Reaching New Fields: Prayer Requests and Pressing On

Hi Friends,

As I was preparing to start this update, I was reminded of William Carey’s quote, said to his senders as he was preparing to leave for India. “I will go down into the pit, if you will hold the ropes.”

Thank you so much for being willing to “hold the rope” for us as we labor here in Papua New Guinea. The place we live certainly doesn’t look like a “pit” with the impressive mountains surrounding us, yet we feel the weight of the spiritual darkness and need of the people here, as well as the physical challenges of life in this remote context. We have several prayer requests to share with you, as well as updates on our lives and work. I’m so thankful that while there are always weighty concerns, we are rejoicing in the Lord and able to praise Him for His abundant care for us.

WATER

It’s a necessary thing that we rarely need to give much thought to in the USA. However, water has taken up quite a significant amount of our time and conversations over the past months. Papua New Guinea only experiences two seasons, wet and dry. We’re currently in dry season, but PNG has been significantly affected by the El Nino weather conditions this year, and our dry season is MUCH drier than normal and started very early, way back in early April.

We typically collect water off our roof and store it in a large tank beside our house. However, after numerous months without any significant rain, our water tank was low enough in July that we started carrying water each day from a spring in the village.

Over the past number of months, Josh carried nearly a thousand gallons of water to put in our tank.

Rowen thought it was a big deal to help carry water too.

We’ve also been going to fairly extreme lengths to conserve water, including limited showering/washing, and all water being used for multiple things. (Rinse water is saved and becomes wash water, which then is saved and becomes toilet flushing water). About 2 weeks ago, I had hiked up with one of the local guys to the source of the spring here in our village, and that source was so low that we thought it was likely to stop anytime.

However, just within the last 10 days, we got the first hard rains since May, and we’re so grateful that our water tanks are now full!

Although we have felt the physical and mental strain of this need for the past several months, we are more burdened for our friends here in the village who will likely continue to experience significant impacts from this draught in future months. It’s been too dry for them to plant some of their gardens, and since they live off what they grow, village leaders have told us they anticipate future food shortages, which is quite unusual here. Please pray for God's provision and mercy for the people in our village and all over PNG who are being affected by the lack of rain this year.

THEFT

While we were taking every measure we knew to take to conserve water and carrying more water each day that we were using, I was puzzled to see our water tank continuing to dip lower. I then discovered that some villagers had been taking water from our tank, since it was closer than the village water source. Theft isn’t new to missionaries in this context, whether it be our teammates’ chickens being stolen, building supplies of mine disappearing and then reappearing in the village later, or recently some kids stealing our tomatoes and then selling them back to us.

I have been reminded of a story I grew up with, “The Pineapple story” written by a missionary named Otto Koning who lived here in the jungles of New Guinea. Otto plants a pineapple garden, but the local villagers steal every single fruit. The book shares how he overcomes his anger and frustration by giving his rights away to God.

Although the water theft we experienced was a relatively small thing, initially these wrongs can feel quite unjust knowing we are here to serve at no expense to the people. However, what a clear reminder of the need for the transformation that only the gospel can bring. And also, what a great opportunity to love and do good to those who wrong us, remembering how merciful God is, as we so often sin against Him.

MONEY

Now that we’ve spent 9 months here in the village, we’ve been able to track several expenses tied to life and ministry here which were higher than we had anticipated, including flights, literacy materials, and increased medical insurance costs. We’ve realized that it would be helpful to have a bit more monthly support per those expenses, and we are praying to raise about $500 a month of additional monthly support pledged if the Lord allows. We’d ask you to pray with us to provide that, if it’s His will.

SURVEY

In August, I had the opportunity to accompany 2 men from another FinisTerre team who were completing their team’s first people group surveys. They were visiting two people groups who still are unreached, and I accompanied them to the second group. It was a blessing to spend time with them and process together as they pray and consider where their team should allocate.

A group picture at the end of the survey

I was grateful that Autumn was supportive of me leaving her and Rowen for a week, and thankful for great teammates who helped look out for her and Rowen while I was gone. Surveys are such an interesting blend of emotions: excitement over another people group hopefully hearing the gospel; exhaustion from the physical demands of ‘roughing it”; the encouragement of hearing people groups asking for “God’s talk” to be brought to them; and the intensity of striving for clear communication to balance the expectations of the groups being surveyed, since the missionaries can only pick one place to move. Please pray for the newest FinisTerre team, as they seek the Lord’s leading on this huge decision regarding where to allocate and serve.

FAMILY

Overall, our family is doing very well. Rowen recently turned 21 months, and his vocabulary is just exploding these days! Almost daily he will recognize and copy new words that he hears us say, and he is running around our mountain ridge with increased confidence, which also brings increased bruises. He’s a joyful, tough little guy though, and we sure love him! Autumn is staying busy caring for him, keeping our home, tracking and ordering all of our supply orders, and helping run the weekend post-literacy reading class in our village. I’m continuing to help lead the Saturday men’s Bible class, teaching sometimes on Sundays, and meeting one-to-one to disciple a local leader, as well as completing lots of building and maintenance projects for our team.

As a family, we are preparing ourselves for the changes that will come in a little over a month when our teammates head back to the USA for a nine month furlough. Pray for us as we face increased isolation and lots more work without them here. We’re so thankful to have had 9 months of life here in nDo with the help of the Cann family, and we’ll miss them a lot!

As usual, we'll close with some pictures of life and ministry over the past several months. Thank you, friends, for your care for us, for praying for each of these areas we've mentioned, and for encouraging us to press on in obedience. We faithfully pray for all of you as well, and love it when you reach out and share updates or your own prayer requests.

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Our team celebrated the 4th of July together on July 6th,
because weekends are far to full of ministry to be holidays here.

Our celebration included coloring flags...

building cardboard boats...

and hiking to the nearest waterfall to race the boats over the falls.

Josh takes care of most building or maintaince projects for our team.
While replacing the Cann family's screens, he had a very cute little "helper."

Rowen was admiring another of Josh's recent project,
building shelves in the office for all of our new literacy materials.

Last month, another literacy class with students from 3 different villages graduated, and we got to attend our first literacy graduation ceremony.