Monthly Archives: August 2022

This week has been filled with a flurry of emotions; some encouraging and also some that make our hearts heavy. Over the past two years, we have kept in contact with many of the Tiale people, but especially with the leaders whom Seth has been discipling since 2016. Though we did not get to embrace our Tiale family just yet, we have been on the phone with them for many lengthy talks. Just knowing we are back in the country, they are flooded with excitement to see the ministry grow, and more importantly, to see their walk with God grow deeper. All of the leaders (just like every Christian), have suffered from many challenges, temptations, and even people trying to deceive them… but God’s Spirit is greater than human wisdom. One of the men just shared with us the other day that he was reminded of the various teachings (that we gave him) when he was put through several challenges and during that time he said, “Jesus had to pass through challenges and so do we…” this was a great encouragement for us to find them seeking God’s Word and relying on His Truth in the midst of their trials . God has kept them faithful and given them wisdom to find victory over the struggles and “other” forces coming against them.

It is truly an encouraging thing to hear their voices, and to hear their excitement… many wanting to commit greater to reaching their own people (they desire more direction), assist us in learning the Tiale language, while also seeing the zeal from the Bible school students that will come next year. “Even though two years have passed, it feels like just one day, because God has united us together in His Spirit…” This is an encouraging thing to hear from the men we work alongside, helping and equipping them to reach their own people. One of the jobs of a missionary is to be a full-time cheerleader, constantly encouraging the people to press on while giving advice from the side, to do the job they very much can do. They need God’s Word (translation), they need discipling (training), but God’s Spirit is their driving force, and our role is to assist them in the process of reaching the Tiale people.

It is encouraging (and funny) to hear a husband-and-wife debate (lovingly) who will get to talk to us first, whether the husband with Seth… or the wife with Nicole… needless to say, the wife won that conversation  . The leaders are eager to assist more in the translation process, as well as desiring more teaching. They know there is much more they have to learn (Acts 20:20), and their humility and hunger is invigorating for us to hear. We love and care for the Tiale people very much, and we are always concerned about their spiritual health, so with this news and various updates, we can see that God has protected them in many ways, while also giving us insight and direction of how best to assist them in their walk with the Lord.

Continue to pray for the Tiale people to have this fire for the Lord and for it not dwindle, continue to pray for us so that we can be sensitive to God and how to assist the Tiale people… and continue to pray for our visa paperwork that it can be done in a timely fashion so we can get back to the village. We love and miss you all! We very much miss our family and friends back in the USA, but this is clearly where God has led us (Phil. 1:24), to make His name more glorified amongst the Tiale people.

We are excited to be back in the country in which God has led us to serve, to be other people’s feet (YOUR feet) to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu.

~Seth & Nicole Stokes

Our journey can be summarized in three phases:

1. Allocation
2. Administration
3. Renovation

1) We are mostly done in the allocation process; yes, we are in Vanuatu, but we have not made it to our island yet, nor to our home in the village. Arriving at the airport 4 hours early sometimes means… you are “on time”. Both in USA and in Australia we found that 4 hours was still cutting it a bit close. There were some complications with the Covid testing requirements (in Australia-PCR), on one flight we were not seated together and on another flight they had us on separate planes! But God graciously made it all work out, never smoothly or easily, but eventually, we made it here TOGETHER and with all of our luggage!

2) Now onto the administration side, mostly everything on the administration side is “finished” or “in process” (we just turned in the last of it, a few hours ago). Anywhere from license renewal, medical exams, insurance, in country flights, to satellite provider to most importantly; visa renewals. Everything is either finished or in the “processing” stage. Once we have confirmation of the visa renewal (hopefully as early as sometime next week), we will head back to the island that God has called us to serve on, Espiritu Santo.

3) Lastly, once we arrive back on Santo, we will then check on the status of our house; water, piping, and electrical (solar), along with the process of cleaning years of mold off of everything, and then renovate whatever our house needs, along with the various Bible School dorms and buildings that were affected by the many cyclones (hurricanes) that have hit our island in the past two years.

Our trip to the capital has been a learning curve; we have not been here in 5 years and many things have changed, which means more walking around to find where we need to go (we easily get our 10k steps everyday before we get home at night). We are also making many more connections with other mission organizations while we are here, we are trying to use our time as effectively as we can. All of these various paperwork’s are being processed as of right now, but we ask that you would please pray for our visas to be approved and processed quickly so we can get back to serving the Tiale people. This process is in the Lord’s hands now, along with the prayer of His saints, and in advance, we say thank you! Stay tuned for an update…

Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu, Seth and Nicole Stokes

We are now heading into the unknown… yes the place is familiar but the process of getting there is very much different.

Thank you so much for your prayers! We have enough of Nicole‘s medication for this next term, we have our bags checked and are currently sitting at the airport; already through customs, even though we had some hiccups already, (such as them having us on two different planes for one of the legs…) it will take about 40 hours to get us to our final destination (of this trip), several layovers and 4 planes later we will be in Vanuatu.

Continue to pray as we will start working on our visas hopefully on Monday while we are in the capital.

After that process is done then we will head to our island, and there we will have to do things like cleaning our house that has been sitting dormant for over two years… not to mention check the piping/plumbing for our water (our water comes from 2 big tanks filled by rain off of our roof), our the water filtration system, as well as see if our solar system (how our house os powered) is still good and running.

All that to say, we have many more hurdles still to come in the next couple of weeks. We are thankful for and very much in needing of your prayers. We pray that this is a somewhat easy phase of ministry so that we can get to the hard work of serving the people and discipling them into maturity, while also working on growing in our Tiale language studies.

We love and appreciate you all, God bless!

Your feet to the Tiale people & the country of Vanuatu,

-Seth & Nicole Stokes

THANK YOU everyone for your prayers for us to be able to get my (Nicole’s) medicine! They have been answered! We got my medicine today for our next term!!! Praise the Lord with us regarding this news! Pray for us to get all of the last minute details finished. We love and appreciate you all!

Your feet to the Tiale people & the country of Vanuatu,

-Seth & Nicole Stokes

Things feel surreal; with having had no certainty these past two years on our our departure date and now planning to be being back with our people in about two weeks, our emotions seem rather displaced. Are we excited? Yes. Do we have reservations because of the unknowns? Absolutely. To be completely transparent, we won’t feel “settled” until we are back in our home and with our people for probably about two weeks… Click on the link below to keep reading…

We are your feet to the Tiale people & the country of Vanuatu, ~Seth & Nicole Stokes