Jason and Toni Stuart Working in Papua New Guinea 
Dear Friends,
We hope you are all enjoying your activities leading up to the Christmas holidays. We are in the town of Goroka now, but will soon be returning to the village and we will be spending Christmas there. A couple other missionaries who work in other locations have accepted our invitation to spend the holidays with us, and a few others will be arriving by boat from a neighboring village just to spend New Year’s with us, so we certainly won’t be getting lonely.
I was recently reading a publication that gave some prayer requests for the church in general in Papua New Guinea and I was thinking how the Inaru church measured up in the areas that they mentioned. I thought that I would share a "report card" of the Inaru church with you so that you could know some more specific areas in which to strengthen the Inaru believers with your prayers.
BIBLE TEACHING- The Inaru church is being taught successively thru different books of the New Testament. In this area, I would give them a high grade. It is our conviction that expository Bible teaching is what makes for a mature church, and from my point of view the Inaru Bible teachers are doing a good job of presenting the truths of the Scripture to the rest of the believers.
CHURCH LEADERSHIP- We have one ordained elder in Inaru and one other Bible teacher as well as several guys who help with leading songs in the church
services. Though the church is not awash in mature leadership, the current leaders do seek to encourage the other men who are faithful and to include them in serving in the church when possible. In this area, maybe the Inarus would only get an average grade, but we are certainly not discouraged with the current church leadership.
TRANSLATION AND LITERACY- Although the Bible translation is progressing well, I would have to say that the Inarus must get a very low score in the area of literacy. We have a couple dozen literate men and less than a handful of literate women and no progress being made to help the rest of the church become literate. There are literacy materials available and different men have taught the literacy program in the past, but the church as a whole doesn’t seem to have the heart to do what is necessary to get an active literacy program going. Of course, we can’t fault them too highly in this, as reading and writing has not been part of their culture in the past and they will not place the emphasis on it that we do. However, we do ask your prayers that they will see the importance of it and that they will hunger to read God’s Word for themselves and desire that everyone else be able to read it too.
FELLOWSHIP WITH OTHER CHURCHES- Most of the Inarus’ contact outside of their village is with villages that do not have a clear Gospel witness. There are some tribes in the area with strong churches that could experience mutual strengthening with the Inarus, but the contact with them is only sporadic. The Inaru church would only get an average grade in this area as
well. Pray that we can strengthen the ties between the Inaru believers and other believers in the area.
REACHING THE NEXT GENERATION- I am afraid that in this area, as well, the Inarus don’t get a high score. The last complete chronological Bible course to lay foundations for salvation was taught 12 years ago, and a whole generation of children has grown up without that teaching. They know some of the truths of Scripture, but there are gaps in their knowledge. Please pray that the Inarus will make a commitment to see God’s Word taught to their young people.
OUTREACH- This is another poor grade for the Inaru church. Our language group has 3 other villages. One village is nominally Catholic with no real knowledge of God’s Word. Two other villages have an evangelical
denomination and some believers, but also much confusion and much mixing of the old beliefs about sorcery with the parts of the Bible they have heard. In two of these three villages, women have been executed in recent years on suspicion of being witches. In all three villages, the main topic of conversation on any given night is witchcraft and sorcery. The Inarus have
the potential to bring light to these villages. Please pray that they get a vision for that and see that God can use them to do a miraculous work in these other villages.
In looking this over it strikes me that the Inaru church is very similar to our Western churches– very good at maintaining the status quo, but short in the areas that require personal sacrifice. When you pray for your own
church, will you please remember to pray for the Inaru church as well. They are fellow believers in Christ, struggling with the same things you do, and you can do a tremendous service to them by praying.
We do appreciate all of you who pray and help us in so many ways. We certainly can’t thank you sufficiently for what you do for us.
In Christ,
Jason and Toni and Jedidiah Stuart
