Daily Archives: June 28, 2016

Abridged Version:

We shared some information that is pretty BIG news for us, and to make sure we shared it clearly we wanted to repost some thoughts and make sure we communicated effectively.

A few short weeks ago, the pastor of our home/sending church; Pastor Kurt Skelly asked us to be open to a new ministry opportunity. Missionary Jeremy Pinero of CSL (Camp Shining Light, we apologize their website is currently under construction) in Vanuatu asked our Pastor if he knew of anyone who could help fill a need in his ministry for a period of time, while explaining to him some opportunities that were opening up to them in Vanuatu. Immediately God put us, Seth and Nicole, on our pastor’s heart and that is where this all started.

We are being asked to help fill the base manager position from the end of July through the end of November. We would be given some freedom during that time to get to know the other missionaries with CSL, learn the make-up of the organization and more importantly, go and be with the nationals learning culture and language. Fortunately, there are many similarities both in language and culture to that of PNG. 🙂

Some time in August we would go to the Island of Tanna with Jeremy Pinero and do a survey trip. Once there we would see the logistics of doing church planting there. We would then finish our commitment in November, come home, reassess what God just did in us and through us.

Once home, we would pray, fast, seek counsel, and connect with you all. We are not wanting to take any decisions lightly, but we also know God is the Author of Peace and He will confirm this or deny this pretty quickly in our hearts once we are there.

If we see this is of God, after connecting with you all (hopefully face to face), we would then resign with NTM, then sign up with CSL and get a multi-year visa and go back to the Island of Tanna and start the process of church planting in 2017!

Other details about this opportunity.

Our intent with this blog is to give some detail to our story and the story being told. This is a lot of information and you probably have many questions. Please write us, we would love to help and answer any questions you might have.

Our history with this missionary and ministry: our home church has supported missionary Jeremy Pinero for several years now, doctrinally he and the organization would match up with the core beliefs that we, our church, and NTM have. The organization CSL was started by Jeremy Pinero’s father, his father was trained by New Tribes. His father felt led to go to Vanuatu and thus started his own ministry, since NTM does not operate in Vanuatu. Jeremy took over the ministry more than 8 years ago, he has grown it to an NGO status and made good relations with the government in Vanuatu. The NGO status enables them to get multi-year (1-5) visas, as well as enables work crews from churches in the USA to come through quite frequently and serve. That process actually helps the NGO status, which in term helps the mission and its missionaries. The freedom of inviting others to come and serve is one of the many things we like about this opportunity!

Vanuatu is not a large country, and for most many are not sure where it is… and rightly so! It’s not that big! It is east of Australia and directly west of Fiji. In the early 1800’s the famous missionary John G. Paton served there and planted many strong churches, sadly he was just one man. And much how like PNG is full of unreached people groups, Vanuatu actually has more UPG per capita than PNG.

When God led us both into missions, our desire was like Paul’s in Romans 15:20, wanting to get to those who have not had any chance yet to hear God’s glorious Gospel. This opportunity is in step with God’s calling on our lives and one of the main reasons we are wanting to visit Vanuatu.

We were told that our time as base manager enables us to have some freedom. Not only do we get to know the mission and other missionaries, but we can get to know the nationals, learning their culture and language.

Bislamah is the trade language for Vanuatu, it is 70-80% similar to that of Tok Pisin, and the culture is very similar to that of PNG. From what we heard and are studyng, the cargo cult has a greater influence there in Vanuatu, making their eastern-shame worldview and their Judeao-Christian-animistic-syncretistic prone belief system get a little bit more messy, google John Frum occult in Vanuatu for a taste, but in the end not much more different from PNG.

When we leave PNG we would make a small detour to Rock Hampton Australia. We will go there to meet the home pastor of Jeremy Pinero and get a better feel of the ministry.

During this whole time we will need you in prayer more than ever, with so many transitions, unknowns and seeking God’s will, we will be fueled only by God’s grace and your prayers.

Once our time is completed, we will come home back to the USA. We figured out that we will have about a month from the end of November through December to visit all of our non-PA supporters, sadly since some are spread out as far west as Kansas, south as Florida, East as New Jersey, and North of New York we will have to make this quick and our time slots might not be the most accommodating… we apologize if we might inconvenience you. We want to get the distance driving done for 2 reasons: 1. It will be close to snow season. 2. If God leads us to go back to Vanuatu, and we would be able to go back quickly, we would have already updated you face to face, our support team. That means for most of our friends in PA we would not be able to see you until after the New Year. Our goal has always been to communicate to you, and to show our appreciation and that is why we want to come to you and see you!

IF God has confirmed this new ministry, we would then go through the due process of resigning from NTM and then signing with CSL, go through the visa process, and then head back to Vanuatu and do church planting on Tanna in 2017! We can see how this transition and time in PNG is of God; our time with NTM here in PNG gave us many invaluable tools and contacts to do the job of cross-cultural church planting. Paul served many years after his conversion in a local church and also served in some short-term trips before God finally made him the missionary as we know him today.

Please pray for us, we need it now more than ever. So many thoughts and so many things to do for each piece to fall into place (Ps. 94:19, 1 Peter 5:7, Matt. 11:28-30).

If you have any questions please fire away! We will get back to you ASAP! We have to pack for Vanuatu (and for coming back to America in November), we will be in Indonesia until July 13th, head to Australia on July 15th, and then head to Vanuatu on July 24th, only to arrive on July 26th… maybe arrive on Spiritu that day or the next, needless to say we have many transitions, logistics, bad internet and other things going on… so please pray for us.

We are thankful God has put you in our life, thank you for praying and supporting us. Thank you for your patience in all of this, we are honored to be called your feet,

Seth’s mom arrived!

Kids being kids

Improvising and putting roofing down

Dem-land

A new Dem baby!

Your feet to the unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes

Us

Here is our Youtube video summarizing what we just shared:

Before you read we want to apologize, we have not had internet for almost 2 weeks, the satellite in the bush went down. And when we come out to town we heard the internet went down for the whole Island on the Papua side… a shark bit the power line or something… that has happened before! So we want to apologize in advance if you do not hear from us, we might not have internet capabilities for 2 more weeks and we are not sure if this will even post, we love you all.

Wow, we are not sure how many of you have ever had to make decisions quickly, feeling the weight of the decision before you ever make it, feeling overwhelmed even with the magnitude of what you might be doing… and that is how we feel, today, right now. But God is Sovereign, He is a faithful Creator, and His timing and planning is perfect for His Saints. Why then do we have so many questions, and not simply trust God with a child-like faith? One reason comes to mind, “we want to be like God and know everything before it happens”. But that is not how faith works, He asks us to walk without looking, and pursue Him over all things.

Our desire from day one has been to reach the unreached, and that is what God has pressed on us each day since, for over a decade now. We as feeble humans, with finite perspectives have been trying to figure out Gods “plan” for our lives. Some would say “good luck”, but that is what He asks of us, He gives us paths to follow and then one day like Paul, He will say “don’t go there! Go there!”.

We have served NTM-PNG Wewak for over a year; we have been in the country 3 months longer than that, totaling 16 months. And less than a few weeks ago our Pastor from our Home/Sending church proposed to us this ministry opportunity that sounds “to good to be true”; that is in line with the calling God has put in our lives, cultivated and walked through with hand-in-hand by our Shepherding Home-Pastor Kurt Skelly, while being done in unity and with the blessing of our NTM leadership, as well as confirmed by the peace of God that only HE can give in such a short time.

So what is this ministry? We will give in depth details in the following emails, but for brevity’s sake we will share our opportunity. We are being asked to go to the Island of Vanuatu (made famous by the missionary John G. Paton, he was almost eaten by the indigenous people several times), and serve as a Base Manager for 4 months. The purpose of the title and position is two-folded. 1. It is a vacancy that needs to be filled soon because another missionary is going on furlough. 2. It will allow us to get to know the missionaries on that field, get a feel for the organization, learn the national language, which is 70-80% similar to Tok Pisin, and see if this is OF GOD. We were asked by the director of the mission to come just for 4 months and see if God is confirming this decision IN us. Our Pastor is convinced God will confirm this ministry in our lives, but he too agrees that this is the best route.

What does the timing look like, and what does that mean for our supporters? Well, we have been on the field for over 16 months, so that means we have accrued some break time, and furlough time. You know how some of you have used your vacation/break time for work projects, or some have taken personal time to go do some ministry? This is very similar. We will head to Vanuatu some time in mid-end July and serve for 4 months (we can get a tourist visa pretty easily). By the timing of things it looks like we would come back to America mid-late November. After the four months, we will go home and pray over what God might be calling us to do. From there, if God confirms things through prayer and counsel, we would transfer organizations and do the due process of formalities and paperwork. One of the main reasons we would come home is to see all of YOU (if possible, we know some have moved quite a distance)! We would love to enjoy your fellowship and explain what God is doing face-to-face. We would be able to get a multi-year visa for Vanuatu so that means we might not see you for a good long time, if the Lord wills.

One of the most exciting and attractive things about Vanuatu is that it has OVER 80 unreached people groups (NO Gospel in their heart-language), other major organizations, like NTM, are not there so this has a lot more of a pioneer mission feel to it, which is our heart desire. If the 4 months go well there, and God confirms this ministry in us, we would be asked to possibly go to the island of Tanna and begin, that’s right, begin a Church Plant there. During our 4 months in Vanuatu we are planning to visit the Island of Tanna in August. There are several languages on the island, there is an active volcano, tsunami’s are always a chance, the famous John G. Paton did go and try to witness to them, but most exciting part is: we get to have this possible opportunity to minister and do church planting in 2017.

We know this may be coming as a shock to some of you, imagine how we feel having to make all these decisions in quick succession? We are thankful for our Pastor helping us each step of the way, our supportive family, and our loving friends. We appreciate you all and value any input or questions you may have. Please Pray for us as we have many details we have to think through as well BIG decisions to make.

                  Seth helping unload plane

            Nicole with the Dem

Your feet to the Unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes.