It is hard to imagine that 2023 is just a few days from concluding. As we look back at what the Lord has done this year we never could have guessed where He was going to take us. Each step of the way we can see His Faithfulness and goodness.
The first 5 months of 2023 we continued on in our orientation ministry here at Lapilo. We had a good class that started in January and we continue to see how the Lord is using them to be a blessing here in PNG. It certainly takes a team to accomplish the work of tribal church planting in PNG.
For June and July we traveled back down to the Sepik and helped out in Wewak for most of the summer school break. This gave us a great chance to spend time with our co-workers, John and Christina Hutteman and their boys. We have missed the fellowship that we enjoyed with them during those 6+ years in Malaumanda. John is serving as an area coordinator so my conversations with him helped me as I got ready for the next phase of our year.
Starting in August, I stepped into the Lapilo Centre Manager role. This was a big change for me, and yet in retrospect I can see that my time in orientation and member care, not to mention our time in Malaumanda, was great preparation for this ministry. This particular role deals with a lot of policy issues and leads to challenging conversations and some awkward conversations. That being said, I have been reminded that policy for policy’s sake quite often ends up misguided. Policy should be about serving people and nurturing unity in the community here. This makes the job that much bigger and harder but at the same time more significant and satisfying. Serving the Lord in any location is of great value.
We do want to thank all of you for your prayers and support. We look forward to seeing many of you in 2024 as we begin our home assignment. More on that in our next update.
In Him,
Eric and Judith, Stephen, Daniel and Timothy
Prayer & Praise
- Praise that we have the health and strength to serve the Lord here in PNG.
- Pray for Eric in his role as centre manager. We are in the midst of discussions as to how we are going to provide training for the PNG citizens that are employed here at Lapilo. We have roughly 80 employees in the various departments here besides domestic workers. It is a complex challenge as we are dealing with cultural differences as well as technical and business understanding.
- Praise that the boys are done with the fall semester and are enjoying their break. For Daniel, he is 5 months away from graduation. Pray for him to work hard til the end. He is still working on Spanish as well which is a prayer request.
- Pray for Judith as she will be adding the organizing of the house and packing to her schedule starting after the first of the year.
- Pray for the printing of the Malaumanda New Testament. It is in the midst of being done though I do not know yet when it will get here. It is still our hope that we will be able to present these Bibles to the Malaumandan church before we leave for home assignent.
- Pray for Stephen as he starts back in to his next semester at Moody Aviation on January 8th. Pray for us as we discuss how this next semester is going to look at.
- Praise for the support that the Lord has provided (93% of recommended). Pray for wisdom and God’s provision as helping Stephen with his schooling has made it difficult for us to have margin for plane tickets and the like.
- Pray for the Lord to raise up more school teachers for Numonohi Christian Academy (here at Lapilo) for next school year. They are really needing high school math, science and english teacher. Watch the video link below. Judith is in it!
