Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His Love endures forever.
Psalm 118.1
Thanksgiving is upon us and it has been a challenge to slow down long enough to take note of all that the Lord has been doing in and through us this year. As the Psalmist wrote we see His goodness and experience His enduring love each day. We pray that you spend a bit of time remembering His goodness this holiday weekend. Here are a few of the reasons that we are thankful.
We had planned to spend time with Stephen this Thanksgiving but that hasn’t happened. He has been able to drive up to Canada and spend this holiday with Judith’s family. While we can’t be with him we are so thankful that he can be loved on by his Oma, Opa, aunts, uncles and cousins.
On Saturday our time we will have a thanksgiving meal with several families here at Lapilo. Ironically most of them are Canadian and German. Being thankful, though, is multi-cultural and fellowship within the body of Christ is always of great value. And a great meal is always welcome.
Earlier this month Judith and I were able to leave Daniel and Timothy at the house (first time for that) and travel into the bush to do a culture and language evaluation for a church planting team. This went very well and we enjoyed our time with these 3 families and with the tribal folk who worked with us during the evaluation. There is every indication that they will finish up their culture and language study next year and begin working on literacy, translation and lesson writing. Before too long the tribal folk in this location will hear the Gospel for which we can be thankful.
We also want to express our thanks for each of you who faithfully pray for us. As you will see below there are many things that we would love for you to pray for us about.
In Him,
Eric and Judith, Stephen, Daniel and Timothy
Prayer and Praise
- Praise that we are into a good routine as a family here.
- Pray for Eric as he is busy managing the centre here at Lapilo. There are some departments that are critically understaffed which makes this a challenge. We are also working on some organizational strategy changes which are challenging but necessary.
- Praise that Timothy continues to do well with his online school. Daniel has also begun working with one of the missionaries on the Lapilo centre. This has meant that he has a full schedule of late.
- Pray for the country of PNG. While it is open for us to continue our church planting work there are some challenges with finding fuel for our Aviation department. This impacts the large commercial carriers as well as all of the mission aviation organizations (MAF, SIL, etc). We can import our own fuel but the cost is a lot higher which impacts most of our missionaries.
- Pray for Malaumanda. I only have occasional interaction with them at the moment and the fuel situation could make it hard for me to travel there.
- Pray for Judith’s green card process. We haven’t heard anything for a while. According to the website we still have 3 months before we receive the approval of the first application. We will be working on Judith’s Canadian passport renewal in the short term.
- Pray for Stephen as he spends time with family in Canada and then travels back to Spokane. He only has 2 more tests to go before being done with the aviation mechanics portion of the course. He will still need to take the FAA tests in order to get his license.
- Pray for us as we wait on the Lord for His leading for the end of 2024 and on into the new year.
