Time has gotten away from us these past couple of weeks. We seem to have gotten swept away by school testing, Sepik conference and then a break. It is good to be home among our Siawi friends again.
We praise God for the time at Sepik Conference hearing His awesome Word. We always enjoy fellowship with our fellow missionaries. The boys especially enjoyed reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. They are only able to see some of their friends once a year. We praise God for a team of folks who came from a church in California to do a kid’s program. They did a great job!
Conference is also a time where we have the opportunity to share with our co-workers here in PNG specifics concerning the progression of the work here in our village. We praise the Lord for gifted co-workers, some who have completed the work of planting churches in other language groups and some who like us are still in the process. We value their thoughts and ideas and appreciate their input which will help us to do a better job planting a local church among the Siawi people. We also value your input as well. As you read our letters please feel free to ask questions, make comments and we will do our best to reply.
We praise God for a time of relaxation away from the daily grind of work. After attending the conference, we went to the Madang Province for some rest and relaxation. We live where we work so the only way to truly get away is to go away.
We got to spend time swimming, snorkeling, and getting sun burned. The boys got to go fishing in the ocean, and Danielle and I were able to read books and do nothing for a change. We also enjoyed reconnecting with old friends and making some new friends.
Because we were gone from home for almost a month, we returned to a very dusty, moldy, and spider webby house. We are still trying to get things in order.
It is not a gentle transition to jump right back into the swing of teaching and discipleship and lesson preparation, etc. The minute our feet hit Siawi soil, we had friends waiting to talk to us. Sometimes we find it hard to not complain about not having enough time and energy to do all that needs to be accomplished.
Praise God that He promises that His grace and strength are sufficient for all of our needs.
Acts teaching continues. While we were on break, our coworker Jason continued to teach through Acts. On Monday he finished the lesson for Acts 13.
Today we didn’t teach a new lesson but asked the believers to think about all they had learned so far. Many of them have asked when we are going to begin doing the things that we have talked about, like singing, praying, baptism, etc. Today we turned their questions back to them and asked them how they were going to begin applying what they were learning. We asked them to come up with things they wanted to begin to do as a fellowship and to discuss how to do those things. Our goal was to review some of the key church principles and challenge the believers to apply them to their lives.
Today the people wanted to discuss singing so we spent the morning talking about why we sing. The overwhelming response was that we sing to glorify God and Jesus our Savior. We discussed everything, including guitars and clapping hands. Is it the noise we make that is glorifying to God or our heart response? We talked about the need for our songs to be in agreement with God’s Word. We discussed who will pick the songs. How will we make sure everybody knows the words to the songs we are singing? One of our guys suggested that the song leader make sure to announce the number of the songs in the song book so that everybody could turn to the words and sing together. This brought up an interesting point that here in the jungle everybody doesn’t have a song book, so we discussed writing songs that we don’t know on the chalk board so that we can work on them and memorize them.
It was fun to watch them come to the conclusion that if their singing was to glorify God that they should stop being unprepared and just letting it happen however and picking whatever songs that the guitar players wanted to sing that nobody else knew, but that we should actually practice and make sure that everybody can know the words and sing together. It was decided that we will start having a practice on Saturday and that Jason and I will begin to work with the song leaders and guitar players with the goal of them being able to lead everybody in worship in order that the church can together glorify God in song.
Please pray as we will be using the Sunday morning meeting time as a discussion time for the next few weeks.
Pray that the Spirit would direct these meetings.
We also hope to talk through what they want their Sunday meeting to be all about, praying, singing, testimonies, teaching etc..
Who will lead?
Who will teach?
Who will make sure that wrong teaching is corrected?
You may be wondering why we have waited until now to begin discussing these church issues. We have had a strong conviction that everything that we taught the Siawi people would be backed by the authority of the Bible. Now that we have taught through the first part of Acts, we have the scriptural authority to discuss church function.
Jason and I are also hoping to begin specific discipleship of men who will be possible future leaders of the Siawi church.
Pray for wisdom on how and when to disciple these men.
We have so many people coming to our houses with questions (this is a good problem), but we are spending a lot of time and not doing a thorough job of discipling all of them. Our hope is that as we focus on a small group of men, they in turn can disciple others. We will have more effective discipleship.
Please pray with us as we look for a time that will fit their schedules and ours.
Lord willing we will finish the book of Acts next month and begin teaching through Romans.
Many of the believers are making a stand for their faith. Praise the lord that we had our normal group of believers attending the discussion today. Many of our folks are distracted as a big sorcery meeting has been planned for our village. People from several other language groups are planning to attend. Because of the social pressure, many of the believers are gathering food to help house the many people who are scheduled to come.
Several people came by our houses yesterday trying to convince us, lie to us, whatever they could do so that we would cancel the meeting today. Those who are organizing the sorcery meeting want everybody to go fishing so there is dry fish to feed those who will attend. Even this morning those same people came to lie to us saying that everybody was already gone and that nobody would attend. We have responded to them that they can go fishing if they want, but we are going to teach God’s Word to those who want to hear.
We went to the village this morning with the intent of meeting with those who wanted to hear God’s Word even if it was only on or two. Honestly, I couldn’t tell from the size of the crowd this morning that anybody was missing. Some of our stronger believers have said that they don’t want any part in housing people or providing for the sorcery meeting, however all of the believers are feeling enormous social pressure to provide for this meeting.
Pray for the believers that they would stand strong during this time of cultural pressure.
Thanks for standing with us to reach the Siawi people.
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