Reaching New Fields: Together as a Team!

We packed a lot into the past month from November 1-30. As you know from our last post, Josh and I left on November 1st to head to Arizona for two weeks. We took four days to travel together and visit friends from our time in training (you can see pictures of our trip at the end of this post) before settling near Phoenix for a week of meetings with our teammates, several pastors, and a number of individuals who will be assisting us through Finisterre Vision. (As you probably remember, Finisterre Vision is the organization which will be providing logistical support for us in PNG.)

Our week of meetings with our teammates and future partners was really helpful and productive. We LOVED getting to see the Noyes family again after almost 2 years apart!

I promised in the last blog post to tell you a little bit more about the types of things we were discussing.

Well, here's a sampling of the topics we dove into together:

Decision-making in the tribe

How will decisions bemade? Will it be by team consensus? By voting? By assigning team members to head up and "make the call" in their assigned areas? By appointing a "team leader"?

Which people groups are we considering?

This is a HUGE prayer request! There are hundreds of people groups in PNG without the gospel, and dozens just in the Finisterre Mountain Range where we are planning to go. Which one do we go to? The type of factors that influence our decision are the accessibility, tribal openness (do they want us there?), language assessment (Is this a language that is still "living" and being used by the younger generations?), and many more.
We will wait to make a final decision on this until after we are in PNG so that the guys (Josh and Craig) can do several survey trips and collect more information. However, we do have one particular group right now that seems like a very good possibility. Since getting back from our trip, I've found myself pulling up google maps and zooming in on this location and praying over the people there who are still waiting for the gospel. What an amazing thing it would be if we got to be the ones God used to take it to them!!

Getting Supplies to PNG

How will we get the supplies we need for our houses and ministry in PNG? Will we ship over a container? Will we purchase things from Australia and have them flown over? Will we pack a shipping container before we leave for PNG in 2020 and then have it shipped later once we move into the tribe?

What are our potential timelines for moving to PNG and then for selecting and moving into a tribe?

Team Personalities and Gifts

It's important to know how God has gifted each person, so we can see how our spiritual gifts and our personal strengths fit together as we look at the task ahead. We also want to have a realistic understanding of our weak areas. For example, while I love people so much, I'm an introvert; so, being in a culture where people don't really understand or value personal space or time will be challenging for me, and it's good for my teammates to know that.

Our stances on various theological issues, preferences on pets or no pets, plans for house building, emergency exit plans...the list of discussion topics goes on and on!

Thank you so much to all of you who were praying for our time together! We are excited to be moving ahead in this process!

Since coming back from Arizona, we have officially transitioned into support-raising! Beginning in 2019, we'll be traveling around, meeting with individuals and presenting at churches about the work we are called to do. We know that God has already called people to be a part of our team by partnering with us financially, and we are excited to meet them!

Some huge praises:

1. On October 23, Josh passed his national theological exam with unanimous approval by all 12 pastors. That officially marked our transition into the next phase of "going" which is support raising.

2. We had a safe, encouraging, and productive time in Arizona with our teammates and future partners! We are so blessed to get to work with people who share our passion for reaching the unreached!

You can join us in praying for:

1. Our Support-raising Process: We would love be leaving for PNG within the next year, but for that to happen, we need to be financially supported at 100%. Right now, we are at about 33%.

2. More Workers! In addition to praying for financial partners, we are also asking for God's direction as we travel and speak. We would love to be used to help challenge more people to be willing not only to give, but also to GO!

3. Balance: One of the challenges of this coming phase of life as we will be traveling and speaking is that we will spend a lot of time in the proverbial "fish bowl." Please pray for us to be balanced in how we allocate our time, and to be consistently growing in our spiritual walks and in our relationship with each other.

Check out these pictures from November, including our time in Arizona.

Sedona, AZ was one of our favorite places we visited!

Josh got to see the Grand Canyon for the first time.

These guys are so tall!

We loved getting to visit with some of our classmates from the missionary training center in Canada!

Since Nathan is a pilot and is working on getting in his hours for his helicopter training, he took us up for a ride!

This man could be one of our language and translation consultants through Finisterre Vision.
Here he is talking about this one verrrrrrrrry long word from one of the PNG languages.