Jason and Toni Stuart Working in Papua New Guinea Dear Friends,
Many of you have written and asked about the last couple weeks. When we arrived back in Inaru after conference, the Inarus were all eager to get
started with the Bible school, but we had no other attendees from any other village. For various reasons none of them showed up. We started with
nearly the entire village of Inaru attending. We were teaching foundationalchronological Bible lessons, which most of the village had heard already, so
the focus of the teaching was on the younger people who had not heard and believed before. Attendance stayed good for most of the teaching, in spite
of the sensational death that occurred at the beginning of the teaching.
On the first day a teaching, a village man named Francis (Bli), who had been disfellowshipped from the church for his constant disputes with his wife and others, took a young widow as a second wife. The next morning during the teaching, Francis went hunting with some dogs. The dogs came back in the afternoon and everyone called out and waited for Francis as day turned to night. In the morning we cancelled teaching so that everyone could go search for him. The search party found him dead in the jungle, with no marks on his body to give any clues as to why he died. This is a classic witchcraft killing to the Inaru mind. Why else would a perfectly healthy
man in his 40’s walk off and die for no reason? And the fact that he had taken a controversial widow (who had already lost two husbands) as a second wife the day before clinched it. He must have been killed by supernatural means. The flurry of speculation, tall tales, and out and out lies occupied everyone’s minds for a few days. I often wonder why the Lord allows events
that tend to reinforce the Inarus’ traditional mindset, but it seems he wants us to use them as teaching opportunities. Many people came to us with
questions and I believe that after the dust settled, more people had more of an understanding of what the Bible says about death.
After the funeral we started the teaching again and went straight thru for 9 more days until it was complete. It was a very tiring and intense time for me to have to teach so many lessons a day and then study for the next day
and practice acting out skits with the Inaru believers and also try to squeeze in some time on translating II Corinthians. On the last day we acted out the crucifixtion of Christ and told those listening that if anyone had learned anything new or believed for the first time to please come and let us or one of the church leaders know. Then we as a family flew to Wewak to begin our travels. So, please pray for the Inaru church leaders as they follow up on the teaching and try to determine if we have any new believers as a result. I know that immediately after the last day of teaching our church elder Raymond (Keiko) sat down with his teenage son and another teenage relative and re-explained the Gospel to them and challenged them to believe. A few others gave a challenge to the crowd as soon as the
re-enactment of the crucifixtion was over. Probably the biggest immediate result we could see was that the church in Inaru seemed to be re-energized
by the teaching and many men seem keen to want to take a more active role in the church. Please pray for men like Solomon (Biga), Job (Wosu), Theo
(Wobuwa), Paul (Waiya), and Felix (Mabiyota), that they will continue to have a strong desire to want to serve the Lord and increase in their devotion to Him.
We are now in Wewak and on April 8 we will fly to the Philippines. I will drop Toni and kids off there so that she can see many of the friends she had when she worked in the Philippines and after a couple days, I will fly to
the States to attend a translation consultant workshop. I will be in Florida from April 12-26, so if any of you are in central Florida at that time I would love to see you. After the workshop I will fly back to the Philippines (sorry, won’t be visiting any of you in America) and we will go
visit the tribe Toni worked in when she was single. We will arrive back in Papua New Guinea on May 8 and will fly back into Inaru on May 12. We would appreciate your prayers on our travels, just that it would be a profitable
time and that we would be able to return safely to Inaru.
Thanks to all of you for your prayers and support and encouragement. Though we did have a death during the Bible school, our two terminally ill people
are still with us in Inaru and many other distractions that could have disrupted our teaching never happened. We greatly appreciate your prayers.
In Christ,
Jason, Toni, Jedidiah and Ella Jo Stuart
