Special Edition for Our Transition!

Thank you for all of your encouraging messages following our last newsletter. We are excited to begin serving as career missionaries with Wycliffe Bible Translators USA. Our transition date from Wycliffe Associates to Wycliffe Bible Translators USA will officially be on August 1, 2015.

We especially appreciate everyone’s prayers during this time. Even though WA and WBT are partner organizations, this transition means we must change health plans and evacuation insurance, data bases, e-mail addresses, and where our funds are sent. For those of you who are financial partners, you will need to cancel your donations to Wycliffe Associates and send them to Wycliffe Bible Translators USA instead. While the financial gifts currently received by WA to partner with our ministry will be transferred to Wycliffe Bible Translators, this will be temporary until our transition is complete. Thank you for bearing this change along with us; we truly appreciate your partnership with us in God’s work here in Papua New Guinea very much.

Last month, we announced that we will be returning to the U.S. in December, when we will attend additional training, serve in our home church, visit people and churches. We believe God will raise up partners for 100% of our Wycliffe ministry budget. As Wycliffe members, we are required to have 100% of our financial partners before returning to PNG. We will also be attending Equip, a two-week training course in Orlando, FL, in mid January. We hope to see friends and family while we are in that area, and will be driving back up the East coast in February. We would love to see as many people as possible while we are back, so please keep in touch. If you would be interested in introducing us to your home church or scheduling an evening with friends where we can share what incredible things God is doing here, please let us know. Thank you for encouraging us in this process.

Our prayer is that God’s will be done, and that He would make it possible for us to return to PNG in July of 2016, so Kathy can begin the new school year at UIS and Scott can reassume his role as Security Operations Manager. We know that “with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). Please consider joining our partnership team, and thank you once again for all of your prayers and support as we continue to serve in faith here in Papua New Guinea! 

What your support means to us

We are so grateful for everyone who has financially and prayerfully partnered with our ministry since we arrived in Papua New Guinea in January 2014. You are a partner in the work that God has been doing here, through us, in the people of PNG. We know that, from an eternal perspective, the two things that will last from this earth are the Word of God and the souls of men and women. Thank you for allowing us to follow God’s calling to come to Papua New Guinea and invest in both!

Above: We were able to return to Aufan, where we lived for a month during the Pacific Orientation Course, to encourage our host family. God has given us the opportunity to speak His Truth into their lives in the wake of several family tragedies. Please pray for the people of Aufan. 

God directing our steps through new transitions...

Over the last three years, we have undergone many challenging transitions. In every situation, God has been faithful.Well, another transition has arrived and He is once again directing our steps. Our sending organization, Wycliffe Associates (WA), has undergone significant changes in their approach to  mission. Previously, WA sent support personnel to assist mission organizations. Going forward, WA is directly working in Bible Translation projects. Many support personnel were given a choice; change positions to better align with WA’s new structure or switch sending agencies. We elected to switch sending agencies and have been accepted to serve as career missionaries with Wycliffe Bible Translators USA. We prayed about our decision and it became quite clear that we are called to stay in our current location and roles. We are still with WA but will be transitioning soon. WA has assured us that the financial gifts received to support our ministry will be transferred to our new Wycliffe USA account once our transition is complete. For those of you who are financially partnering with us, we will provide detailed information on how you can continue through Wycliffe USA. This change means that we will be returning to the U.S. in December, where we will attend additional training, serve in our home church, visit people and churches and, Lord willing, raise 100% of our ministry budget. We hope to return to PNG in July of 2016 so Kathy can begin the new school year at UIS and I can reassume my role as Security Operations Manager. Thank you for your prayers and support as we continue to serve in PNG.

Teaching for the future...

1 Timothy 4: 11-12 “Command and teach these things.  Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.”  

I have always highly valued education.  Maybe it was watching my Dad work full time, while completing his college degree at night, that inspired me to complete my own Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.  Or perhaps it was when God led me to teach high school at PCA, and I saw how each student developed the gift God had blessed them with, and then graduated and went on to become a blessing to others. Now, after teaching my first year at UIS, I am deeply reminded again of the power of education. 

With this power comes great responsibility; to teach and learn the truth, through the lens of God’s word, and then to live it out in practical ways.  For these students, it means preparation for life back in their home countries once they graduate, or when their parent’s complete Bible translations in PNG.  For Papua New Guinean students, it is a firm foundation, that they might continue their education here or abroad and come back to serve and lead their country.  I see these students stepping up, setting good examples, and leading now,  and I am joyfully reminded of the Bible verse from 1 Timothy 4.  I don’t teach just so the students can gain present knowledge, however useful, I teach so they can become present and future Christ-like leaders in their nations and in the world.

Kathy accompanied her grade 7 class to serve at a church in Kainantu, where they were able to bless the PNG congregation with music and drama for a special children’s day service. 

First school year at UIS is accomplished

Kathy is so proud of all of the work accomplished by her students at UIS this year.  Whether it was the grade 7 and 8 students building and launching water bottle rockets, or the grade 10 students dissecting toads and rats,  all of the students put forth great effort.  She especially enjoyed working with so many students from different cultures and countries, and seeing them work together harmoniously.  She is preparing for the new school year now, and looking forward to meeting her new students already!

Above: Stacey, a grade 10 biology student, is enjoying her toad dissection, while Kathy helps  other students discover their ‘inner surgeon’.

Travel in Papua New Guinea

Scott recently needed to travel to Madang, to assist another mission organization with security. He planned to travel by car, a 5-6 hour trip depending on the road, but several bridges had washed out, making the road impassable. Road conditions here are poor in general, with no traffic enforcement, higher likelihoods of accidents with animals or pedestrians, frequent road blocks to extract “tolls” and occasional armed robberies. It is no wonder that air travel is often the only way for translation teams to get to remote village locations. We are so blessed and thankful to have some of the best pilots in the world serving here in PNG, and thank you to Gavin Jones for getting Scott safely to Madang that day! 

Trying to “run the race” well...

Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” This is the verse printed on the new UISSC sport shirts, which I saw demonstrated in a powerful way during Sports Days this year. Sports Days are mandatory track and field days where the entire middle and high school participates, and the community comes to cheer them on. The students are split into Teams Alpha and Beta, so there is good-natured competition, as well as students striving to break school records in events like discus, shotput, javelin, hurdles, relay, high jump, and running events. Teachers help to officiate, measure  and record results; I placed markers for shotput for 4 hours and could barely walk the next day, so I could empathize with those who actually ran in the events! The most inspiring to me, though, were the students who were not naturally gifted in sport, but who ran their races with perseverance, like Hebrews 12 described. This is true in all of our lives- there is a race marked out for us, and some parts will be very difficult for us, but we must persevere. I am aspiring to this as I endeavor to finish my first year at UISSC well, even though I am feeling tired and worn out. What is our key to success? That is revealed in verse 2: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith”- without Him, we will fail, but with Him, we can and will persevere to the end.-Kathy
 

I may have not run, but I did get my first UISSC sport shirt, so I will be ready for next Sports Day! 

Learning what “normal” really means...

This week I found myself speaking on risk management and security at the PNG Orientation Course, a similar program to the Pacific Orientation Course we participated in when we arrived in January of 2014. I am comfortable with the subject matter, but it felt odd to be on the other side of the podium teaching new missionaries about PNG. After all, it seems like we just got here and yet so much has happened over the last 16 months that has forced us to learn and adapt. For example, the basics of life take 30% more effort here. Doing laundry is an all day affair and cooking, shopping and basic repairs take considerably longer, so we've adapted our expectations accordingly. Professionally, people rarely make appointments here; instead, they show up unannounced and it is considered perfectly normal. Flying is by far he safest and most efficient way of travel here; in contrast, the road conditions are generally poor and become much more so when it rains. There is no national EMS system, first aid is illegal unless you have a license, and the police don't patrol the roads in the same way they do back home, so driving is much more dangerous overall. There are many other differences as well, but even in our relatively short time here we have adapted and some of the additional steps we need to take to get things done have become second nature. The really interesting part of all of this is that life here is far more representative of what the vast majority of people on the planet deal with every day, as opposed to what we were blessed with back in the U.S. So, in a sense, we did not know what normal was until we lived in PNG.-Scott