Monthly Archives: November 2013

            Over eight years ago a certain man/pastor played basketball with Seth on a Friday night at a local college. During one particular play, the man cut across the court towards the hoop and Seth passed the ball to him, but he was apparently unaware of the incoming ball. This led to the ball hitting the man in the face and putting him on the floor. The man smiled (as usual) and got up, affirming Seth that it was not Seth’s fault but that he should have been ready. This man consistently kept inviting Seth to a special event at his church, after the ball hit him in the face Seth felt bad and went to church with the man. This was the catalyst that led Seth to get involved with that church, our now home church, which God would eventually use to shape Seth and to get him devoted to full-time missions. It does not always have to be the big things that persuade the heart of men, sometimes a friend who is consistent and faithful is all God needs to use for His work.

We started with this story in Seth’s life to show how God works. We just finished participating with another church’s mission’s conference but this one was special for us. The man who Seth hit in the face with a basketball almost a decade ago is now the pastor of the church whose conference we participated in. This church was the first church that; we first gave our missionary presentation to back in January, and the first to set aside a time of corporate prayer for us and laid hands on us to send us away to finish our last semester of training. This time was refreshing and busy (in a good way); we were with people constantly and made life-long friends. We know God placed us in the right home with our host family and that was fun, we had opportunities to share with the church, Sunday school, yes, we dressed up for the kiddos 🙂 and afterwards went to ice cream with friends still dressed in our “get-ups”, spent quite a bit of time making new friends over meals, and even had an opportunity in a more intimate setting to share more in-depth of the “nuts and bolts” of tribal church planting. That was one of our highlights here in Indiana, regarding sharing opportunities. We will be here through Wednesday night (20^th) only to drive through the night to get back to Pittsburgh by the 21^st so Nicole can be back home for her event that she is hosting for some of her good friends.

Tribal With Part of Our Host Family

Pastor Leeman-The Guy Seth Hit W/ A Basketball

Travels This Month

Although we do not have red shoes to click together, God has blessed us with a little red car that keeps on going. Since October 27^th until November 10^th, we have put over 3,500k on our car. The above map shows our path during this past trip. (Start with the dark blue arrow from Pittsburgh to New Jersey). We have gone as far east as north New Jersey, to as far west as Kansas. Seth missed two nights of sleep in six days to drive through the night. We left New Jersey at almost midnight Sunday night (Nov. 3^rd) and arrived in Kansas around 7:20pm to be a part of their mission’s conference.

In Kansas-Pastor Stine

Then Friday night drove to Ohio for a men’s conference only to be there just in time to hear the preaching. This was a total blessing for Seth! To see well over 500 men get together to worship our Lord. Coincidentally, our home pastor was one of the main speakers.

In Ohio-Men’s Conference

It was refreshing to see some familiar faces during our travels; we even reconnected with some of our teachers from our training while traveling through Missouri. We are waiting to hear back from several churches to see if they will partner (prayerfully, financially, encouragement) with us…Pray that God puts it on their hearts to partner with us in this BIG task our Lord has given us.

We have had opportunity after opportunity to share our ministry with churches and individuals; telling them what God is doing around the world and how they can be personally involved in our ministry. We continue to share the need of missions and specifically “unreached people groups” around the world. We continue to see a lack of awareness about this great need and passion for the unreached people groups of this world. We have been even asked why do you not go the “traditional route” of missions? (Referring to going to developed countries that have the Bible already in their language). We see in the life of Paul to preach, “where Christ was not named”, and that he was the apostle/sent-one/missionary to the gentiles (ethnic or non-Jews). Also, Jesus’ great command was to go (emphasis on being active), make disciples (this takes quite some time, Jesus Himself discipled men for 1-3 years), and to do this with all nations (ALL ethnicities people groups). With our Lord commanding us and by seeing the life of Paul as an example, this is “why” we are doing what we are doing.

We will be back in Pittsburgh on the 21^st for a short period of time. By that time we will have visited over 25 churches since September 15^th.  Nicole is having an “event” with the ladies of our home church and any profits that come from that time will help subsidize any of our travel expenses. More importantly, we just want people to come to that event on the 21^st because it will be great to see some familiar faces and fellowship; it will be very refreshing for us if you come, thank you!

We will continue to keep traveling, hitting the road at full-force because we know the need is great, with many tribes waiting for missionaries, and we know that in us in no good or special thing, but the message we have will forever change their lives. Please pray God provides more partners in this eternal work, and for our safety until we get to PNG. More missionaries’ die in the U.S. driving a car then on the field, so pray we leave soon 🙂

We have been in several churches already on this month-long trip. We recently participated in a church service that really impressed us. As missionaries going to the unreached people groups in Papua New Guinea, we were excited at what we saw. We walked in to the room with the walls scattered with cards. Each card had an unreached people group on it, a picture with the number of people in the people group, and their geographical location. There were thousands of them to give you a sense of being overwhelmed. That really strikes a cord with us. The pastor gave a brief message of how most missionaries are not sent to these unreached people. The guest missionary stood up and shared several statistics; that for every $100 we spend for full-time ministry, less than 1/10 of one penny is used to reach the unreached people of this world. Wow! If you do not like doing math here it is, for every $1,000 spent on ministry only $.01 (a penny) is used for reaching the unreached. The missionary gave an illustration (I will modify it a little) he pulled out a bag of candy, a bag of 1,000 pieces of candy. He divided the auditorium into 4 sections representing the world. ¼ the world claiming some form of Christianity, about ½ of the world has some form of the Bible (the unevangelized), this left ¼ of the auditorium representing the unreached people in the world. He walked back and forth shouting for joy to give candy to the “Christian” section and the unevangelized section. But every time he went to the unreached section (where we were sitting) he looked at them with discontent and walked away, showering candy on the other two sections. At the end he came to our section (the unreached) and asked us how we felt. Some people said “angry, upset, left-out, neglected, forgotten, hated, etc.” After the bag was almost empty he gave us the leftovers. This illustration hit us hard and we left even more encouraged about where God is leading us to serve.

We are sharing some of these things with you because they have impacted us, and we want to encourage you that there are people out there serving God at full force and that He is working through His people.

While we were at this church, we saw something else that was awesome. At each dinner table there was a box of supplies; cardboard, scissors, rope, aluminum foil, etc. for that table to build a tribal missionary house. We thought this was unique, seeing that we too will have to build our own house in the tribe. Each table had about 20 minutes (so not that much time) to build these houses. The missionaries then walked by each table to pick which one they would like to “live in”. We thought ours should have won, but oh well. This was inspiring because we saw young kids, and families getting involved and learning about missions, working together and trying to relate to the missionary.

We had the opportunity at this church to speak to the youth, and we saw it fit to dress up again in our PNG garb, we literally had to rush out of the service and take the tie off and put face paint and grass skirts on. We acted as tribal people, telling the kids about what we believed before the missionaries came to us and what we believe now after we heard “God’s talk”. The kids were very engaged, and asked really good questions. As we were heading back to get washed up, the pastor wanted us to go before the congregation and share our ministry with the church. It was a unique experience, to stand before a church dressed up with our faces painted and all…but as we know, always be ready :).

We are in Somerset NJ right now and just finished up a wonderful mission’s conference! God really blessed us through this church! We will be heading to Fort Scott Kansas tonight. It is about a 20-hour drive and that is just enough time to be there by Monday night for another mission’s conference. Please pray for our safety, our car, and our support team to grow. Every day we are reminded that there are 13 tribes in PNG right now asking for missionaries. This breaks our hearts; we have been trained, we are being sent, we just need to get to that goal of support. Pray that those tribes stay preserved until a missionary gets to them and present God’s Holy Word to them. As missionaries, we have heard it over and over; God uses death to motivate the living. Thank you for supporting us by reading our blog, we love and appreciate your partnership.

Building Tribal Homes

Speaking at Church

Unreached People Cards

We have visited well over 20 churches to date. Whenever we receive a phone call from a new pastor, off we go to visit their church. We have been in several mission’s conferences and have shared our ministry with many other churches, we have even sat down with some pastors one-on-one over a cup of coffee. As we appear

PNG Bins

before more and more churches, getting to know more and more Christ-followers, we begin to think more about our purpose and mission in life. We have opportunities to turn to the left or the right, and even when it is not comfortable and seems fruitless we know that this is where our Lord would have us. Before we began this current month long trip, we went through all our belongings and said “do I really need this?” many times. After it was all said and done, we have our suitcase’s in our car and an attic of 4 bins and a handful of boxes that we can call “ours”.

These are our earthly possessions, the things in the attic are not to be seen until we head to PNG (kitchen stuff, decorations to make it feel like home, etc.) and in reality, the house could catch on fire and we could lose our stuff, or our crate could get lost at sea when we head to PNG…who knows? We desperately desire to know God like Elisha and at any moment, burn all of our possessions and follow His leading.

To be like Paul and to be imprisoned and say “I am content”, we believe as Americans we have such a hard time to see God like this because our culture tells us to find our identity in our possessions. Even in our travels we see this; if we do not possess a piece of paper that identifies us with a select school we get cast aside because we do not identify with a person’s ideal. We pray we too do not succumb to our culture, and whatever we do or do not have may we fully surrender to our Lord, even our ideals.

Our Lord has been gracious to us in our travels, we have had the blessing of meeting new people and growing our support team. We see God in the small things; in our travels we drove for over 4 hours and this is what we saw for our fuel gauge in our car (a little less than half a tank in a 4 hour drive!)

Our Gas Tank

Elisha Burning His Plow

God is too good to us, our car is about to encroach 180k on our next drive (we will post a picture), and it is still going strong. With the way we have been traveling it will hit 200k shortly (Lord willing). Our current “actual” support is over 10% praise God! We started at a true 0% back in July and are at 10% now; we see many churches now through January. We are waiting to hear back from several churches for whether they will pick us up for support or not. We need 65% more before we can buy our plane tickets and head to the field. The practical reality is by January we will have been to about 40 churches, and if each one takes us on for support for 1-2% we could leave! It is seriously that simple, would you pray with us that prayer? It is truly that attainable. If you feel God is leading you or your church to partner with us would you please contact us? It was surreal; someone walked up to us and said “imagine, if everyone in this church gave up a $5 Starbucks coffee a month, you could be on the field today”. We both got excited and imagined that possibility. I say that to say this… it is really simple to be a part of and support missions. You just have to make a plan and be committed.