We hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving! There are so many things we can all be thankful for. We are so THANKFUL to be BACK here serving the Tiale people. Life here has been a bit of whirlwind, but a good one at that. There has been much fruit from the ministry here. Stay tuned as we will be making several posts soon about just what we mean by “fruit”. Also, we are trying to post more photos on our Instagram account so check it out to see more pics @stokingthefires.
There are many areas in which we still find ourselves adjusting: the language, relationships, house maintenance, property upkeep, the climate, the isolation and the constant work of discipleship… Click on the link below to read our latest newsletter…
We truly appreciate all of you whom we represent, here in the country of Vanuatu,
~Your feet to the Tiale people & the Country of Vanuatu,
We spent the day on Monday after the weekend events to specifically engage with our immediate core group of disciples (both the men and their wives). Seth sat down with the men all morning until well past the usual lunch time. Nicole spent the time fellowshipping and catching up with the ladies, singing some Tiale praise songs, and encouraging them to be intentional in the roles they hold as wives and to complement their husband’s ministries, all while they cooked a special lunch.
So great to be back!
Making a traditional dish (mashed plantain bananas, greens, & coconut cream-cooked in banana leaves)
Adding greens & coconut cream
Tied up & ready for the oven!
The traditional oven; hot stones
It’s done!
Seth and the men spent a lot of time catching up, evaluating how their churches are doing, seeing how the men are doing spiritually, asking how to better encourage them, having several times of prayer, along with specific teachings that he wanted to give them in order to challenge their walks with the Lord on a deeper level.
Not every conversation was filled with smiles, some of the men had gone through various trials, but their faith in God was not shaken. One of the men was with us when we had to medically evacuate Nicole, he said this;
“When you left, we didn’t sleep at all that night… we felt sick, and hurt… we look at you guys as part of our family. We are glad you are healthy now, and we know this “Covid-thing” stopped you from coming earlier to us, but we missed you.”
If you remember, when we left, we left not because of Covid, but because Nicole was medically evacuated. 3 men and their wives accompanied us on that trip out of the village, and when we said goodbye to them, they knew we would come back, but they couldn’t sleep that night knowing how they saw Nicole.
Throughout the meeting, we were able to ascertain some very important things. We were able to help give them a fresh perspective and renewed focus, as well as encourage them in many ways. There have been various groups going against them and there are, and were, many wiles of Satan that have been testing them in their faith. We set up a 2-year teaching plan and a discipleship program to hopefully strengthen the local churches that they are shepherding; this much needed direction really encouraged them!
We plan to be more intentional with these 3 men and their wives, as God allows, through living life on life with them, as well as having them in our house, intentionally discipling them. In our absence, God has raised several other men to be more bold in their faith (5 men in particular). We are excited to see God growing His church here among the Tiale people! We are eager to invest in these 5 men as well on a weekly basis, intentionally maturing them as the Lord allows. We continue to see and find many new opportunities to be invested in, between teaching, learning language, and discipling; there is not an end to this work. We are praising God that He allows us to be A PART of the process!
Pleases specifically for pray for these 11+ men that Seth will be engaged with on a regular basis, and the 10+ women Nicole with be discipling. We need lots of prayer for wisdom, discernment, and direction from God in this process! Please pray for the spiritual health of the 4 local churches we are closely connected with, each one being unique in their situations and are very much in need of your/our prayers. Thank you for holding our ropes in prayer! Checkout our Instagram for more pictures and videos: @stokingthefires.
Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu, Seth and Nicole Stokes
We want to share with you about two separate events we recently hosted in our village, one on Saturday and one on Sunday…
There was a lot work that went into getting things setup and prepared for the weekend festivities; going back and forth to the river (40 min. drive roundtrip) to gather firewood (to use for cooking) and to gather stones (used for baking/traditional style cooking), cutting the grass, cleaning up the area, decorating both the community house and the local church, along with preparing lots of garden food, killing two cows, and a pig, along with many bags (40lbs.) of rice. The culture here places eating together and working together as high core values, thus the relationship building, even in the setup process, was encouraging. It was a full weekend starting Friday night with killing of the pig and throwing it in the traditional pit to cook, which really is like an old school ‘crockpot’, and the events continued through until Sunday night.
Gathering stones
Getting firewood
The pig
One of the cows
The community house
The “crockpot” & meal prep
Getting “fired up”
Rice Delivery
Saturday’s focus was to encourage the Tiale people as a whole in regards to the Tiale Translation project, to help the locals who did not know its purpose and how it will bless them all (as a language group), as well as to encourage the Tiale people who are aware of its purpose.
Although not as many people came as some projected, we still had over 250 people come, and that represented about 15+ of the 37 (technically 41) Tiale villages. It was a great opportunity to influence and encourage as many of our people as we could. People lingered until late into the evening talking about the topics at hand, feeling both encouraged and motivated, our language helpers were especially impacted. Seth had intentionally prepared the men (those whom he has been discipling for 5+ years) to use this as an opportunity to engage people on a heart level and lead people to the Lord; they really used that opportunity well.
The event consisted of 5 speakers; our local chief, a local language helper (who is viewed as the “head” of our language translation project), a local pastor, a language helper who has assisted in Bible translation for over 25+ years (in a sister language group), and lastly, Seth. Each of the men expressed excitement and gratitude for having a Bible Translator come to their language group.
Some feedback from Saturday…
“I never understood what the importance of translation was, now I see the purpose and it pricked my heart… oh I want to hear God’s Word in my own language.”
– A chief who does not Jesus as his Savior
“I needed to hear this, even though I know Jesus, I don’t know him in my own heart language, I see that once I have God‘s word in my own language my faith in him will grow.”
-A local believer
“Even though I’ve worked in translation, I never really thought about what it will look like in heaven, that I will still be praising God in my heart language.”
-A language helper who has assisted in Bible translation for over 25+ years (in a sister language group)
Saturday’s Ceremony
Seth Sharing
It’s a FEAST!
The finished “crockpot” meal
Sunday’s events were replicated but with more of a focus on encouraging those who are already believers. We had 5 local churches (those within a 3-hour hike) come to our village so that they could be both fed spiritually and physically. When people come for events like this, they usually spend the night, so we took this as an opportunity to teach and train the core group of people within the local churches, while also having one of the local pastors give a Gospel-oriented message to those that lingered around. We wanted to make sure we maximized our reach and scope of our ministry, as God allowed. Some related the events to John 6, having spiritual encouragement and abundant food, while also having leftovers to take home.
The weekend was such huge a blessing! It was wonderful to be able to see so many of our Tiale friends after being away for so long and be able to encourage people inside and outside of our immediate village/language group.
Tiale songs in Church
Worshipping together!
More food!
It is an honor to be able to represent so many people and churches back home in the USA and to be able to be used by the Lord in one of the language groups in the world who has YET to hear God’s Word in their heart language. There are over 2,600 languages who have YET to hear God’s Glorious Gospel in their heart language to date, and it is 2022!
Continue to pray for us as we seek discernment with how to disciple the believers and evangelize to the unbelievers. Also, please pray for us as we start back into full-time Tiale learning mode, in order that we can more effectively teach the people and help them to know their Creator God more fully. We so desperately want the people to hear God’s Word in their heart language. Thank you for your partnership in the journey, we could not do this job without YOU!
Check out our Instagram to see more pictures… @stokingthefires
Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu, Seth & Nicole Stokes
We are BACK: FINALLY we made it back to our house in the village! We have been busy getting the house cleaned up and getting it set up once again. We left in a hurry so the house was not packed up the way we would have liked. But we are so THANKFUL that our house is intact and had little damage! Thank you for your prayers for our home! Below is our latest newsletter. Lots of exciting things happening as we kick off life and ministry full-time here. Stay tuned for some exciting news after our weekend celebration…
We are your feet to the Tiale people & the Country of Vanuatu,
We have officially arrived on our island, Espíritu Santo!!! What a crazy whirlwind these past few weeks have been! But we have FINALLY gotten here, with our visas in hand (PRAISE the Lord) and have already hit the ground running. Seth is currently up in the village at our house working on the deep cleaning and assessing the damage. Please pray for him as this is a BIG job. Thankfully things seem “mostly” intact. But there is definitely a lot that needs to be done.
Click the link below to read our current update. We love and appreciate you all and covet your prayers.
We have officially arrived on our island, Espíritu Santo!!! What a crazy whirlwind these past few weeks have been! But we have FINALLY gotten here, with our visas in hand (PRAISE the Lord) and have already hit the ground running. Seth is currently up in the village at our house working on the deep cleaning and assessing the damage. Please pray for him as this is a BIG job. Thankfully things seem “mostly” intact. But there is definitely a lot that needs to be done.
Click the link below to read our current update. We love and appreciate you all and covet your prayers.
This week has been filled with a flurry of emotions; some encouraging and also some that make our hearts heavy. Over the past two years, we have kept in contact with many of the Tiale people, but especially with the leaders whom Seth has been discipling since 2016. Though we did not get to embrace our Tiale family just yet, we have been on the phone with them for many lengthy talks. Just knowing we are back in the country, they are flooded with excitement to see the ministry grow, and more importantly, to see their walk with God grow deeper. All of the leaders (just like every Christian), have suffered from many challenges, temptations, and even people trying to deceive them… but God’s Spirit is greater than human wisdom. One of the men just shared with us the other day that he was reminded of the various teachings (that we gave him) when he was put through several challenges and during that time he said, “Jesus had to pass through challenges and so do we…” this was a great encouragement for us to find them seeking God’s Word and relying on His Truth in the midst of their trials . God has kept them faithful and given them wisdom to find victory over the struggles and “other” forces coming against them.
It is truly an encouraging thing to hear their voices, and to hear their excitement… many wanting to commit greater to reaching their own people (they desire more direction), assist us in learning the Tiale language, while also seeing the zeal from the Bible school students that will come next year. “Even though two years have passed, it feels like just one day, because God has united us together in His Spirit…” This is an encouraging thing to hear from the men we work alongside, helping and equipping them to reach their own people. One of the jobs of a missionary is to be a full-time cheerleader, constantly encouraging the people to press on while giving advice from the side, to do the job they very much can do. They need God’s Word (translation), they need discipling (training), but God’s Spirit is their driving force, and our role is to assist them in the process of reaching the Tiale people.
It is encouraging (and funny) to hear a husband-and-wife debate (lovingly) who will get to talk to us first, whether the husband with Seth… or the wife with Nicole… needless to say, the wife won that conversation . The leaders are eager to assist more in the translation process, as well as desiring more teaching. They know there is much more they have to learn (Acts 20:20), and their humility and hunger is invigorating for us to hear. We love and care for the Tiale people very much, and we are always concerned about their spiritual health, so with this news and various updates, we can see that God has protected them in many ways, while also giving us insight and direction of how best to assist them in their walk with the Lord.
Continue to pray for the Tiale people to have this fire for the Lord and for it not dwindle, continue to pray for us so that we can be sensitive to God and how to assist the Tiale people… and continue to pray for our visa paperwork that it can be done in a timely fashion so we can get back to the village. We love and miss you all! We very much miss our family and friends back in the USA, but this is clearly where God has led us (Phil. 1:24), to make His name more glorified amongst the Tiale people.
We are excited to be back in the country in which God has led us to serve, to be other people’s feet (YOUR feet) to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu.
1) We are mostly done in the allocation process; yes, we are in Vanuatu, but we have not made it to our island yet, nor to our home in the village. Arriving at the airport 4 hours early sometimes means… you are “on time”. Both in USA and in Australia we found that 4 hours was still cutting it a bit close. There were some complications with the Covid testing requirements (in Australia-PCR), on one flight we were not seated together and on another flight they had us on separate planes! But God graciously made it all work out, never smoothly or easily, but eventually, we made it here TOGETHER and with all of our luggage!
2) Now onto the administration side, mostly everything on the administration side is “finished” or “in process” (we just turned in the last of it, a few hours ago). Anywhere from license renewal, medical exams, insurance, in country flights, to satellite provider to most importantly; visa renewals. Everything is either finished or in the “processing” stage. Once we have confirmation of the visa renewal (hopefully as early as sometime next week), we will head back to the island that God has called us to serve on, Espiritu Santo.
3) Lastly, once we arrive back on Santo, we will then check on the status of our house; water, piping, and electrical (solar), along with the process of cleaning years of mold off of everything, and then renovate whatever our house needs, along with the various Bible School dorms and buildings that were affected by the many cyclones (hurricanes) that have hit our island in the past two years.
The View from our Place
Our trip to the capital has been a learning curve; we have not been here in 5 years and many things have changed, which means more walking around to find where we need to go (we easily get our 10k steps everyday before we get home at night). We are also making many more connections with other mission organizations while we are here, we are trying to use our time as effectively as we can. All of these various paperwork’s are being processed as of right now, but we ask that you would please pray for our visas to be approved and processed quickly so we can get back to serving the Tiale people. This process is in the Lord’s hands now, along with the prayer of His saints, and in advance, we say thank you! Stay tuned for an update…
Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu, Seth and Nicole Stokes
We are now heading into the unknown… yes the place is familiar but the process of getting there is very much different.
Thank you so much for your prayers! We have enough of Nicole‘s medication for this next term, we have our bags checked and are currently sitting at the airport; already through customs, even though we had some hiccups already, (such as them having us on two different planes for one of the legs…) it will take about 40 hours to get us to our final destination (of this trip), several layovers and 4 planes later we will be in Vanuatu.
Continue to pray as we will start working on our visas hopefully on Monday while we are in the capital.
After that process is done then we will head to our island, and there we will have to do things like cleaning our house that has been sitting dormant for over two years… not to mention check the piping/plumbing for our water (our water comes from 2 big tanks filled by rain off of our roof), our the water filtration system, as well as see if our solar system (how our house os powered) is still good and running.
All that to say, we have many more hurdles still to come in the next couple of weeks. We are thankful for and very much in needing of your prayers. We pray that this is a somewhat easy phase of ministry so that we can get to the hard work of serving the people and discipling them into maturity, while also working on growing in our Tiale language studies.
We love and appreciate you all, God bless!
Your feet to the Tiale people & the country of Vanuatu,
THANK YOU everyone for your prayers for us to be able to get my (Nicole’s) medicine! They have been answered! We got my medicine today for our next term!!! Praise the Lord with us regarding this news! Pray for us to get all of the last minute details finished. We love and appreciate you all!
Your feet to the Tiale people & the country of Vanuatu,
Stoking The Fires 