“I Fear God…”

“In the fear of the LORD one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge.”

Proverbs 14:26

We want to say thank you once again to all of you who faithfully work and give so that we can be here and faithfully work and give – we love being part of your team.  Every month, we are amazed again and again by the faithfulness of God and of His people.  Thank you for investing in the Inapang Churches and entrusting us to this work.

We haven’t written much since the new orientation classes have begun, but just to catch you up, here are a few bullet points from this Spring’s NTM-PNG Equipping & Training program:

• The Lord has blessed us with workers and we have the largest program to date with 6 families and 2 interns. In July, we are back to the normal numbers with 3 families on the books. Please pray for those who are already here in country and those who are preparing to leave.
• The Lord brought on more staff families to help us with this larger program and they have all been huge blessings to us. It has been an added bonus being able to work with Bill’s mom and dad.  God is so good!
• This year’s e2 student team is another amazing group of men and women. We are super privileged to be a part of their lives and ministries for the next few months.  We are encouraged by their love for the Lord Jesus, their desire to obey him in the day to day things, their learning to balance their lives while stepping out in what we call +1 culture and language study and their willingness to “become PNG” and be part of the national church next door. Such a blessing to have them all here.

Please pray for us as we work side by side with them.  And, please continue to pray for these new families as they adjust to being a family in a new place and serving Jesus together in a new culture.  Pray that they will see every day that HE. IS. WORTHY.

We had the special treat of having Promise along with two of our Itutang church elders and two translation men from the Tangguat church visit this week.  Promise was able to check off more translation that will now be usable for the Tangguat church.  Thankful for the hard work she has put into this!  Our elders co-taught one of the modules with us called “Living as Elders” and it was so encouraging for all of us.  There was much wisdom passed on from these PNG believers to our new missionary families here on centre.  The Q&A that stands out the most to us is when one of our students asked the elders about how they look after so many churches and help with the Tangguat outreach and still have gardens and families – how do you keep doing these hard things?  Kletus didn’t even skip a beat as he replied something like, “Mi save pret long God, olsem na gutpela taim na taim nogut, wanem wok em I givim mi long mekim long dispela de, mi save mekim wok bilong en tasol. Em i lukautim mipela.”

Translation: I fear God and so whether it’s a good time or a bad time, I just do the work that the Lord gives me today. He looks after us.

Thanks to all of you who have been praying for us and our girls through a hard time of being apart.  So thankful for our girls who write truth to us and encourage our hearts to keep pressing on for the sake of the gospel.  Praying that God will indeed as the verse above says continue to be their refuge.  He is so faithful.  Please keep praying for us that in the good times of joy and strength and in the lonely, hard, and ugly times, too, we will just follow in obedience like Kletus and do what He gives us today – in His strength, in His power, for His glory, and by His Amazing Grace.

Over a decade and we still love this job. That’s your prayers at work.  Thank you.

By God’s Grace and For His Glory~

Bill and Kelley