We Have a BIG Announcement!!!!!

​No, we are not pregnant! After prayerfully considering what country to serve in, while communicating with our home church in Pennsylvania, God lead us to Acts 13. After looking at the passage, we see the involvement with church leadership as quintessential in following God’s leading. With much prayer and fasting God, is now leading us to the SAME Island, but to the other side. We were “originally” heading to West Papua Indonesia but are now heading to the East side known as Papua New Guinea (PNG). For those of you who are not savvy on countries and governmental politics, that may appear to be minor to you, contrariwise it is very different. Indonesia is a progressively developed country, and is the largest Muslim country in the world, although there are sporadic extremists it is still pretty well developed. PNG on the other hand is very “under-developed” and is well known for its crime (mostly muggings). Because of the governmental situation, there has been a drastic inflation countrywide hurting many locals and missionaries. Some missionaries have had to leave because the inflation caused them to be “bankrupt”, and the locals resort to muggings and arson.
​We had a “field-fair” recently (which is basically missionary representatives from all over the world come and share the needs of their perspective countries), during that event God impressed upon our hearts the country of PNG, a country that is open to the Gospel, where missionaries can freely come in, get visas legally and easily, and do missionary work. The missions’ organization we plan to go with shared that they are ready to start TWELVE new works! Many of these new tribal works went to other villages and told some missionaries to send them missionaries; these people are waiting and wanting for God’s Word in their own language! Hearing that news, we shared that burden with our home church, and after looking through everything that goes into “tribal” missions we were all fully persuaded that God is leading us to PNG. This too reminds us of when Paul was heading to Bithynia but was “hindered” and then re-directed to Macedonia. We are so thankful to God that He has been faithful to lead us step-by-step. He gives us a broad stroke of His plan, and then just enough for each day so we can trust Him and allow His Spirit to work.
​We wanted you to know about this BIG change, it was hard to write to our families about the change and we are still “dazed” by it, meaning many things still have to fall into place until we can head to PNG. But, we are thankful to God that He has been faithful to lead us each step of the way. Please pray for us as we now have to go through the paperwork “hoops” to get into PNG, and like most people, we really are not too fond of paperwork 🙂 but it is a necessary “evil”. Also, please Pray for us as we plan to start deputation (raising our support) in June. If you know of any churches that are willing to meet with us please let us know. Our desire is to be in PNG next year, but for that to happen we will need many of God’s people to pray and provide for us. There is such an openness and readiness for the Gospel in PNG with many tribes still unreached. We were informed that there are 862 different language groups in PNG and less than half of them have had any contact with missionaries. Will you also pray with us for more laborers to go into the Harvest, for the field is plenteous. We appreciate your partnership on this exciting journey!
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