GETTING READY TO...

Greetings, friends!

As I write this, I am thinking back over this last year and all the steps that we’ve taken on this journey to work in the nDo tribe in PNG. As I reflect, my mind is dwelling on the truth that we who are children of God are each running a race.

Therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let’s rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. – Hebrews 12:1-3

The race is often difficult, but so worth it, as we are running for the Glory of God. As we’ve been traveling around visiting so many of you this past summer while working to raise the funds necessary to return to PNG, we’ve been encouraged to see and hear about how you are also running the race that God has put before you. We who are called by His name have so much to be grateful for, and today I am striving to be grateful for how Christ ran His race according to the will of the Father and as a result, we have such hope and reason to carry on in the race the Father has before us.

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As this update title indicates, we have a number of areas in which we're anticipating and preparing for a significant step forward in the next 1-3 months, Lord willing. We are getting ready to...  

FINALIZE PAPERWORK

Over the past month, we’ve been adjusting to becoming parents and starting to learn all about the new little person in our family. We’ve also been evaluating numerous areas to hopefully set a reasonable timeline and trajectory for our next steps.

Rowen seems to be thriving with no apparent health issues, and Autumn is recovering well from her C-section. 2 weeks ago, we received Rowen’s passport, which enabled us to submit the required paperwork to the PNG government for his entry visa. Once that gets issued, we’ll need to send his passport to the PNG embassy in Washington DC to get the visa stamped into his passport. To the best of our knowledge, all of this could be completed sometime in March (although timelines for PNG paperwork are certainly never a guarantee).


FINISH OUT SUPPORT RAISING

At this time, the primary question mark that remains as we consider when to set our “goal date” to leave for PNG is how fast God will choose to bring together our remaining financial support needs. This month, we are working to line up additional meetings and hopefully in February, we'll begin some more support raising travels. The Lord has provided the majority of our support already, and we fully anticipate He will bring in the rest. Here's an update on the two areas of support we need to raise.

1. MONTHLY/ON-GOING SUPPORT

Our monthly support is our most significant support need, because is the support we will need to live and do ministry in PNG, and specifically in the nDo people group. Currently, we are at 80% of our needed monthly pledged support, which is such an encouragement to us. Thank you to all of you who give sacrificially to help send us! 

We don’t know how long it will take to raise the remaining 20%. It could take several months, or God might choose to provide it tomorrow. One of our primary prayer requests right now is for the Lord to provide this remaining needed monthly support. 

2. ONE-TIME START-UP FUNDS

Our start-up fund is what will allow us to get to PNG and get moved into nDo. This fund covers the follow one-time expenses:

• our travel to PNG
• initial expenses to purchase supplies to build our house in nDo (including the supplies we needed to ship from the USA, which are already on their way to PNG on a cargo ship),
• multiple helicopter flights to get our housebuilding supplies into the tribe
• Josh’s travel back and forth into the tribe for numerous 2-3 week building trips
• our own move-in costs

With the input and advice of the mission organization we work with and our teammates who have had to cover these costs for their own family, we are aiming to raise $96,000 for our start-up fund. Amazingly, God has been answering this prayer before we even started formally advertising the need! We already have $59,000 in our start-up fund. Some of that is money we’ve been able to save from our regular monthly support, and the rest was given by several supporters who knew that this was going to be a need and chose to give before we had even officially asked. That leaves us with $37,000 to go for us to reach our goal.


SET A DEPARTURE DATE

So, when do we leave for PNG? That is the question we're earnestly praying about right now, as we have discussions with our leadership. As we've stated before, we believe it is reasonable to arrive back in PNG sometime between March and June of this year. 

We would greatly appreciate your prayers for us to have wisdom as we work toward determining the proper time to go ahead and set a specific departure date and book flights to PNG. We anticipate that by the next time you hear from us, we’ll have a "leave date" set. We also ask you to prayerfully consider if God wants you to be part of our monthly support team if you are not already, or if you would be willing to contribute to our start-up costs.

As you can see from what I have been sharing with you already, God has been bringing together so many different details to pave the way for us already. We are striving to trust Him with the future details as we run the race He has put before us, first and foremost as Christians and then more specifically as a family called to this particular work as we head back to PNG.

We appreciate you all and your faithfulness. What an encouragement it has been to us!

In His service,

Josh, Autumn and Rowen Miller