Author Archives: Stokingthefires

“All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God, because they reckoned on His being with them”. –J. Hudson Taylor

This blog will be a little different, we will keep the names anonymous in the stories we will share…but know this, giants (of our faith) walk among us. Unless you get close to them and hear their story, you will never know what God is doing in and through them, you will never know the journey of how much God has brought them through.

Time after time people have come to Papua New Guinea to serve as missionaries, many come, but many go. This field is not easy: it is hot, there are diseases everywhere, infections and stomach problems are common, and you hear of someone having malaria as often as you see the rain coming during rainy season. This field has an astronomical attrition rate, but there are many times God shows His glory to and amongst His fallible and fragile creations. Here are 3 short stories:

1. The wife of a close friend of ours has had many health issues, sick from time to time removing them from their tribe in which they are working. Eventually they got x-rays and found a massive tumor in her brain. Everyone’s heart dropped and prepared for the worst. They have kids, they are doing an awesome work, and it makes you wonder what God is doing. As they were walking onto the plane to fly to Australia and seek better direction medically, the husband turned around and told his friend who had dropped them off, “I will be back”. Wow! People, he is saying with or without his wife he was coming back! When we were going around raising our support we met people who said they couldn’t do missions because they were afraid of flying, they like modern conveniences, they don’t like bugs or the heat, and yet this man saw missions not as an option, but as a mandate, an obligation (Rom.1:14). To go and share the Good news of Jesus Christ, even if he lost his wife…God spared his wife for now, and they are back in PNG serving full-time.
2. Another man had his wife diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor as well. They, with their young kids, were already in Australia and the doctors gave her less than 6 months to live. However, she made it only a couple of weeks, and then passed. Within less than one month after his wife’s passing, this man was able to collect his things and purchased tickets to come back to PNG in the near future. He just lost his wife, his kids lost their mother, and yet he sees the message of the cross and the worthiness of our Savior that nothing will hinder him from serving our God full-time in missions.
3. The final story we will share for now, another man and his family had 3 medevacs in less than a year. First time, his young son went limp and had no body functions for a while; the Lord healed him and the doctors are still not sure what happened. Second time was a severe case of malaria. Third time, this man’s wife had severe body pain, she began to have open sores and pustules that oozed, not the nicest of things. Her bones ached and it was laborious for her to move. Eventually they took her to the doctors in Australia and they didn’t know what was going on with her either. She came back with little improvement; this was a crucial time in the ministry. This was the time they were presenting the Gospel for the first time. As she sat down in pain she shared with the team, “I got it! I know what God is teaching us, He is teaching us to trust Him! He is worthy of our trust”. Such a simple statement, and yet so profound, this was said and done in the midst of a trial.

We pray you have been blessed as we have been by these stories of faith building. Our God is worthy of our trust and there is no trial too BIG to remove us from His will and serving Him in missions. Because He is worthy of our trust!

Your feet in PNG to the unreached, Seth & Nicole Stokes

We know what you are thinking, you think we just watched Pinocchio, but we can assure you we have not watched that movie in almost a decade. We have been busy spending a lot of time in the nearby village with the people. Instead of comfortably taking one of the vehicles we have as a mission and going grocery shopping by ourselves (the American style), we went to the village, grabbed a friend and hopped on a PMV (Public Motorized Vehicle). We are trying to learn to do things the way the locals do. It was Nicole’s first time on a PMV, and it was fun! The driver goes as fast (no posted speed limits) as he wants and around whomever he likes. Some of the things we experienced while on the PMV: sitting with 24 people in a 15 passenger van, red betel-nut spit on the windows, no AC, typical PNG music playing, the smell of lots of sweaty bodies close to you, and people loving to “accidentally” bump into us to feel our white skin. This is a great way to travel, it is really inexpensive; to town cost’s about $.76 cents. We went to all of the stores our friend wanted to go to, he showed us all of the “local” stores, and we showed him some places we have found that we liked.

To show our gratitude to some of our friends/language helpers we bought some dough balls (which everyone loves, including us), and a carbonated beverage, he was very thankful. Food is a typical way to show you appreciate them and value their friendship. We walked all around the town taking in the many sights, and then got on another PMV to head home. Quite a fun trip, it was great to learn a more about their perspective of everyday life.

Whenever we have a mealtime free, we usually invite our language helpers here on the base, Joshua and Amelia (and baby Russell) over and introduce them to American food and cooking; they loved looking at Jell-O, it was funny to them. We even taught them how to play the games Battleship and left right center! That was fun as well. Other times we are free we go to the local market to buy some local greens and maybe some small fish, bring some rice, and then go to the house of one of our friends in the village to sit down, talk, and eat. Little by little we try to live like they live, cook like cook. Have you ever tried starting a fire with only wet wood and a close to dying lighter? Seth had to learn. Nicole got to carry a baby the traditional way (in a string bag on her forehead) then she carried the baby and a bag of groceries for close to 3 miles. This is what life is like for most people in PNG. Seth learned how to make a mat (used to sit down, sleep, or rest on) and a fan for the fire both made of coconut tree branches. Seth learned to climb trees and Nicole is learning to make string bags. Time and time again we learn a new skill, the people use a term and call us a “real boy or girl”, meaning: we are becoming like them. They love seeing that process and are genuinely happy to help.

We are making great relationships, and little by little as we learn their language and culture, we try to point them to God, help them with basic hygiene and medical, show a difference in our lives to make them want God, and overwhelm them with love. We will randomly bring things to them to bless them; their culture doesn’t really have the concept of a “gift”. When we give them something freely using words to show it is free and has no strings attached, that they don’t owe us, you can literally watch their face in shock because they have never seen something like that before. It is nothing major, we don’t know their language fluently yet, but each little thing we can do we pray “stokes the fire” inside of them toward our Loving Father.

 Your feet to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes

Making a Mat

Cooking a Traditional Meal

Making a String Bag-“Bilum”

A PMV in Town

Greetings friends & family!

We have officially been here in PNG for 2 months and 2 day! The time sure has flown by! We are very thankful to be learning “Tok Pisin”, the national trade language and to be making great relationships with the people. Read our newsletter below to hear more. We could not be doing this without YOU! Yes, YOU! Thank you for being a part of our team! 🙂

Your feet to the unreached in PNG,

Seth & Nicole Stokes

March-Newsletter-2015

At least we are progressing! When you begin to learn another language you will always learn “words” in isolation first, then you move to sentences, eventually to full paragraphs. From there, you move on up to discourse level with hopes of one day being proficient (meaning you sound exactly as a national, not just with words and intonations, but also with culturally relevant topics and how you present the information in which you desire to communicate). There are 4 levels in which you can gauge a person’s language ability: basic, progressing, capable, and proficient. Within each of those levels (except proficient) there is a range of: low, mid, and high. Giving you a total of 10 language levels. At the beginning of this week, we had our first language evaluation. We were able to get in 30 days of actual language study, and after those 30 days Seth was marked at “progressing low” and Nicole was marked at “progressing mid”. This is awesome and encouraging! Our consultants told us we are marked in a place where we function at ALL times, but are able to communicate at higher levels some of the time. So that means at some point throughout the testing we were reaching other levels of language learning. So at this pace we might become “capable high” in the next 4-6 weeks. Once we can achieve this level we can then start ministering at a more full capacity and then start proactively seeking direction of which people group (tribe) to move into.

Speaking of consultants, we had a wonderful time with all of our consultants. We hosted 2 of the 6 men in our house, one consultant went to bed close to midnight and the other woke up around 5am. Seth loved this time so much; he was up after they went to bed and woke up before/at the same time with them so that he could glean as much as he could from these Godly men. We want to give a special Thank You to Aaron L. and his family who organized the weekend and gave us invaluable tools to learn language and to be able to plant a church that worships our Lord. We want to also thank; Tim, Aaron W., Eric, Brian, Greg, Jason, and Bill for giving us some much needed insight, thank you for sharing and giving us some helpful tools, thank you for your fellowship.

We learned so much this past week and were also given a lot of information about possible works/tribes with which God might lead us to. We are compiling a bunch of data and survey information on many of these tribes. Once we feel like we have enough information and a better understanding of what God is doing and how He is leading us, we will then share that information with you all and then ask you to partner with us in prayer. YOUR insight is valuable to us; please feel free to contact us and ask us questions to help us think through the information we have been given. We will not make this decision without YOUR help in prayer, guidance, and communication. This is far too big of a decision for one person to ever make. We will strive to progress further and further until we learn the national language, and then we will need your specific partnership in making this BIG decision.

 Your feet to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes

Language Check & Consultants

We thought it would be fun to share some of the things we see here from time to time that are relatively “normal” (for PNG), but might not be normal for those back in the USA.

In the United States, we pride ourselves in diversity, yes we all speak the same language (with variances), and we have a melting pot of different races spread throughout the continent. Here in PNG, if you do NOT have dark skin, expect everyone to give you a good long glance, you are the abnormal one, so they look.

When you are walking into town or walking through the village it is not uncommon to see a lady carrying a bag (bilum “bee-loom”). In America, this is normal, we call it a “purse” and it holds too much makeup, tissues, credit cards, and money, among other things. It is not only how the PNG women carry the bag (on their head) that is different, but also what is found inside…like groceries…many times a baby. Yep, seeing a baby inside a bag is quite normal here. It can be quite comical (to us) as we walk by a tree and there are some ladies sitting underneath a tree and you see several babies asleep inside string bags hanging from the tree. We are still getting used to this one 🙂

Amilia Carrying Russell in her Bilum

Make sure you always clean up everything, everywhere. PNG is in no short supply of ants, yes, ants. There is not a day that goes by we don’t see ants on our counters, in our kitchen sink, in our bathroom toiletries, sometimes our food, and it is always fun finding ants in your sealed cereal bag, extra protein! You always feel like something is crawling on you. Ants are everywhere!

When you live here in Madang, everyone stops and appreciates the wind. It is quite humid here so every little breeze is greatly appreciated and we thank God for a break from the humidity; the breeze is as close to air conditioning as you get.

Almost everyone has a garden here. There are markets but it is a common practice to have your own garden. We do not have our own house yet so we do not have a garden. Garden produce is the Papua New Guineans main source of food. Everyone looks at us like we are weird since we do not have our own garden.

When you go to the produce market, there are no refrigerated sections; all produce is on the ground with bugs near by and dogs walking about. This is one of the many reasons why you must wash your produce with bleach.

Nicole Buying Greens at the Market

While you are in the market, do not be surprised if you see giant larvae for sale, the locals love them. We can’t bring ourselves to try them…if someone offers one to us, we will do it (for the sake of the Gospel), but we will not volitionally bring this upon ourselves.

“Binatang” or Larvae…Yum?

Talk about going to the market; make sure you drive on the right side of the road, which is the left side. The driver is on the right side and all the switches are reversed, so it takes a little getting use to. One of our friends drove and they forgot they were on the right side of the road (which is the wrong side here), luckily no one was coming on the other side.

The language Tok Pisin has a lot of interesting things about it. It is a very descriptive language: in English we call water coming from underneath the ground a “spring”. In most cases we would say, “that is a spring, or this is spring water”. In Tok Pisin you would literally say, “that non-salt water is non-salt water that comes from inside the ground”. The word they use is a prefix that can denote cold, or clean, or water to wash with or drinking water, or water that comes from a river or lake, or is simply NOT salt water (and they might give the direction of where it is going). Short simple sentences alleviates most ambiguity, it is rather nice. The major thing we find that is hard in terms of ambiguity is the use of prepositions. They basically use one prepositional word for almost everything. Which if you are having a lengthy conversation or having multiple discourses it can be a bit unclear. Other than that, expect to hear many words like: pela, pla, bilong, blo, planti, lukim, tok, and long; you will hear them everywhere and in every context! Seth jokes a lot with the locals about that, they all laugh together.

With some exceptions in the US, you will typically find people who are reserved and mostly keep to themselves. Here in PNG, people are always ready and wanting to help. They always want to help us learn their language and they love teaching. Hospitality and giving up your time for another is common, you can pretty much walk up to a persons house at almost anytime of day, and they will stop what they are doing and talk to you. Being with someone and talking with someone is a huge lifestyle here in PNG. In America, we value alone time and solitude, but here in PNG all things come to a stop if a stranger walks by, maybe they want to just sit down and talk, maybe it is to get away from the sun for a period of time and or maybe it is to drink a coconut.

There are a lot of things we are still getting use to, like not holding one another’s hand in public (men and women do not touch in public), but it is common to hold a member of the same sex’s hand; it is a sign of friendship. Some other things we are getting use to is ladies walk in front of the men when in town for security purposes, cooking from scratch, no microwaves, the power going out regularly, keeping track of the data we use on our phone/internet, always swatting flies and mosquitoes, always taking prophylaxis for malaria, walking most everywhere and much more. All in all everything in our life is new except for each other. Though many things here are different from what we are use to, God is allowing us to have joy and appreciation with most things (we don’t-and probably never will-like the bugs) here in PNG. At the end of each day, we know God brought us here and He has given us a love for the people and the work He is doing here in PNG. Hope you enjoyed reading some of the differences; we will share more another time.

Boiling Coconut Milk to Make Oil

Seth Scraping the Coconuts

Cathy & Family Teaching us How to Making Coconut Oil From Scratch

Your feet to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes

 P.S. We have now talked to a handful of people via Skype and FaceTime, feel free to call anytime. If you have Apples products: iMessage/text us at nicolestokes22@gmail.com. We also have received our first American letter a little bit ago; thank you uncle John and Aunt Di! Funny story: Seth was talking with his mom on Skype while we were ay a friends house (a national), and he let his mom talk to them briefly… afterwards our friends were tickled that they got to talk to Seth’s mom and talk to someone in the U.S. for the first time. It is the little things that make people smile.

How Will They Hear?

We have seen some amazing things this done a lot of things putting more than 10 hours a day into language learning; that is a lot for the human brain, and considering it is only light outside for 11-12 hours. We are trying to get this language quickly! We have been given motivation that shakes the soul. We have been in various events and settings, from going about the village, to town, to Bible studies not in our native tongue, and much more!

We were greeted by our language helpers (Joshua and Amilia) when we came back from orientation and they said things like “we are happy to see you…we want to teach you our language…come on over and talk with us anytime”, the translation is not a one-to-one ratio but the message and heart is clear. They want us to learn their language, and they want to help us.

While we were walking in the village I (Seth) was talking to a man, he told me he wants to help me learn Tok Pisin (the national/trade language). He said he wants me to speak his language and to teach me the “right” way (talk straight) to speak. It is a funny saying in Tok Pisin, because everyone says the same thing, it is encouraging. But this is where it turned…he said he has helped many people learn his language, but just when they become proficient in Tok Pisin they leave. He said he loves hearing about the Bible, and wants me to learn his language so I can share about God’s truths…if that is not motivation, I do not know what is? To have a moment of transparency, we looked at Tok Pisin as the gateway to the tribe, once we get there, we can get to where we ought to be, but that is far from the truth. God brought us here at this time to seek His will for not just our tribal work, but to impact the people HE is placing before us right here in Madang. Pray we learn well, so we can share the Message of Christ with these people soon!

We want to share one more amazing experience with you. When we were at the base in Goroka (Lapilo) going through orientation, we were able to observe some “translation checks”. What an amazing and detailed process! The Bible translator first has to submit a “back to English” translation for the checker. A checker is typically a person who has translated a good-bit of if not all of the New Testament into a tribal language. The checker then reads and prepares several questions regarding the discourse analysis and the apparent grammar idiosyncrasies. You can translate word for a word, but just because it is a word within a group of words does not mean it conveys the accurate meaning to the audience. Example: five stones grabbed smooth David. This is a poor example, but it does show the difference in meaning. It is a familiar Bible event, but we would better understand the sentence if it were written: “David grabbed five smooth stones”. From there, there is something that is natural for foreigners to have…presuppositions. Who is David? Where did he come from? Why is he getting stones? Why five? Why do they have to be smooth? When did David do this? Where did he put the stones? Among many other questions that could be given, but that is why we must ask and think through as many things as we can. We have found this to be true in Tok Pisin. We keep looking for words like “for” or “because” but they do not exist on a word for word translation, the same meaning is there, but the exact words are non-existent.

After the checker goes through the back to English process, they move to an indigenous person reading the passage for comprehension. Next, there is another indigenous person listening and then regurgitating what was read. Another person shares their opinions on the text and repeats what the other two people had said (all three people are different ages and genders, the more broad the spectrum the better the testing can be). After that, there are several things done through the national language, and other testing’s of the translations accuracy. After fluidity and comprehension is checked, you move on to the next verse. We were able to listen to 12 verses being checked, this took almost an hour! There was a lot of work that went into the translation before it was even checked; all in all it is a thorough and tedious process. But when it is done, there is such a joy; it is amazing to see a people receive a passage of scripture in their own language and be able to understand it, truly there is no greater thing! The joy of being the first to ever hear parts of God’s Word in your own language, when so many have had it for decades, centuries, even millennia, truly there can be no greater joy. Be excited! Many tribes are getting translations finished and checked right now while you are reading this blog post.

Rejoice, God is faithfully building His church and preparing hearts, pray for missionaries to come to PNG. There is a great decline in missions and sadly, the attrition percentage rate is growing. The church needs to step its game up and separate its people for missions, send them (Acts 13:1-3), and partner with them to reach the lost for Christ. There is too much work to be done and too much opposition to give the Devil and the world another foothold. We need to step away from entertainment, pleasure, and excuses and answer the call for people to hear the Truth of Jesus Christ. I do not know of another place in the world where there are so many people asking for God’s eternal Word, pray we can answer the call to here in PNG before another religion does and sways the masses to an eternal separation from the one true God. Hell is real, and our time here on earth is short, let’s get busy for our King.

Your feet in to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes

*Make sure to follow our Instagram to see more pictures of our journey here in PNG!

Instagram: Get_Stoked_For_PNG 

We have been rushed through many different things these past 4 weeks; we arrived into the country later than expected, we had a week of modules, we spent over 2 weeks at our main base to get acquainted and know our co-workers and our support staff, and now we “officially start” language learning…or do we? We have a few more modules to better understand the language/culture and then it is language and culture learning full-force!

We were blessed for the past 2 weeks and enjoyed NOT sweating. The base we were at for orientation in Goroka (Lapilo) has a beautiful climate, warm and yet cool. We did not need fans over our bed when we slept, that was a nice. Now we are back in Madang (sea level) it is always hot and continuously humid, it is almost impossible to keep your shirt dry. We left for just 2 weeks and we found mold on a backpack, a book, and a couple of other items that were in drawers; that is humidity to the fullest!

Tok Pisin is the national language; English and other Indo-European languages heavily influence it. Understanding basic nouns and verbs is pretty easy for any English-speaking individual. But just because something is similar does not mean they are the same. Take for example the name “Seth”, fairly simple, one vowel and a consonant cluster, basically just one syllable… simple right? Well, in Tok Pisin they do not have the “Se” sound in their language, they have a “Sh”. They also do not have the theta sound or the “th” sound, but they do have a “t”. So, when we go out and share our names in the village they say “Shet” instead of “Seth”, and half the time the vowel sound changes, so what we thought was an “easy” word in a language that is so similar to our own, it actually comes out and sounds more like a profane word in our English language (which in Tok Pisin is not an actual word they use). That is the beauty of language for you, it is too late we wish Seth would have introduced himself as “Isaac” (his middle name), but the name has spread already throughout the village, so now we go around just correcting vowel glides when people say Seth’s name 🙂

Thought that would be a fun and interesting tale to share, so a name is not so simple and a shirt is never dry here in Madang. Please contact us anytime! We are getting use the Internet here, and sometimes it is non-present, but we will get back to you asap! Feel free to iMessage us at nicolestokes22@gmail.com any time! We love you all and covet your prayers!

 Your feet to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes

Amelia One of Our Language Helpers

Our Ride to Goroka

Hey everyone!

Sorry this is a bit late, we are still learning how to manage our time and how to best use the Internet/Data here. We have officially been here for a month! We would love to hear from you. Our contact info is in the Newsletter below. We love and appreciate you all!

Your feet to the unreached in PNG,

Seth & Nicole Stokes

February-Newsletter 2015

Hiking With A View

Learning About NTM in PNG

This past week has been yet another unexpected week; this week has been used to be yet another validation and affirmation that God brought us to PNG (Papua New Guinea). NTM (New Tribes Mission) PNG works entirely different than that of all other fields, this field is the largest field in which NTM has missionaries. With such a large team, they have been forced to develop and grow several bases and build up their infrastructure (NTM has been in PNG since 1950!). God distinctly brought us to PNG rather than another field as we were studying and reading HIS Word. We saw the pattern of Paul and Barnabas being sent out by the church of Antioch and how He used the church to direct their sent-ones, we too had our home church leadership direct us in “where” to go and serve. Our hearts were greatly encouraged when our church leadership chose PNG because we knew that the team and infrastructure here in PNG was amazing.

For the past week we have been at the main base in Lapilo (Goroka), where there are a multitude of support workers, it is overwhelming. The main purpose of us being here at the Lapilo base is for us to learn how NTM PNG operates and functions. So many welcoming people, all understanding and loving (and great cooks too 😉 ). We have really felt so cared for by so many people from those who do our paperwork, set up our internet, purchase supplies, language consultants, medical needs, even people who are willing to come into our tribe to help build our house, staff at the boarding school for 7-12^th grade (Lord willing when we have kids), and a plethora of other roles that help get us and keep us in the tribe. We truly see the Body of Christ working, as it ought to, no one looking at the situation as if being a part of the Great Commission were an option. All hands on deck, everyone doing their job to the best of their ability unto God, and all of them looking at us as church planters saying they are encouraged by us, and they are doing their job so we can be free to do our job to the best of our ability, they are rooting for us and want us to succeed. What a great team to be a part of!

Job Openings

            Speaking of jobs and opportunities, the NTM base here in PNG is always looking for workers, anyone who can come for several weeks, to 3 months, or even longer, there is always a void ready to be filled for anyone who wants to come and give aid. There are infinite options in administration and secretarial, construction, maintenance, teachers for the school, nurses, and SO MUCH MORE! If you are interested please contact us and we will direct you. God is able to use any of you and your gifts to build His kingdom here in PNG, no matter how much time you may or may not have.

NTM Lapilo Base

In 5 Days We have Our 1 month Anniversary in PNG!

            We have been tremendously blessed meeting many of our co-workers, all ready to impart wisdom and encouragement, and to give us the tools to succeed. It has been great to see “how” we get our visas, what it looks like to pack supplies as they get sent to various tribal works, and to hear the expectations from the field leadership. We have a couple more meetings and modules this week to finish it all off. Then we get back to our house in Madang, we start right back into national language learning (NCLA). Because of the meetings here at Lapilo, we have only been able to put 5-7 days of actual language learning in, and we have our first language evaluation at the end March. On a side note, Seth was given the opportunity to administer an I.V. and practice on one of the nurses here at the base, he was not as smooth as a professional, but was able to do it! That is a skill we hope we never have to use.

Madang From The Plane

So Much Work, So Few Hands

While we were on deputation, we shared with several people of how 14 tribes are ready and waiting for the Gospel. This was and is a true statement, but it still does not share the gravity of reality. The field here is truly ready for the harvest, many more tribes are ready for the Gospel. There are so many tribes that they cannot keep track of them all, 14 is just the number of tribes they can support as an organization, if there were more support workers who come, they could do more! Tribe after tribe, ready, and waiting, so the question has to be…who will be the ones to reach them? Who will be their missionary? Where are the missionaries to answer the call? There are fewer and fewer missionaries worldwide, missions as a whole for long-term missionaries is decreasing. Short-term trips are increasing. Pray that both young and old people will take the call of missions seriously and reach these people with the Gospel (the innumerable tribes here in PNG), before commercialism and Satan blind them and ensnare them more and make them resistant to the Gospel.

Right now, there are many tribes ASKING for missionaries; pray we can answer the call. For the time being, God has allowed PNG to be wide open and we can get 5-year visas, what more could you ask for? A people who are hungry, freedom to preach, long term visas (we literally get to walk through the PNG citizen line at the airport), and a well established organization…truly we are without excuse before our Lord to answer this call to missions.

Pray:

• Praise we received all of our bags and nothing was missing!!!!
• Pray/Praise for the many tribes right now that are getting translations worked on here in PNG, we personally got to see over 5 people who are currently doing translation and have a maturing church. This is so exciting! People who have never heard the deep truths of scripture for the first time, seeing things connect and understood in their own language. It was such an encouraging thing to see eyes and hearts light up hearing things that they can understand!
• Pray for the visa process for NTM PNG as an organization happening THIS WEDNESDAY; we have yet to have problems getting visas, but it is always a very thorough and stressful time going through the process, showing 3 years worth of information to affirm NTM’s purpose in PNG.
• Pray for our language check at the end of March, we want to keep progressing.
• Pray for us to have wisdom as to which region we should pursue, so that we can answer the call of one tribe to give them the Gospel.
• Pray for us as a couple, we see this time has been used by God to strengthen our relationship, but we do not want to be deceived and miss an opportunity to grow with one another and grow closer to our Lord and Savior.
• Pray for veteran missionaries in PNG the Stewarts, Mrs. Stewart has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and has not been given long to live, they have two young children.
• Pray for more missionaries to be raised up: missions to-date has a 47% attrition rate of those who leave by their first 5-year term, less than 30% of them have been for health reasons. A sad statistic that we learned as we looked at all the works here in PNG, that with all the tribal works that have been done and are being done here in PNG, only a handful of teams (typically 3 families per team) have stayed together from start to finish. Truly we wrestle not against flesh and blood, pray for us, other missionaries you know, and anyone who is going through training and heading to the field, they desperately need you prayers.

Your feet in PNG to the unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes

We have been in PNG for about 5 days now, we have been rushed around town and have been to several markets; when we use the word market, that is a reference to the national place where you get food, typically fruits and vegetables. The markets are outside, filled with people, typically women sitting down with big leaves laying over the ground with a plethora of fruit and vegetables to choose from, dogs walking, men standing and talking, flies buzzing around, and “buwai” shells littered everywhere. Buwai is what is most commonly known as “betel nut”. When we use the word store that would be referring to a common indoor grocery store/supermarket. This is where we would get pretty much everything else; paper products, cleaning supplies, rice, bread, box milk (which God has been so gracious and enabled us to actually like), etc. This society is changing so rapidly, it is not uncommon to see people walking around in western clothing, and then have a naked child being carried in a typical bag (bilum, pronounced “bee-loom”) from their forehead.

Here are just some of the interesting things we are learning about the culture, when we are in the market, we can ask for a second price (it is a form of bartering), but this does not work in the stores. There are so many things that are different, even how we walk! Typically in the west a married couple would walk side by side, but here the woman walks in front of the male. You would never have any form of physical touch (even holding hands) with the opposite sex in public, but it is NOT uncommon to hold hands with members of the same sex, it is a sign of friendship and does not have a bad connotation like in the west. We are getting to know our neighbors; we have had several sweet times of friendship and fellowship. Jephet is a young Baptist preacher, his wife Nashville is a loving lady, their son Dan is fun, and his mother Anna is a Godly woman (it is not uncommon for people to have a “common name” or English name, and then to have a name from each of their parents clans). Typically several members of a family live together in one household, Jephet’s sister, niece, and others share the same space, like Jephet said to us, “ we as Papua New Guineans love to have our family close to us, we love family”. They cooked us a typical meal, we sat around eating with a spoon and our hands, we talked till it got dark, we then sat around fire throwing coconut husks on the fire to make it smoke up and dispel mosquitoes. We smell like smoke and are covered in dirt often. We have been eating as much local food we can, and have not experienced any bowel problems yet. So far we have only found one thing we didn’t particularly care for. We are getting some basic sayings down now, along with nouns and verbs, we are able to extrapolate more language data now and are getting a little bit more confident in what we say. The pronunciation here is different to that of English, the vowels are made further back in the mouth.

We are trying to get into a good schedule, people in PNG do not have watches, so we just enjoy one another’s company with no compulsion of time. The only problem with that is we have class time with our fellow “whiteys” (Americans) in the morning :). But we are learning to get into the swing of things; we are learning how to interact with people, how to plan our day, going to the store, showering 2-3 times a day (it gets to a cool 79F degrees at night with constant humidity), and basic life. There are some similarities but everything is different. We have learned and experienced so much more, even our clothing. Men are pretty simple when it comes to modesty, but the attire for women varies from location, but it is pretty consistent with having high tops, and then have from the hips to the knee covered with loose material. Whether it be a loose long shirt over a skirt, or capris, or a loose dress, they typically wear what is called “meri” tops (pronounced marry). Either way, women do not show the form of their hips or inner thigh.

We have pets! Well not really, ants, geckos, and frogs are very common to see EVERYWHERE. We are not talking about outside, we are talking about geckos inside our house and ants in the kitchen, yay pets! Another thing we did this week was that Seth got his PNG drivers license! He even drove all around town and back to the base. Driving in PNG is an experience, people cover the roads, there are potholes everywhere, you drive on the opposite side of the road, and the steering wheel is found on the opposite side of the vehicle. We did not have any accidents or flat tires so it was a good day!

We are soaking in so many things, trying to get a grasp of both the culture and language. Pray we learn well. Pray we can encourage Jephet and his family, along with our language helpers Joshua and Amelia. They are all invaluable tools to both the culture and language, and are already dear friends in Christ. Pray we learn how to plan our days for maximum output and learning. Pray we stay healthy and strong. Thank you so much for prayers, we could not do this job without your partnership.

Your feet in PNG to the unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes.

Seth With His License

Joshua, Amelia, & Russell

A Fish Market

Market

Pastor Jephet & Family

Joshua & Seth Planting Banana Tree

Jephet’s Mom Anna

First Coconut