We have officially been in Vanuatu for over 2 months now! The time here has gone so quickly. It has been really a blessing to see the Lord continue to direct our path as we seek His will for our life. He sure has kept us busy. Read our newsletter to hear more about what we have done these past two months. Thank you for following our journey!
Ladies Sewing at Church: Headbands
Newsletter: August-September, 2016
Your Feet To The Unreached,
~Seth & Nicole Stokes
Teaching Phase 1 or Course 1 is a dream to many missionaries! To be given an opportunity and the audience is hard to come by sometimes, with some missionaries never getting the chance, or to find out the people reject the teaching except for maybe 1 or 2 families. That is a true history of missions, and we say that before we share our experience. We do not want to forget those who are serving God faithfully in hard places, but to also lift up God’s name alone in that He prepares the people and road to share His glorious Gospel, always being reminded that Christ is the one building His church (Matthew 16:18).
What we mean by the title “for the first time”, to our knowledge we are not sure if anyone else has ever taught the Firm Foundations teachings here in Vanuatu. If so it was not well publicized nor was it translated into Bislama. There are no large mission organizations here in Vanuatu like in other places, so when I asked a missionary who has been here for 16 years about it, he could not think of anyone who would have taught the Firm Foundations teaching. We are so thankful that we learned how to use the Firm Foundations teaching approach back in our missions training. Since then, we have taught the teaching in English and in Tok Pisin. Bislama is now the third language we have taught the course teaching.
Teaching
It was an awesome experience! The way the lessons are set up, you go systematically through major Old Testament stories, leading up to and through the Life of Christ. You finish with his death, burial, Resurrection and Ascension. It was a lot of teaching, and God blessed my (Seth’s) voice to be able to speak that long. The format of the lessons go through main points, verses in the Bible, expound, teach thematically, and then ask questions at the end to gauge their comprehension of the lesson you just taught.
Foundational Bible Teaching
It was so exciting to teach each class, even in the time of the day when the sun hits the aluminum roofing and we are all sweating. My (Seth’s) favorite time was the time for questions after each lesson, I asked specific questions to gauge their comprehension, were they tracking with the main points of the lesson, and so on. But then I left it open for them to ask questions that pertained to the lesson that was just taught, it was an amazing time for people to personally apply what they just learned. Many would ask questions what everyone else in the room was thinking. The Light level grew and the people’s understanding of how the Bible is one cohesive story became more and more clear, they realized the focus is God and His grace, not man and his work. Many people felt so free afterwards.
We did the 40 lessons over a span of 3 days, we ate all 3 meals together every day, having fellowship and laughing in-between the lessons. We finished that part of the teaching and then had an almost 3 hour Bible Q & A time, during which over 40 people came. No topic was off-limits, each time a question was asked, I (Seth), never answered “what I think”, but used the Bible and showed them the Final-Authority and All–Inclusiveness of the Bible. They are used to people giving them answers through their own personal wisdom, and from opinions, along with many things from their animistic pasts that convolute absolute truth. My goal was to disciple them in how to answer questions, to show them that the Bible has the answers, not man or his wisdom, and that we can trust our Heavenly Father. After that time, many left and commented how the Bible was the focus, and if we study it, it can give us the answers our hearts are looking for, so amazing!
The 37 Students
We took a day of rest on Sunday, I was asked to preach, and we had a great day of rest and fellowship, talking about the deep truths of God. The next day it was back to work, and my favorite part of the teaching. I encouraged and asked for volunteers to re-do the teaching, but this time I asked them to do it, with the understanding I was there to help coach/disciple them through the process. Remember this is a shame-base culture, with heavy focus on male authority with women almost looked at as possessions. So to my surprise I had 21 people volunteer to teach, with 6 of them being women! 8 of the 21 people had never taught before, they were so nervous, but each one of them after they finished their lesson, they smiled and walked away with a huge sense of confidence and accomplishment. We walked through the lessons and reviewed how to teach, the purpose in the lessons, and the other minutia of teaching dealing with the audience. Everyone loved that they are now better teachers, and have printed systematic teachings that they can now replicate in their own villages.
After I taught the course, and then they re-taught the course, so many of them left encouraged in their faith. Even though the whole thing was done in Bislama (the trade/national language), there were about 6 languages represented in the room. Each one from a different people group, they are more equipped and are excited to go back to their people and share what they learned. So many people thanked us for the teaching, they loved that it was laid out in a cohesive way, it is full of Biblical facts so they grew in their knowledge, and it even was used by God to lead one person to a saving knowledge of Him! One young man told me, “The teaching helped me understand the Bible as a whole, before I use to jump around while teaching, but now I see the Bible as one story of God’s grace to man. I am so excited to teach my friends and family when I get back to my village”. So many people walked up to me and said they were now going to go through the teaching with their people. Talk about replication!
One of the students teaching
We could go on and on with testimonies, because God’s Word is amazing. Many people are asking us to go teach it in their villages, host conferences, and asking us to finish translating the other lessons. God really used the teaching to take ahold of people’s hearts. God is too good to us, His Word is powerful, and we know your prayers were quintessential to the success of our time. Thank you so much for your involvement in our ministry.
Your feet to the unreached, Seth & Nicole Stokes
We thought we would give a brief update of our time with the local church here in town. The next blog will be about the Phase Teaching done in Big Bay, then the blog after that will contain some details about our time in Big Bay.
We are currently serving alongside the Pinero family here in Vanuatu, Jeremy is the pastor of the church we attend here in town, and he has made it grow over his several years of service with them. Several other missionaries have aided this process over the years and to list all their names would take some time. There are ministries throughout Santo, almost every day. We will share just some of the ministries we are a part of here in Vanuatu.
Church
Wednesday night Bible Study; Seth has taught at a Wednesday night Bible study almost every week since we have been here. It has been fun, making lessons, and growing in our Bislama along the way. Because Tok Pisin is so similar we were able to comprehend a lot since day one. It’s fun to go the people’s house, sit with the adults and kids, and have a good time of fellowship and prayer. Seth usually has to use a headlamp to read the lessons because the lighting in their house is not the best, and that is why we do not have too many pictures from this Bible study.
Wednesday Bible Study
Kids clubs; we have helped out with this ministry, the ones leading it change from Emylee, Matt, Jon, to Jeremy. It all depends on schedules and who is in the country/area at the time. We usually hold the programs at a local school, play games, have a Bible lesson, sing, and invite the kids to come to church.
Kids Club
Campus projects and activities; we usually have a meal once a week with whomever is on campus, share a devotion, and have a time of just getting together. It’s fun to just grill-out and chat with everyone. Seth gave the devotion this week and it was his first time preaching in English in about 2-years. There are always work projects on base to maintain the property and vehicles always need attention. Seth got to learn how to use a sawmill recently. That sawmill was later used to cut wood that will be used to build a church in South Santo in October. Building relationships here with both the white and national families has been fun.
Lumber for a Church building
Ladies studies and projects at the church; Nicole and Liz Pinero started a women’s discipleship class. Many women have shown great interest in this, and one lady realized she was not saved and now has a relationship with Jesus! Nicole and Liz are writing lessons and developing the program weekly. The ladies also have regular craft days at the church and have a short devotional and testimony time. On two occasions, they have had sewing as the main craft. They brought several sewing machines to the church and over 20 ladies came for a “woman’s day” at the church, the ladies loved learning how to sew and grow their skills as mothers.
Sewing Class
Being involved in many other ways; we are involved in many other projects weekly, from random quick maintenance projects, writing lessons, helping cook, relationship building, outreaches, being a driver, and speaking. This upcoming Sunday morning Seth will be preaching at church. We see there is no end to ministry here, on a small side note; between devotions, preaching, and working the Phase 1 teaching, Seth has preached/taught over 60 times in just about 7 weeks. He has only used one message more than once and that was at the request of someone else so that their church could hear the message as well. We are super blessed to serve our Lord here in Vanuatu!
We will post again in a couple of days about Seth teaching Phase 1 in Big Bay. Stay tuned! Thank you for your faithfulness and following our blog. We so appreciate your prayers, support, and encouragement!
Your feet to the unreached,
Seth and Nicole Stokes
Since so many things happened during our time these past 3 weeks, we will share several small blogs versus one or two larger blogs, so be prepared for some emails this week and next week.
First of all, thank you all for your prayers! Seth hiked to several villages, drank and ate with the people, and did not get hurt or sick, truly a testimony to God’s grace and your prayers. Seth did lose 7lbs but that is due to the rice 3xs a day and hike-for-hours diet. There is a new diet plan for ya!
We have many things to share with you about: Seth’s trips/outreaches, teaching phase 1, our involvement in the local church here in town, and our time with the people.
We will share about the outreaches in this blog. Seth went on two outreaches during his time up in the bush. The first outreach Seth went with Jeremy, and 16 other men and youth. It was a good time of fellowship, fun, and focusing on the conversation not so much on the hiking J. They hiked 11 hours one day and crossed the river over 50 times to get to one village, spent the night there and preached a morning and mid day service, followed by a 4.5 hour hike to another village to preach again that night, spent the night there, and then headed back on their 8 hour hike back to the main village. They hiked about 24 hours in less than 55 hours.
The Outreach Group
Pastor Gabby, Jeremy, Seth
Hiking The Trail
Seth preached several times and shared devotions with the men and youth daily. It was a great time of fellowship which was filled with constant Godly conversation, talking about the Word, life, and even discipling some of the young men along the way. It was a real bonding experience for the men, the youth will think about the trip for a long time. Seth knew that the focus of the trip was to encourage existing young churches, so he brought intentional applicable encouraging messages to challenge the churches to press on to unity and glorify God. The devotions focused on disciple-making, prayer, and perseverance. The churches were super encouraged seeing that they have not had a visitor in over a year, they were feeling forgotten, but God used our visit to bless and encourage them. We met one man named Jonas in town a month ago, he is the pastor of the church on top of the mountain the men climbed, and Seth told him he would come visit him, 4 weeks later he did. When Jonas met Seth, Jeremy, and the others on top of the mountain he said “I never thought you would come, but now I know you will keep your word… even to climb a mountain to do so…” after which he gave us a big hug and a giant smile. The other village also said similar things seeing as they have not had a visitor or heard from another church in almost a year. The question God pressed on our hearts as we walked to each place, “how far would you go to encourage someone?”. We literally climbed mountains, hiked for days, arrived tired, with the sole purpose to encourage these men in their faith, and by God’s grace alone we were able to do that.
Seth Preaching
On the second outreach, only 12 of us went and Seth was the only ex-pat/white person to go on that trip, they only hiked 6 hours each way this time. After experiencing the first trip he was ready with devotions and messages to preach. But God always works things out to make us depend on Him. We went to the village, where only one family is saved and is suffering opposition from the existing religion. Once again God used this time to disciple the young men who went on the trip (future pastors/missionaries), and encourage the more mature Christians and the one family at the village. Once again we see God asking us “how far will you go to encourage another?”. We went to the village and conducted a service for the one family who has no access to a church, and started to build bridges with the chief of that village with hopes to one day come back and do phase teaching, and see more people in that village come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Arriving at a Village
We were able to encourage 3 villages and remind them we are here for them, disciple many youth along the way, encourage local believers, and make relations to one day do full phase teaching in other villages. We were able to make many connections and impact several villages, God completely blessed our time on the outreaches. Thank you for your partnership and prayers, we pray that there is fruit added to your account from these outreaches.
Your feet to the unreached,
Seth & Nicole Stokes
*Phase teaching is a reference to Creation to Christ, Firm Foundations. There are several courses, 1: Creation to Christ, 2: Security of the believer, 3: Acts/the work of the Church, and to some up the rest we will call it phase 4: New Testament Principles taught through the New Testament especially in the Epistles.
*The team that served on the outreaches were a part of the local church in Big Bay, as well Jeremy Pinero from CSL/Reach Vanuatu, and some of the youth 17-26yr old men from the Church in town.
We wanted to give you all a brief update: Seth and 18 other men had a VERY successful outreach to several remote villages. They hiked for over 26 hours total in order to reach all the villages that they had planned to visit. They were welcomed with great joy as the national pastors were thrilled to have a group come just to encourage them. Many of the pastors were so overjoyed to know that they and their people had not been forgotten. The outreach brought such an encouragement to everyone! Some of the pastors they visited came back to the Bible school for the Chronological teaching course. It is now day 2 of the Chronological teaching in Big Bay! There have been more people (about 50) that showed up than previously expected. This has been a pleasant surprise! We have been excited to see the response from everyone so far. Please keep Seth in prayer, as he will be teaching for about 11 hours a day through Saturday and then preaching at another village on Sunday. Pray for him to stay healthy and for him to have clarity of mind while teaching and talking with everyone.
Pray for these people as they listen to the teaching!
Seth Teaching
While Seth has been busy with the Chronological teaching, I (Nicole) and Liz Pinero have been developing a discipleship program in Bislama for the ladies at our church here in Santo, Vanuatu. Our vision is to see this program used in the various villages that we are partnering with to advance the Gospel and seek to have mature believers making disciples that make disciples. We had our first class and it went really well! We ask you to pray for wisdom for us as we continue to write lessons and formulate a culturally relevant Discipleship course. This is such an exciting time in our ministry! Lastly, please continue to pray that God would solidify what He has for us and if pursuing a full-time ministry here in Vanuatu is what He desires. Thank you for being a part of what God is doing here in Vanuatu!
Your Feet to The Unreached, Seth & Nicole Stokes
Today is a big day! We leave the base in Santo and head up to Big Bay. We will be staying with a national pastor and his family. I (Nicole) will be there until Saturday and Seth will stay for an additional 2 weeks (or more) to go out on some surveys and outreach trips with several national pastors and other men from the local church here in Santo. Seth will also be teaching a course from creation to Christ to national pastors and leaders from remote villages, a group of young students at a local Bible school, and any other people who show up. Please pray for us as we go out on this trip that God would direct our paths and show us clearly if this is where He wants us to serve full-time in the future. There are many great opportunities in Big Bay and we are excited for this trip and the surveys that will be done as we pursue the Lord’s leading.
Prayer Points:
Well, to be honest… a lot! Where do we begin? Our first week here we got to experience Vanuatu’s 36 year Independence week. That week was a time of running around getting to know our fellow co-workers, the nationals we partner with, and the church we work alongside and getting settled in our new house. Right away our experience and time in PNG paid off! Bislama (pronounced “bish-lama”) is its own language but we have been able to understand most of what people are saying since day one. During our first week, the church held a pastor’s seminar and this is where we started seeing God move… but first we will share what else has happened. (We apologize for not adding pictures, our internet has been too slow for uploading pictures.)
We moved into a house that needed a good hard cleaning and several repairs. We worked on cleaning, fixing, painting, buying appliances like a stove and a refrigerator (the essentials), and of course beautifying the house to Nicole’s liking. Soon after we started hosting people from the team, which includes both foreigners and nationals (Nevans, “nee-van”, the people of Vanuatu). We are trying to get to know everyone and hopefully encourage them; this past season here in Vanuatu was a really busy and taxing season on many. We are trying to be a blessing and encouragement as the Lord leads us.
Ministry-wise: Seth jumped into a teacher role, teaching and sharing several times a week. He has started to lead a Wednesday night Bible study, help out with teaching and games for a kids club as well as help out with a youth program. Nicole is helping with administration and has helped teach some of the church ladies how to sew. Seth has done several small projects here on the base, as well as done a lot of driving.
Our Life here in Vanuatu Thus far…
We live about 15 minutes outside of town; the church we work alongside is about 10 minutes away. Vanuatu is similar yet so different from PNG; more clean (no betel nut here = no red spit everywhere), more safe , and in some aspects more developed. One missionary looked at us and said “I can tell you did not come straight from America, your expectations are lower, you are not so time-oriented, and you are appreciative of the small things”. It is true, to us PNG trained us to live almost anywhere warm. In Vanuatu, we ride in the back of pick-up trucks a lot, whether rain or sun. Most of our favorite PNG foods and fruit are here! For the first time in a long time Seth does not have to worry about someone breaking into our car or house, the culture here is completely different and way more relaxed. We have not seen a fight yet! While we were in PNG Seth saw a fight almost weekly, most of them resulting with people cutting each other with bush knives.
We are studying Bislama learning to change out certain Tok Pisin words for the Bislama equivalence. With Seth having to speak so many times already, he is feeling more and more confident in his speech. We are starting to investigate culture here, the “Cargo Cult”, along with the “John Frum Cult” are pretty dominate here. Just like PNG and it’s veneer of Christianity, mixed with a catholic heritage, a dash of animism, a pinch of eastern philosophy and shame culture, makes you think a lot when you communicate, especially when trying to communicate the truth of the Gospel.
What is on your agenda this next week or two?
Seth was asked by our team to translate the chronological teaching into Bislama. Seth will be working with the team and several nationals to do this task. Seth is really excited for the opportunity to work with the men, his passion has always been to do lesson development and translate. And now that time has finally come!
God moving…
Well, we told you we would share more about this. In 2 weeks, we will go to the region known as “Big Bay”. Both of us will go up there for a week and get to know the locals, live with them and investigate what are their needs are currently. This trip will have many parts to it:
One of the exciting parts to this visit is to see if God is leading us to that location full-time. We are making no commitments but are in desperate need of your prayers! The people still use their heart language, outside of the men and the pastors they still hold to their heart language, there are no Bislama schools near them so they will hold onto their language for several more generations. With all that being said, they want a Bible in their language, they have a small Bible college that they started and they do that all in Bislama so we could help out with that as well. There are truly many aspects to the ministry that sound so exciting! The main landowner in the area is also very strong believer; he is even the Pastor of one of the churches. He has invited us to come and be with him during that time, an open and clear invitation. That is so amazing!
Needless to say that was a lot of information but we want you all to be in on every aspect of our ministry, we want you to know what we have done, what we are doing, and where God may be leading us. We know for many of you who have been praying for us for years to be with working with the people group God has for us, this is all so surreal. This is a very exciting time in our ministry! Thank you for being a part of this journey with us. Keep holding our ropes; we cannot do this without YOU!
PRAY:
It is our privilege to be your feet to the unreached, Seth & Nicole Stokes
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!
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
Verse of the Day
Stoking The Fires 