Author Archives: Stokingthefires

This summer has been filled with many new changes. We have lived in many places and met many new faces. Whenever Seth was not connecting with churches, he was working for a local tent company and (when able) worked with his father-in-law doing odd jobs. Seth has greatly enjoyed his time working at the tent rental company, working up to 16 hours a day, alongside both saved and unsaved men (below is a picture of a tent he set up recently). He is very thankful for the ability that God has given him to work and is also thankful for the times he had to share the Gospel with multiple co-workers in various ways; whom which sparked the conversation (what a blessing!). Seth hopes that these coworkers think more about their conversations and he also prays that their conversation has somehow encouraged his fellow (saved) coworkers and employer. Seth was ecstatic that towards the end of the summer, he asked if he could pray over the meal for the whole crew, and one of the unsaved coworkers encouraged him to do so, and he was humbled with the opportunity to go before the throne of Grace (Heb.4:16) with a mixed group of saved and unsaved men. This job has blessed us by providing for our travel expenditures, as we had to do a lot of traveling already and are about to do a great deal more. We are reminded of Paul in Acts 18:3, where he had to work to help pay his costs’, and coincidentally, he too was a tent worker :).

We will be in the PA area for a week or 2 more so that Seth can work and save up for our travels while also connecting with more churches. After that, we will visit several churches in Michigan for about 2 weeks (part of that time we will be participating in a missions conference), then head straight to New Jersey for another conference. We might connect with another church while in the area then head back to PA to speak at our own home church’s mission conference. After that, it will be back to “tent-working” and scheduling more meetings (for the most part in the PA area), until our next Tour de America 🙂

Nicole has been our personal secretary, keeping all of our paperwork in order. She has also kept in close contact with some of the ladies from her jail ministry in Missouri and has been doing correspondence with them. PRAY for Nicole and for wisdom how to share truth with these ladies.

Continue to PRAY for our safety as we travel and for Gods blessing on our car. PRAY that the Lord would rise up people and churches to join our support team so we can get over to Papua New Guinea as soon as possible. PRAY for the hearts of the people who God is leading to partner with us prayerfully and financially. PRAY for compatible partners for us to work with in our tribal ministry. PRAY for those we hope to soon minister to, that God would preserve them until we get there so that we can give them the Light of our Saviour. If you, or someone you know, would be interested in having us share our ministry at church or over a meal, please contact us, we would love to share the burden God has placed on our hearts with you.

~Your Feet to the Unreached

We have traveled quite a bit, as we are hitting the “deputation” (support raising) trail. We had the opportunity to share with four different audiences in the past couple of weeks. We just started this new phase of our lives this month and are already tremendously blessed with God’s people being so involved and interested in our ministry. We have made new friends and solidified old ones. Seth had an opportunity to share at a church during their missions emphasis Sunday service as well as share during a midweek service at another church. He even had an opportunity to share and give a Bible lesson to a youth group dressed in “mock PNG garb”… yes, he taught a Bible lesson with his face painted, feathers in hair, and a grass skirt (check out our pictures below). We both dressed up, we had fun interacting with the kids, Seth played basketball, soccer, and football with the kids; they loved it! When it came to the Bible lesson time, Seth started with some beliefs of tribal people and told them in a story format, captivating the kids, and quickly transitioning to the message keeping the kids attention and finished with a Q & A time.

Seth had the opportunity to share now with two churches, and Nicole recently had the opportunity to do a ladies Bible lesson which she weaved in what God has been teaching her as a missionary wife along with presenting our ministry. The ladies were very engaged and loved Nicole (of course, who couldn’t). Seth has been blessed with plenty of work when he is not connecting with churches, this is a total blessing from God, so that we can provide for our expenses and start to save up for our not too distant “departure cost’s” 🙂 . We have also been blessed with being able to spend time with family when we are not traveling to churches. It will be hard to leave, but we know it is what our Lord commands of us. He says that we cannot be His disciples unless we forsake or even hate (compared to our love for Him) our family for His name’s sake. This verse has constantly strengthened us in this time.

Praise God for His constant provision. He has blessed our car and it is still going strong. We are just starting this new phase and have already shared with four different audiences, which are leading to many others being interested in our ministry and other meetings with churches. We have about 15% of our recommended support pledged with a few more possible supporters, Praise God! As soon as the funds come in, we head out!  Continue to pray for our safety as we travel across the northeast, pray we can use this time to grow spiritually and closer in our relationship with one another. Continue to pray that God would raise up partners to team up with us, so we as a collective group of God’s children can fulfill our God’s command of reaching this world for His glory!

Your feet to the unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes –Romans 15:20

There has been around 200 kids showing up for Vacation Bible School each night. Today (7/31/13) is the last day of VBS. Please pray for the kids to be attentive and receptive to the messages that have been prepared for them so that they can understand how to be “a child of God”, which is the theme for this year. We have been helping in the missionary story time where we have dressed up as tribal people. Each night we have shared stories about what tribal people used to believe and then what they believe after hearing the Truth of God’s Word when the missionaries come and teach them. We have enjoyed teaching the kids about some culture and language from one of our case studies in our training. It has been very enjoyable to paint our faces each night and dress up in tribal character.

As this month comes to a close, please take a few minutes to read our newsletter (click on the link below) so you can share in our travels and participate in the opportunity God has given us as we bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the unreached people in PNG.

July’13 Newsletter-Front                     July ’13 Newsletter-Back

To all of you prayer-warriors, if any of you are looking for things to pray for, we have some prayer requests:

TODAY

Seth will be teaching (with his teammates today, 5-16-13, at 2pm our time) at the local county jail (our outreach) on the betrayal, arrest, and burial of Jesus (to the men).

Nicole will be teaching (with her teammates today, 5-16-13, at 2pm our time) at the local jail on the resurrection and ascension of Jesus (to the women).

SATURDAY

Seth will be giving a baccalaureate speech at a local public High School in Kansas near our church (at 1pm our time). He will have 15-20 minutes to impact the graduating class. He has taken this very seriously; just praying and giving much time to the message God has given to him. Seth will be using James 4:13-17 as the thrust of his message.

SUNDAY

Seth will teach the youth group for Sunday school for last time. Seth will be focusing on prayer in Ephesians 6 to close.

Seth will be giving a “good-bye” challenge/message to our church in Kansas, at the church luncheon.

This is all being done while trying to finish well in class (we have two weeks left!), packing, cleaning our apartment, expecting our family to come down for graduation, and investing in staff and fellow-students while we are still here. We greatly covet your prayers during this time; know that your prayers might bear fruit for our God among these various audiences we share during these next four days. Please pray especially for Seth, he is averaging about 4 hours of sleep this past week. Thank you for partnering with us in this endeavor, we love and appreciate you all. We hope to see you over this summer and would love to set up a time to get coffee or something when we are in town near you.

​No, we are not pregnant! After prayerfully considering what country to serve in, while communicating with our home church in Pennsylvania, God lead us to Acts 13. After looking at the passage, we see the involvement with church leadership as quintessential in following God’s leading. With much prayer and fasting God, is now leading us to the SAME Island, but to the other side. We were “originally” heading to West Papua Indonesia but are now heading to the East side known as Papua New Guinea (PNG). For those of you who are not savvy on countries and governmental politics, that may appear to be minor to you, contrariwise it is very different. Indonesia is a progressively developed country, and is the largest Muslim country in the world, although there are sporadic extremists it is still pretty well developed. PNG on the other hand is very “under-developed” and is well known for its crime (mostly muggings). Because of the governmental situation, there has been a drastic inflation countrywide hurting many locals and missionaries. Some missionaries have had to leave because the inflation caused them to be “bankrupt”, and the locals resort to muggings and arson.
​We had a “field-fair” recently (which is basically missionary representatives from all over the world come and share the needs of their perspective countries), during that event God impressed upon our hearts the country of PNG, a country that is open to the Gospel, where missionaries can freely come in, get visas legally and easily, and do missionary work. The missions’ organization we plan to go with shared that they are ready to start TWELVE new works! Many of these new tribal works went to other villages and told some missionaries to send them missionaries; these people are waiting and wanting for God’s Word in their own language! Hearing that news, we shared that burden with our home church, and after looking through everything that goes into “tribal” missions we were all fully persuaded that God is leading us to PNG. This too reminds us of when Paul was heading to Bithynia but was “hindered” and then re-directed to Macedonia. We are so thankful to God that He has been faithful to lead us step-by-step. He gives us a broad stroke of His plan, and then just enough for each day so we can trust Him and allow His Spirit to work.
​We wanted you to know about this BIG change, it was hard to write to our families about the change and we are still “dazed” by it, meaning many things still have to fall into place until we can head to PNG. But, we are thankful to God that He has been faithful to lead us each step of the way. Please pray for us as we now have to go through the paperwork “hoops” to get into PNG, and like most people, we really are not too fond of paperwork 🙂 but it is a necessary “evil”. Also, please Pray for us as we plan to start deputation (raising our support) in June. If you know of any churches that are willing to meet with us please let us know. Our desire is to be in PNG next year, but for that to happen we will need many of God’s people to pray and provide for us. There is such an openness and readiness for the Gospel in PNG with many tribes still unreached. We were informed that there are 862 different language groups in PNG and less than half of them have had any contact with missionaries. Will you also pray with us for more laborers to go into the Harvest, for the field is plenteous. We appreciate your partnership on this exciting journey!
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Things with the youth group are going well!  Seth has taught through several portions of the Old Testament to lay down some groundwork of God’s character and His emphasis on the Word. Now we are going through Ephesians to see what God has for us today, as New Testament believers, and how we “ought” to live in light of what God has given us through His Word.  We (Seth and some of the guys) had fun the other week playing paintball on Sunday afternoon, something about shooting the youth director makes a young person smile 🙂  it was fun, muddy, and we made some good memories.

Basketball camp started! And the kids are having fun, there has been anywhere from 8 to over 15 kids that come and make Seth run around a lot. He loves it and the kids are so fun and cute! We are loving our time here in Kansas and are truly blessed by the people, we have learned so much, and have been humbled by everyone’s love they show for us. Jail, for the most part, is going pretty well, minus a riot that broke out before we arrived so we were not allowed to visi

t the inmates and then an ice storm, which made it, impossible to go, but otherwise it is going well, when we are there. God has led both the men’s ministry team and the women’s ministry team to teach on the life of Christ in different ways tailored specifically for each of the inmates needs. It is very important for these men and women to have a foundational understanding of the eternal Christ, coming down as a “helpless” baby, submitting to His parents, and going into the temple at a young age to learn more about God (an example that is truly mind-blowing!). Christ’s endless principles and perfect example on this earth, challenges every Christian to submit to the Spirit so that He can conform us more into His glorious image.

Pray we speak to the inmates and the youth at a “heart-level” and meet their particular needs as we m

inister to them. Our desire is to share with them Gods perfect attributes, Christ’s blameless life, while extrapolating principles to live by, model the “Christ-life”, and that we would encourage them to be more devoted followers of Christ.

Basketball Camp

Camdenton Jail

Our “live” language course is in full force with many details we can not post on the internet (but if you call us we would love to share our experiences with you) as to not ruin it for the next classes following us. In this course we are going deep into the mind of a “tribal person”. Our teachers who have experienced other cultures, have lived among a unique people group, and have learned language and culture get “into character” during this time. The teachers put on wigs, sunglasses to cover their eyes, wear old clothing, put fake piercings in their noses, and live in a “mock” village, with many sounds and noises that are familiar to the people group they are imitating. These teachers know their roles very well and at times I think they could be in a Hollywood movie and fit right in! Their acting is very convincing and they know the culture as if it was their very own.

When we are in the village we learn some vocabulary (greetings and basic phrases), try to become “friends” with the locals, observe every detail, take note of the surrounding village and where everyone lives, and even the quick little phrases they mumble to us as we leave, we must write everything down as it is flurried at us.  We then have to quickly go back to our class debrief while everything is fresh, then plug it all away in this computer software that helps process language and culture data…the mission calls it CLAware, I call it a virus 🙂  (because it can make your computer start typing in phonetic symbols or do random things).

As was previously stated, each person in the village speaks a unique language with a mixture of other regional vocabulary; with a sprinkle of English as the “trade” language it is not uncommon for us to hear a minimum of four different languages and at times even up to seven. If that was not confusing enough, we also do some Indonesian language learning during the week to advance our knowledge for the field God is leading us to. On top of that several times a week Seth does a live Greek language study with a teacher. Add in the sporadic use of Spanish in the house with Nicole’s upbringing in Colombia, life can get rather interesting.

How was our break? Well 8 places in less than 4 weeks, no more than 5 days at one place, and even a night in the car was what it looked like. That can some up our “break”, it was an amazing time of seeing family, friends, making new friends, and being encouraged. We left Missouri in the middle of the night to beat a snow storm, headed to Pittsburgh, got to be with Seth’s family for Christmas and to make some good memories with Seth’s sister Jennie and her family. Side note: Praise: Job (our nephew who had a swollen kidney) is doing great! He is so fun and a great baby. Pray for Scott and Jennie as they are still waiting for paperwork to go back into their tribal work. After Pittsburgh, we headed to New Jersey only to re-pack, take a nap and head to Virginia Beach with Nicole’s side of the family. We had a great time with family there and celebrated New Years. It is always great to see family, when we head overseas we might not know when/if the next time we will get to see them. Next, we headed back to NJ so that Seth could work for Nicole’s dad and be with them for a bit before David (Nicole’s brother) went back to Panama. Our family is literally all over the place 🙂 . We then drove back to Pittsburgh to strategize with our home church and Pastor to see how we want to begin planning for our deputation/raising support phase over the summer in order to get overseas as soon as possible! So many details involved in every decision. Then we finished the trip in Indiana at a church there. Seth had the opportunity and privilege to share our ministry vision for the first time. To our pleasant surprise, we welcomed with open arms and encouraged and blessed so greatly once we walked in the doors. The church and the Pastoral staff have such tender hearts and are seeking God’s will for their life as a church. The church is dedicating much time to prayer this year and to be more involved in any way possible in each of their missionaries lives. This church was such an encouragement to start our journey of visiting churches and sharing God’s vision for the unreached. All in all, we did not get “one” alone night together on our whole trip, but it was worth it! We were so blessed and encouraged through the people God has placed in our lives. We cannot even begin to show our gratitude to everyone we met with over our short time being home.

It is crazy to think about and to put into perspective that we are in our final semester, two weeks down, and 16 more to go. Time is flying and we hope it does not pass like the wind in Kansas. We barely got settled in and then went straight to work with classes, our local outreach, and our church in Kansas.

Classes: We have finished two classes thus far, these classes were building blocks for our next class and will be eternally helpful when we get overseas to plant a church cross-culturally.

Phonemics Class: This class continued where we left off with phonetics last semester. In phonetics we learned to decipher and reduplicate the sounds the mouth makes, phonemics focuses on how to write those sounds down in a concise and cohesive way for the indigenous people. It is said, “phonetics is an outsiders perspective to language, and that phonemics is the insiders perspective to a language”. This emphasizes orthography (the language in writing) and sounds the speaker thinks he is making vs. the sounds the speaker actually is making. As usual we will give an example J Cat, Butter, stop, top, and auto are just some examples. What do they all have in common? A “t” in English, but we are sure if you say those words and focus on the “t” you will notice each one makes a different sound, and yet we still give the symbol “t”. To make a long story short (from the example, in order); “unreleased t”, “glottal” “un-aspirated t”, “aspirated t”, “flapped r” are the technical terms for each of the sounds the “t” makes in each of the words above. Phonetically we can understand the nuances that are going on and write them down as such, but with phonemics being the focus, making the language more simple and understood by the speaker  “t” is used and we all understand what is going on. That is just one example, hope that makes you look at English differently J. With just that example in our native tongue, we will have to rely heavily on God to give us wisdom in order to know how to do that in a tribal setting with a language that is not our “mother tongue”.

Literacy: We had the opportunity to make a primer, using the tools we learned in class and a methodology that has been proven effective to teach illiterate monolingual people their own language. We put together words, syllables, and introduced 7 new sounds in our primer (look at our pictures to better understand). This class is key! If we ever expect the church to grow, they must have God’s Word in their language and they must be able to read it for themselves! We see a horrible example of what happens when you do not have Gods Word in your own hands to read in your own language when centuries ago it tore a country apart, and it went into a downward spiral since (in terms of spiritually).  The goal of literacy for an illiterate “uncivilized” indigenous people group is achieved when; “the people can READ what was written, UNDERSTAND what was read, and WRITE to another what was understood”.

Outreach: Jail started back up! We see some of the same faces and some new ones. Seth had an awesome experience with the guys in jail talking about Christian life truths. One man said that the peace of God is like driving down the road and a cop pulls you over, and the car is yours, right license, license plate, etc. everything! You feel good about the situation. And they gave an extreme example of what it looks like when you do not have the peace of God… quite a detailed description they gave, many of them laughed. Another guy put abiding in Christ in a way that you can not be attached to two trees, you can not abide good fruit and bad fruit, that doesn’t make sense. You must be attached to the True Vine (Jn.15) and bear good fruit. It has been a privilege to see God work in the men’s lives. Nicole had a couple familiar faces and many new ones; she started back at the beginning of the King of Glory book, to lay some foundations, and to show Gods faithfulness in His unchanging testimony in her personal life. Nicole will continue with the teaching where they left off with the birth of Christ.  Pray for Nicole and Jinny (Nicole’s teammate) as they strategize their teaching segments to best impact these ladies for eternity.

Church: It was awesome to see everyone’s smiling and encouraging faces our first Sunday back. It was great to catch up with many of the families and with some of the teens. Next week we will have a “first” in the teen group. Details to be given afterwards.

Side note: Seth has been given the opportunity to give the baccalaureate speech for Uniontown High School in Kansas at the end of May, many saved and unsaved kids will be coming to this event. Please pray for wisdom regarding what to say and to use the time wisely in order to impact these young and impressionable hearts for the Lord.