“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!
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.
We would love to talk with each one of you either through Skype, FaceTime, or a good ole fashion phone call. If emails or messaging is an option, then we can go that route as well. There are some transitions in our life coming up, and as your feet, we want to keep you in the loop every step of the way.
In saying that, we also know between the time difference and your personal busy schedule that connecting directly might not happen for quite some time. With that being said; if we do not hear from you by June 20th, we will post a series of blogs explaining our new opportunity.
We love each and every one of you, we appreciate your partnership in our ministry. We want to be faithful to our relationship and that is why we sent out this update. Those of you who are a part of our financial support-team should have received an email, and or a letter via snail mail, if you did NOT receive either we apologize! Please contact us so we can rectify that mistake of ours.
Here is a brief video of our time in Dem. We wanted to post a quick video while the internet was good. Just click on the link and it should take you to our you-tube channel. Thank you for following us!
Please pray for the Dem and their missionaries, as we are posting this video we hear the wailing of the tribe, a woman died giving birth. Death is real, and the only Hope we have is in Christ.
YOUR FEET TO THE UNREACHED, SETH AND NICOLE STOKES
This trip has been one of the most memorable trips we have taken thus far, not only do we get to help a missionary and their work, but day in and day out we get to be a blessing to our family. One of the hardest things for missionaries is not being able to see family, we love our parents deeply… but leaving our nieces and nephews was one of the hardest things. Not knowing when we would get to see them next, how much time would pass and how much we would miss in their developmental years. We are thankful for video calls, and we are grateful God allowed us to see them, because after this time we are not sure when the “next time” will be. With our ever-transient lives every moment cannot be taken for granted. In 2013, Seth had Christmas with both siblings for the first time since 2002! That’s right, just 3 kids and because of furloughs and missions it took over 11 years for everyone to be together, who knows when God will allow the next opportunity.
Walking up the Airstrip
Working with our Nephew
We have been able to help out a lot around the house; Nicole has done a lot of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids… even making special meals like homemade ravioli that take quite some time, which normally would be too long to make with the ever busy schedule in the bush. Seth has continued doing several jobs around the house, painting, sanding, staining, repairing, building, chasing pigs, cutting the airstrip with a hand mower (15% grade incline), teaching Bible and PE class, and much more… even running to the top of the hill to check on the water tanks because something clogged up the water. The houses are fed by fresh springs that fill up tanks, which when full, provide pressurized water. These tanks are several 100’s of meters up hill, pigs, animals and nationals sometimes bump into the hoses or tanks causing malfunctions that need to be fixed from time to time, no matter when that time comes.
Helping with Medical
Waiting for a baby to be born!
The addition to the porch
One of Nicole’s favorite experiences thus far has been hiking to a couple different ladies huts at night with the other missionary ladies. Many ladies are currently pregnant and Nicole got to be with several of the ladies right before and right after their pregnancy. This time was also very sobering as she got to see some animism first hand, one lady was having complications and so they literally laid a baby pig over her, said an incantation, and then they sacrificed the baby pig… this reminds us that though they smile and are friendly, they are still lost and need a Risen Savior. Please pray for the DEM team as they are learning language and culture so that one-day they can speak to the people and give them the Word of Life and Truth.
Thank you for your faithfulness to our ministry, your feet to the unreached,
Sometimes our life sounds like a never-ending transient journey, traveling from one place to another. We love the destinations, but packing and doing paperwork is something we have never been that good at, but God is gracious and lavishes mercy on us in our time of need.
We have done several bush trips now, but this one will be by far the most exciting… going into Dem-land! That is the tribe Seth’s brother works in, we are going to just hop the border and make the trip to go help them.
Seth’s brother and sister-in-law (and their team) are knee-deep into TCLA (tribal culture language acquisition), slugging it out with a tough language. We thought we could go and help them with any projects they need done. There are several work projects that Seth can do in order to alleviate (Phil. 2:25) time from Jay, so that he can put more time into language learning. Nicole will help with the household work; cooking, cleaning, maybe do some school with the kids. This too will relieve some time from Briana and enable her to get some more language time as well.
This is exciting for us in many ways; we as a couple have not been in a highlands mountainous-tribe, we have been in several swampy tribes in the lowlands, and even an island tribe, but this will be the first for us together. This will be Nicole’s first time in Dem-land, so that is very exciting! We can be a genuine relief to the ministry and enable them to put in more TCLA time, as well as hopefully encourage them. They have had many tribal fights and disruptions in their village recently, along with much medical care needing to be administered. We will be helping out in that ministry as well while we are there. Two more exciting parts about this trip:1. Did we mention we get to be with family? Nieces and nephew! Special times! 2. Seth’s mother is coming over for a short visit, which will make this good times all around.
Our Ride into the Tribe
Our Sweet Niece and the People
Seth Teaching Bible Class
We are super excited that God allowed this opportunity to come, we love bush life, we love serving, there is a lot of work for us to do, and how awesome is it to help others? Let alone help family?! We are so privileged to be your feet, and as usual, since we will be in the tribe, expect more pictures than normal!
Thanks so much everyone, we know many of you read our update and were praying for Seth’s friend. Shortly after the update was posted, Seth was able to get ahold of his friend, Seth prayed many times for a clear opportunity to go deep with this guy. God opened the door, through the topic of prayer. God used this topic as the catalyst for Seth to navigate through the multi-layer worldview that many Papua New Guineans have… animism, syncretism, eastern mysticism, eastern shame culture, as well as a litany of other layers like cargo cult, other occults, and a veneer of Christianity plague this country, really much of the South Pacific. Because of these complexities of the culture, it makes you think through many things before you share, in order to communicate effectively.
We always try to be very clear, putting on that multi-layered worldview lens so we can understand better where we need to navigate in order to present a clear Gospel. The Spirit and prayer must be the focus of each opportunity God gives us. Seth was able to talk about how once you are saved, you have a relationship with God. Through that relationship alone does prayer make sense, Seth was able to use that topic and tie it into various aspects of the finished work of Christ, and how salvation is completely of God. There is not a drop of works you can be added to the mix, you must make sure the focus is on Him alone, removing any focus off of yourself.
Seth left the conversation with his friend knowing that salvation is of God alone, believers have a personal relationship with God the Father, Jesus paid the debt for all his sin, and the Spirit alone will grow him in God’s timing, no work or service can add to Christ’s finished work on the cross. Seth also left knowing that his friend better understood prayer, and believes his friend has a relationship with Jesus! All of this is possible because of God’s grace, and YOUR prayers. Thank you for being involved in each step!
Stoking The Fires 