Monthly Archives: July 2016

About to board our plane to Vanuatu! Here is our July Newsletter. Click on the link below. Thank you for following our journey… Next post will be from a new country!

Newsletter: July, 2016

We made it! After dodging so many potential issues of; flights, visas, and baggage problems we arrived in Rockie (Rockhampton, Australia). As we were driving to the church from the airport we saw familiar things like McDonald’s, restaurants and malls…. We were not in PNG anymore.

How did the trip go? Well, to be honest we did not know when we would make it to Australia, but we ended up only being 1 day late and 2 bags short, compare that to when we entered into PNG 18 months ago 2 days late and 4 bags short we feel like that was better. Before we left Indonesia we had to straighten out our visas and that was almost impossible; Idul Fitri (the biggest Muslim holiday) was going on so everything was closed for the week prior to us leaving, after 5 trips to the office and 2 days of trying to fix the issue we got our visas this past Tuesday. We said our good-byes to our family (which was really hard) and crossed the border Wednesday. After we crossed the border our driver told us the office had issues on Monday and Tuesday the roads were impassable due to rain, we thought “phew, dodged some more bullets”. We left Vanimo Thursday and headed for Wewak, when we were at the airport the man before us in line fell asleep and someone else took his boarding pass, this made us double-check and make sure we got our tickets (only 28 passengers every other day leave Vanimo)! We arrived in Wewak hearing rumors of strikes by the main airline (which we had to take the next day), they were not flying the day before, that day, nor were they planning to leave the next day… Seth was online and making phone calls all day, we still had to pack up our life from PNG, and say good-byes too! Super busy! Seth went to the airport at 4am (that is when they were suppose to open up) to double-check everything on Friday, expecting not to be able to leave, much to our surprise they opened the doors around 6:45am. Seth was one of the first to be in line (many things happened to get to that point), the plane came 5 and a half hours late, we were almost not allowed to be on because it was a full plane and we had more than one bag each, but at the last-minute we were allowed to get on (and there was 15 available seats on the plane). With the delay we were all but guaranteed to miss our connecting flight… but they held the plane because there was 10 of us connecting. The plane took off over an hour late and now we had to make one more flight!

                In Rockhampton

We landed with less than hour before our connecting flight to Rockhampton from Brisbane. Needless to say that’s when the delays snowballed; we got behind people bringing in bugs and illegal live plants in customs, we took a maxi taxi (which we were told that we had to take), somehow it took 4x’s as long and cost 3x’s more than it should have… of course we are foreign and ignorant so we got taken advantage of, and missed our last connection by less than 5 minutes! But it is okay, the next day we arrived in Rockhampton and 2 of our bags decided to stay in Brisbane, that too was okay because they ended up coming later that night.

We arrived in Rockhampton on Saturday and have been loved on by the Pastor and the Church already, we experienced our first western style church service in 18 months with great worship both in the word, music, and fellowship. We feel like kids again just being in a familiar place getting great food, western conveniences, and being with spiritually minded people.

We are taking this week as sort of “rest week”, we leave in 8 days for Vanuatu, we know that we will have to be ready to serve for 4 months in many capacities before we come back to the states. Pray for our trip and that it is a smooth transition, pray that we can be a blessing and encouragement to the CSL team, pray we can get our minds geared up for CLA again, and pray God gives us wisdom as we will be taking a survey trip in August to see if God would have us serve there full-time.

As always, we are humbled to be your feet to the unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes.

“I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms”. John G. Paton

The above quote is from John G. Paton, famous missionary to Vanuatu, to an elder of his church as he headed out to Vanuatu for the first time, he says it right, “ whether eaten by cannibals or by worms…”. We all must come to that point where we must choose God’s will or the comforts of this world. This past week we got to spend some good quality time with our family, we were able to help out a little bit in the midst of relaxing; helping with food, supplies, packing and logistics, but the hardest part of this whole thing is that it will all come to an end. We will have to say good-bye, and when we will say “hello” again is completely in Gods timing. Like we wrote in an earlier blog, we did not have Christmas together with all of the family (Seth’s) for over 10 years at one point! And that is part of the cost Christ asks of us in order to follow Him.

For the next 3 days; Wednesday through Friday, we transition from Indonesia to PNG, from PNG to Australia, and a week later we head to Vanuatu to see if God is leading us there full-time. Please pray for our transitions, planes, bags, visas and other transportation norms. We spent a day and a half and 5 trips to the Indonesian Consulate office to straighten-out our Indonesia visa, and now we start this trip knowing we received an email that there will be a strike in Port Moresby during the window we travel through… of course there is, such is life.

We covet your prayers as we travel these next 3 days, we leave heavy-hearted knowing we will miss our family but count it as a privilege to serve them as your feet. We are also excited for this opportunity God has given us to serve Him in Vanuatu, it is our privilege and blessing to be your feet for our King. Pray that we get our minds ready and geared up for our time in Vanuatu. We also want to say we are sorry to several people who wrote us, we plan on writing back to you once we are in Australia next week with better internet, thank you for your patience.

We love you all and we will try to keep you apprised of our situation once we get to Australia. Thank you for your prayers and support.

Your feet to the unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes

After many attempts to post this newsletter and several days with no internet… here it is… finally. Click on the link below. I am sorry that the picture quality isn’t the best (due to slow internet) but at least you can read what the month of June consisted of. Thank you for following our journey. Please keep us in prayer as we have some big transitions this next month. Pray for safety, health, and smooth flights with no luggage being lost. We appreciate you all!

Newsletter: June, 2016

Your feet to the unreached,

Seth & Nicole Stokes