NTM

This past month has beeen a FULL one filled with special memories, cultural opportunities and LOTS of activities!

Our neighbor's family - Putri is the oldest of 6

Preparing baked goods for our neighbors

FOR ONE, this past month has been the month of fasting (Ramadan) for the predominant religion. They awake at 0400 to eat and pray before their long day of fasting. Not even allowed to drink or swallow their own spit, their fast is broken at 1800 with large meals and loud celebrating. As the only Christians in our neighborhood, we were very aware of these happenings.

Yet this past week just ended the fasting month and people broke their fasting with large parties. An important part of this was our cultural obligation to visit each of our neighbors. It was a real blessing to interact with our neighbors and friends- giving them their gifts and deeping our relationship with them. Now we just continue to pray that their month long search for religious fulfillment will instead become a search for a relationship with the ONE TRUE GOD!

Anna and Chicken Feet

Yes, that is a whole fried fish, Brian

Decorating Kayla's room

Another highlight this month was having our friends – Brian and Anna – visit. We enjoyed showing them around and letting them experience the unique Indonesian cusine. We also appreciated all their help with painting (Anna, honestly, the kids rooms would never have been decorated without you!) hanging shelves, watching the kids so we could actually go on a date and just giving us a break for the daily grind.  They were real troopers as they endured all the stares while visiting our neighbors, butchered some chickens for Melissa and helped with the monotonous task of sorting thousands of parts with Bryan at the hanger. We all had a blast and were sad to see them go!

Heli returning to the hanger after a long week of flying

LASTLY, this month has been and continues to be filled with flights. Beginning with a medical evacuation (check out the related story!!!) and flying in a volunteer carpenter into the tribe to repair a church planter’s house, it continued with flights for a week long tribal Bible Conference and taking various translators and church planters interior to evaluate the tribal churches which were planted several years ago. Hoping to reopen and continue these works, as well as open new ones, leadership is using these evaluation flights to determine the next steps. It has been exciting getting to support these activities. Please continue to pray for safety and wisdom as decisions are being made and lots of flying is being done!

For more pictures of this past month, click here!