Author Archives: Stokingthefires

Travels This Month

Although we do not have red shoes to click together, God has blessed us with a little red car that keeps on going. Since October 27^th until November 10^th, we have put over 3,500k on our car. The above map shows our path during this past trip. (Start with the dark blue arrow from Pittsburgh to New Jersey). We have gone as far east as north New Jersey, to as far west as Kansas. Seth missed two nights of sleep in six days to drive through the night. We left New Jersey at almost midnight Sunday night (Nov. 3^rd) and arrived in Kansas around 7:20pm to be a part of their mission’s conference.

In Kansas-Pastor Stine

Then Friday night drove to Ohio for a men’s conference only to be there just in time to hear the preaching. This was a total blessing for Seth! To see well over 500 men get together to worship our Lord. Coincidentally, our home pastor was one of the main speakers.

In Ohio-Men’s Conference

It was refreshing to see some familiar faces during our travels; we even reconnected with some of our teachers from our training while traveling through Missouri. We are waiting to hear back from several churches to see if they will partner (prayerfully, financially, encouragement) with us…Pray that God puts it on their hearts to partner with us in this BIG task our Lord has given us.

We have had opportunity after opportunity to share our ministry with churches and individuals; telling them what God is doing around the world and how they can be personally involved in our ministry. We continue to share the need of missions and specifically “unreached people groups” around the world. We continue to see a lack of awareness about this great need and passion for the unreached people groups of this world. We have been even asked why do you not go the “traditional route” of missions? (Referring to going to developed countries that have the Bible already in their language). We see in the life of Paul to preach, “where Christ was not named”, and that he was the apostle/sent-one/missionary to the gentiles (ethnic or non-Jews). Also, Jesus’ great command was to go (emphasis on being active), make disciples (this takes quite some time, Jesus Himself discipled men for 1-3 years), and to do this with all nations (ALL ethnicities people groups). With our Lord commanding us and by seeing the life of Paul as an example, this is “why” we are doing what we are doing.

We will be back in Pittsburgh on the 21^st for a short period of time. By that time we will have visited over 25 churches since September 15^th.  Nicole is having an “event” with the ladies of our home church and any profits that come from that time will help subsidize any of our travel expenses. More importantly, we just want people to come to that event on the 21^st because it will be great to see some familiar faces and fellowship; it will be very refreshing for us if you come, thank you!

We will continue to keep traveling, hitting the road at full-force because we know the need is great, with many tribes waiting for missionaries, and we know that in us in no good or special thing, but the message we have will forever change their lives. Please pray God provides more partners in this eternal work, and for our safety until we get to PNG. More missionaries’ die in the U.S. driving a car then on the field, so pray we leave soon 🙂

We have been in several churches already on this month-long trip. We recently participated in a church service that really impressed us. As missionaries going to the unreached people groups in Papua New Guinea, we were excited at what we saw. We walked in to the room with the walls scattered with cards. Each card had an unreached people group on it, a picture with the number of people in the people group, and their geographical location. There were thousands of them to give you a sense of being overwhelmed. That really strikes a cord with us. The pastor gave a brief message of how most missionaries are not sent to these unreached people. The guest missionary stood up and shared several statistics; that for every $100 we spend for full-time ministry, less than 1/10 of one penny is used to reach the unreached people of this world. Wow! If you do not like doing math here it is, for every $1,000 spent on ministry only $.01 (a penny) is used for reaching the unreached. The missionary gave an illustration (I will modify it a little) he pulled out a bag of candy, a bag of 1,000 pieces of candy. He divided the auditorium into 4 sections representing the world. ¼ the world claiming some form of Christianity, about ½ of the world has some form of the Bible (the unevangelized), this left ¼ of the auditorium representing the unreached people in the world. He walked back and forth shouting for joy to give candy to the “Christian” section and the unevangelized section. But every time he went to the unreached section (where we were sitting) he looked at them with discontent and walked away, showering candy on the other two sections. At the end he came to our section (the unreached) and asked us how we felt. Some people said “angry, upset, left-out, neglected, forgotten, hated, etc.” After the bag was almost empty he gave us the leftovers. This illustration hit us hard and we left even more encouraged about where God is leading us to serve.

We are sharing some of these things with you because they have impacted us, and we want to encourage you that there are people out there serving God at full force and that He is working through His people.

While we were at this church, we saw something else that was awesome. At each dinner table there was a box of supplies; cardboard, scissors, rope, aluminum foil, etc. for that table to build a tribal missionary house. We thought this was unique, seeing that we too will have to build our own house in the tribe. Each table had about 20 minutes (so not that much time) to build these houses. The missionaries then walked by each table to pick which one they would like to “live in”. We thought ours should have won, but oh well. This was inspiring because we saw young kids, and families getting involved and learning about missions, working together and trying to relate to the missionary.

We had the opportunity at this church to speak to the youth, and we saw it fit to dress up again in our PNG garb, we literally had to rush out of the service and take the tie off and put face paint and grass skirts on. We acted as tribal people, telling the kids about what we believed before the missionaries came to us and what we believe now after we heard “God’s talk”. The kids were very engaged, and asked really good questions. As we were heading back to get washed up, the pastor wanted us to go before the congregation and share our ministry with the church. It was a unique experience, to stand before a church dressed up with our faces painted and all…but as we know, always be ready :).

We are in Somerset NJ right now and just finished up a wonderful mission’s conference! God really blessed us through this church! We will be heading to Fort Scott Kansas tonight. It is about a 20-hour drive and that is just enough time to be there by Monday night for another mission’s conference. Please pray for our safety, our car, and our support team to grow. Every day we are reminded that there are 13 tribes in PNG right now asking for missionaries. This breaks our hearts; we have been trained, we are being sent, we just need to get to that goal of support. Pray that those tribes stay preserved until a missionary gets to them and present God’s Holy Word to them. As missionaries, we have heard it over and over; God uses death to motivate the living. Thank you for supporting us by reading our blog, we love and appreciate your partnership.

Building Tribal Homes

Speaking at Church

Unreached People Cards

We have visited well over 20 churches to date. Whenever we receive a phone call from a new pastor, off we go to visit their church. We have been in several mission’s conferences and have shared our ministry with many other churches, we have even sat down with some pastors one-on-one over a cup of coffee. As we appear

PNG Bins

before more and more churches, getting to know more and more Christ-followers, we begin to think more about our purpose and mission in life. We have opportunities to turn to the left or the right, and even when it is not comfortable and seems fruitless we know that this is where our Lord would have us. Before we began this current month long trip, we went through all our belongings and said “do I really need this?” many times. After it was all said and done, we have our suitcase’s in our car and an attic of 4 bins and a handful of boxes that we can call “ours”.

These are our earthly possessions, the things in the attic are not to be seen until we head to PNG (kitchen stuff, decorations to make it feel like home, etc.) and in reality, the house could catch on fire and we could lose our stuff, or our crate could get lost at sea when we head to PNG…who knows? We desperately desire to know God like Elisha and at any moment, burn all of our possessions and follow His leading.

To be like Paul and to be imprisoned and say “I am content”, we believe as Americans we have such a hard time to see God like this because our culture tells us to find our identity in our possessions. Even in our travels we see this; if we do not possess a piece of paper that identifies us with a select school we get cast aside because we do not identify with a person’s ideal. We pray we too do not succumb to our culture, and whatever we do or do not have may we fully surrender to our Lord, even our ideals.

Our Lord has been gracious to us in our travels, we have had the blessing of meeting new people and growing our support team. We see God in the small things; in our travels we drove for over 4 hours and this is what we saw for our fuel gauge in our car (a little less than half a tank in a 4 hour drive!)

Our Gas Tank

Elisha Burning His Plow

God is too good to us, our car is about to encroach 180k on our next drive (we will post a picture), and it is still going strong. With the way we have been traveling it will hit 200k shortly (Lord willing). Our current “actual” support is over 10% praise God! We started at a true 0% back in July and are at 10% now; we see many churches now through January. We are waiting to hear back from several churches for whether they will pick us up for support or not. We need 65% more before we can buy our plane tickets and head to the field. The practical reality is by January we will have been to about 40 churches, and if each one takes us on for support for 1-2% we could leave! It is seriously that simple, would you pray with us that prayer? It is truly that attainable. If you feel God is leading you or your church to partner with us would you please contact us? It was surreal; someone walked up to us and said “imagine, if everyone in this church gave up a $5 Starbucks coffee a month, you could be on the field today”. We both got excited and imagined that possibility. I say that to say this… it is really simple to be a part of and support missions. You just have to make a plan and be committed.

We thought it would be fun to keep track of certain things like; states visited, beds slept in, and miles traveled. So from the end of May till today we have (the past five months):

Beds stayed in: 29 different beds

States visited: 10 states visited

Miles traveled: over 16,800 miles traveled

And counting… 🙂

Our traveling reminds us of when our Lord Jesus sent out His disciples, and how they were not to care about where they stayed, and were simply command to go. This is just a foreshadow as His servants for when we are to go overseas for full-time service for our Lord.

“And whatsoever house ye enter into, there abide…” Luke 9:4

“So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, WE are unprofitable servant: WE have done that which was OUR duty to do. ” Luke 17:10

Current Support Tracking

Moving? No Packing 🙂

This thought has run through our heads several times, how do I pack for this next year of deputation, while packing to send things overseas that we will use for the rest of our lives? It is a hard balance of what to keep and what not to keep. Especially when you do not have that much to begin with! Whether it is packing for clothes, kitchen necessities, decorations, tools, and pretty much all facets of life, we look at everything and keep saying, “do I really need that?” Ladies you especially should be able to relate during this time, trying to keep “cute and trendy” clothes while you are in the states only to transition to a place where you will wear all new stuff that will be culturally relevant, which will pretty much be a routine wardrobe. Keeping all that in mind while also being reminded that you will need some stuff for when you come home to the states to visit. So many options and things to consider and yet so little space, so many decisions over little trinkets and something as simple as a scarf! Also, to add into the mix is the anticipation; at any moment when we raise our support we have to be ready to go! Imminence co-mingled with patience and waiting

We don’t want to be that couple…

on the Lord while we await to hear back from churches, is such an interesting feeling we cannot explain. Various missionaries have told us that this process of waiting to be on the field is one that is entirely unique; friends, pastors, and other people will try to understand but will never be able to relate. We are slowly understanding more of what other missionaries have said as we head to the field. This is truly a unique process God is using to forever change us into His image. We look at all of our possessions and thank God for giving them to us, but we know that if our container (how we will ship most of out things) were to be lost on the way to PNG we would thank Him still for it because they are His possessions to begin with.

Trying to Enjoy Packing

Pray we keep an eternal perspective on all our possessions and that we continue to surrender every part of ourselves to the Lord. Please pray we abide in Christ so that even our very emotions during deputation stay God-honoring. We love you all and thank you for following us and supporting us by reading our updates!

Seth Sharing our Ministry

This past week was a time of encouragement, intimidation (to stand before our home church), fulfillment (it has been 8 years since Seth has committed before the church to go into full-time missions), and a time where one of us almost passed out! Our home church’ mission’s conference came to a close last week. As the first presenter, Seth started the mission’s conference by sharing the burden God has given us for our ministry. He also finished the week off with a missions charge to the academy students during their chapel. Seth was sitting in the front row waiting to be announced before the church by Pastor Skelly as he started to feel loose, turned white and even the pastor saw the physical predicament as he was announcing him to come to the podium. Seth got up and presented our ministry, everyone at church saw his excitement and they were unaware of what almost happened (with him about to pass out). There was some technical difficulties, miscommunications

Seth & Pastor Skelly

with audio, and lights that dimmed and brightened, but God still spoke through Seth and many individuals and some of the other missionaries said that he “set the stage” for the conference with his excitement. Seth shared the information of how many “unreached” people groups there are in the world and shared about what our ministry will look like on the field. When he unrolled the scroll of 2600 unreached people groups that spread across the floor for over 50 feet, the tribes typed-up in 12pt. font with no spacing the audience stared in silence while Seth shared that McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and Heinz have been to more countries than God’s Holy Word. He told the church “this is to our shame!” challenged the church to “keep pressing on, there is still much work to do” and walked away from the stage.

Mission’s Conference

We were blessed by the food, the company, encouragement, friends, and by the church in so many ways, it was truly an unforgettable time. Seth even got to preach a brief message in the chapel for the kids, and told them he/we have been praying for them for years and said; “I have been praying that this church would not only be a mission-minded church, but a sending agency, sending people all over the world”. He used three simple verses and gave three simple points and ran out of the room challenging them to follow him as he follows Christ.

A life that is short: James 4:13-17, -Shared that many people from his high school passed away already.

A legacy that is shameless: Phil. 1:20-2, -Gave the example of Jim Elliot and the way he lived, that in his death Jesus was magnified.

A Lord that is shouting: Matt. 28:18-20, -Jesus gave the great commission to his generation… which generation will be obedient?

Nicole dressed up in her PNG garb and shared stories with the younger kids for youth chapel, as always kids cannot help but stare when we dress up. Seth gave a simple message about serving God or rebelling against him. The kids wanted to take pictures with Nicole and touch our authentic nick-knacks from Papua. We are so thankful to see young men and women growing up in a Christian environment. This generation has the potential to shake the world for Christ.

Nicole in PNG Garb