It's time to fly

By the time you’re reading this, we’ll have left Ohio and started our trip back to PNG. If your reaction to the news of our departure is “Wow, that seems sudden!” we can understand that. We bought tickets just a week ago, and our priorities have been focused on making sure we are ready to fly out for the last several days. However, we’ve actually been working towards getting all our paperwork completed to renew our work visas with the PNG government since April with the goal of going back this fall. Per history, we guessed that it’d probably be mid to late October before we would be able to return to PNG, and that’s exactly how it turned out. We got the last of our paperwork back exactly one week ago and booked tickets the following day. 

Just a quick side note: Some of you knew that we had intended to leave several days ago, meaning we wrote this update planning to send it out Monday morning. However, we had a medical concern that came up the evening before we were supposed to leave, so we ended up changing our tickets and spending a couple days getting medical check-ups for Autumn to make sure there wasn't a chance of cancer. Thankfully, the most serious concerns weren't the case, and the doctors were able to put together a treatment plan that we can start here and finish while traveling.

We’re expecting this trip to be a difficult one and we need your pray support. Here are the things you can pray for with us.

PRAY FOR SAFETY FOR TRAVELS

Returning to PNG involves a multi-day trip that sometimes feels like it's lasting forever, and that takes us to a time zone 16 hours in the future. Once we arrive, we’ll be working to line up the boat and skipper who can take us into Pano, and that trip always has some significant risks. While we’re pretty familiar with the city of Madang where we’ll be living, we also appreciate prayers for daily safety as we travel around the city working to accomplish all we are going back to do. 

PRAY FOR WISDOM AS WE COMMUNCATE WITH PANO

The trip into Pano will be one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. Our hearts are breaking to think of having to tell them that, at least for now, we’re not able to come bring them God’s Word in their language. We need so much wisdom and guidance from our Heavenly Father to know how best to appropriately let them know about the reasons for these changes. We want to communicate clearly with them and not cause confusion or misunderstandings that could hinder them being open to missionaries (us or others) in the future.

PRAY FOR GUIDANCE AS WE SORT AND LIQUIDATE SUPPLIES IN PNG.

We’ll spend a lot of our time in PNG working to sort through all the supplies that we had prepared to build and outfit our jungle house. Some supplies will be sold and passed on to other missionaries, others will be stored long term since we hope to return someday, and some supplies can hopefully be brought back with us to the States. We will need wisdom to know how to make decisions on how to handle all the house building supplies and personal stuff,

PRAY THAT WE CAN “LEAVE WELL” AND PRAY FOR OUR HEARTS AS WE SAY LOTS OF HARD GOODBYES

On one hand, we feel excitement about returning and seeing so many people who we've grown to care so much about. On the other hand, it is also hard to say goodbye not knowing when the next time will be that we will see them again. We were recently reminded of the pain of indefinite goodbyes, when we messaged with a dear brother in Christ who was the pastor of the church we attended in Madang, PNG. We found out that his wife Daphne went home to heaven almost 9 months ago. Please pray for Pastor Ake and his young daughter Eranu as they grieve the loss of their wife and mom. It was odd for us to grieve the loss of a friend who has actually been gone for some time. We’re thankful Daphne was a believer, and we’ll see her again. But that won’t be true of many of the people we’re saying goodbye to this time in PNG, including the Pano people and our dear PNG “family” in Bahor. These upcoming goodbyes will be very hard for that reason. 

PRAY FOR MORE SENDERS AND MORE WORKERS

We can't put into words how much we appreciate all of you who are supporting us faithfully. In many ways, this trip seems like the end of a significant chapter of the story towards reaching the Pano people with the gospel. We know it’s not the end of that story though, and God will be faith to reach them. We want to be part of that work, and we are praying for God to bring new teammates and all of the things necessary for us to return to PNG and bring God’s Word to the Pano people. Thank you for continuing to pray that we will be used in His plan to accomplish that!

Click HERE to download a pdf bulletin insert of this update.

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