6 days with the church there. We did a lot of teaching with the main focus being on God’s plan for church leadership. One passage that we spent some time on was Ephesians 4.11 – “Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.” I asked the leadership team there just how good of a gift they are to the church body there. A wonderful gift or something akin to the white elephant variety?
When we weren’t teaching then we were talking with the leadership team and with individuals that we are working with. We have one leader who has been struggling with his walk, his marriage, and his family. We have another man who has been a deacon in training for a number of years and doing so faithfully. We have another man who has shown some promise as a teacher and pastor.
On the one Sunday we were in there we had a packed 2 1/2 hour service where a previous leader in the church gave a good testimony as to how the Lord is working in his life to be more consistent in his Walk. Then we had the pastor that we mentioned above tell the body there that he is stepping down because of the problems he is having. Then after John and I spoke we called up the new deacon and his wife and prayed for them. After that, the teacher in training and his wife came up to be prayed for as well. As you can probably tell, the morning was a bit of a roller coaster ride. Are we confident in what God is doing? Absolutely! Do we know what it will look like? Nope! We just keep praying.
I do want to mention that the day after I returned from this trip our son Daniel turned 16. It is amazing how fast time goes by. And in just a few short months Stephen will be graduating and we will be traveling back to the US to get him settled at Moody Aviation in Spokane. He has been accepted there and is excited to get going on his journey toward becoming a missionary pilot. We’ll talk about the details related to this trip in another update.
In Him,
Eric and Judith, Stephen, Daniel, and Timothy
Let me introduce you to Yanome.
I spent some time with her and her husband during my time in Malaumanda. I was amazed at the peace and joy that I saw on her face and heard in her testimony. Believe it or not but the Yanome I know, from back in the early days, had no peace. I know her as a lady who has suffered the loss of her first two kids in tragic ways. She had a terrible marriage. I still have images of her running after people in the village while yelling at them with a machete in hand. She didn’t have the Prince of Peace and it could be said that emotionally her brain ‘snapped’. Her life is still tough and her marriage is far from perfect but our Savior has brought some healing to her heart and I thought that you should rejoice with me in God’s Grace.
Prayer and Praise
- Praise that we are all healthy.
- Pray for Eric as he is in the midst of a busy time. There are Pidgin evaluations, tribal language evaluations as well as some orientation teaching. There are still some Malaumanda tasks to do as well. And did I mention that I need to get taxes sorted out as well?
- Praise that the boys are well into the second semester and doing OK. Of course, this reminds us that Stephen will soon be graduating. Pray for all of the details that need to be sorted out for Stephen as he prepares to attend Moody Aviation in the fall. Praise that Stephen did get accepted to Moody.
- Pray for our family as we seem to be in the midst of the flux that comes with having high schoolers that are always changing. We always seem to be in the midst of adjustment.
- Praise that there are few Covid restrictions in PNG right now.
- Pray for the Malaumandan church leadership. Specifically, pray that the existing leaders will show themselves faithful. Pray for the new deacon and teacher trainer to be faithful. Pray also for the believers there to read the Bible that they already have. Dusty Bibles do nobody any good.
- Pray for the final formatting work to be done on the Malaumanda New Testament. We are about to print off one copy for us to see how the final book will look.
- Pray for our family as we start planning for our upcoming short trip to the US in June. There are a LOT of details that still need to be sorted out. More on that next time.
- Pray for 2022 to be a year that will see God’s work here in PNG grow and our part of it bring glory to him.