Thank you all so much for your prayers, texts and concerns for Seth! He is home and on the road to recovery. Please continue to pray for his pain management; the nerve block didn’t work and pain medications usually don’t work on him… needless to say he’s feeling everything right now and is in a good bit of pain. The doctor said they don’t give out stronger medications. The surgery was successful and he is expected to make a full recovery. Thank you for your prayers, we greatly appreciate them!
Getting the dressing off…It will be a nice scar!
Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu,
Seth is going to have surgery at 7:45am today to attach his ruptured patellar tendon on his left leg.
Our dear friend came to pray with Seth!
We appreciate your prayers in two ways: 1. That the doctor does everything correctly 2. That Seth has speedy recovery.
We usually are the ones driving all over the place to visit family and friends… but this will ground us for this Christmas season. God is gracious in that we understand what “the Prince of Peace” looks like in many ways. Thank you for everything. God bless!
When it Rains… We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, although this is a time for us North Americans to typically think of cold weather, hot chocolate, redundant jingles of your favourite Christmas playlist, time with family, and thinking about the greatest Gift God gave to us in the Incarnation of Jesus. However, this time of year is typically the hottest season in Vanuatu. This week the flooding has already begun, with the rivers being impassible, temperatures in the low 100’s, humidity nearing 100%… it truly is the mark of the rainy season…
Thank you for continuing to follow our journey! We would love to hear from you, so please feel free to write us or we could even plan a video chat. We really appreciate you all!
Your feet to the Tiale people & the country of Vanuatu,
As the leaves are changing and the air temperatures are dropping, we are eager to get back to Vanuatu! Join us today or choose another day this week that is best for you to fast and pray with us for our return to Vanuatu. Many of you have been asking us, when are you guys heading back? Lord willing, we will head back to Vanuatu (as of now, our best guess) the end of November. This is our current projection, but due to the unpredictability of Covid-19, we are patiently waiting on God’s timing.
3 Tiale Teachers
Graduating students (2 not pictured)
If you want to hear more about what God is doing in Vanuatu, click on our newsletter below…
What is going on back in the village of our home in Vanuatu?
One of our greatest highlights recently, has been communicating with our Tiale friends! Periodically, we receive notifications or phone calls, when one should be sleeping, (the time change makes it difficult) but we jump out of bed with joy to talk with the people God has led us to serve. Over the past few weeks, we were able to talk with specifically three of our Tiale friends that we have been discipling, two of which are men who are looking after their respective churches, as well as teaching the lessons that we developed for the Bible School. We enjoy hearing about their lives; we relish in the opportunity to talk about them diving deeper into God’s Word and trying to better understand who He is…
Click on the link below to continue reading our latest newsletter…
We love and appreciate you all following us on our journey! Thank you for the many prayers and encouragement along the way! It has been such a blessing to see many of you while we are here Stateside. We hope to see more of you over the next few weeks, Lord willing.
As always, we are your feet to the Tiale people & the Country of Vanuatu,
A famous missionary once said, “wherever you are, be all there!” This past year has been different for all of us, so let us get that out-of-the-way. Since we knew things were always up in the air, as in a sense of “when” we could go back to our field, our home pastor along with many other pastors that support us encouraged us to raise our finances; seeing that we were at roughly 80% when we came home from the field. So we took that as a sign from the Lord to be proactive in pursuing new partners in our ministry. And we went from 80 to about 86% currently. We have something scheduled for every Sunday (except two) from now till October 31st. We purposely end it then, because as of right now we are planning to leave that first week of November for Vanuatu and be there by The 6th (by the Lords will and grace). This is exciting, and by early September we hope to finalize this.
Continue to pray, we have two open Sundays and would to love and fill them, whether it be by a potential partner, or the privilege to share about Unreached People Group ministries and the need that still exists worldwide in 2021; we are rather passionate about getting that information out to churches. We are currently available September 26th and October 3rd, if you know of a church that would be willing to host us and give us an opportunity to share, please let us know and email us at: stokingthefires@gmail.com
God has also been gracious and all of our projects have been taken care of except for one building project and our quarantine fee. It is amazing to see how God is bringing this all together on His timing.
We love and appreciate you all, we cannot do this without your love, encouragement, prayer and support. We eagerly await to head back to the place we call home and to serve the Tiale people. -Seth and Nicole Stokes, your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu
Psalms 27:14“Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait…”.
Teacher in Training
Video Call with Friends
It comes when we least expect it, a message that one of our Tiale friends are in town and are available to talk or a few minutes… before they do their shopping, and are at the mercy of jumping on the back of a transport vehicle; being shuttled around by the whim of the driver… we leap at the opportunity to call and connect with them! …click on the link below to continue reading…
Today is quintessential for our Faith! Seth had the opportunity to preach this morning… here are some snippets from his messages…
“The focus of Good Friday is Jesus paying the penalty of sin, but the purpose for Easter is that Jesus gave us the ability to have power over sin in our lives.”
“Jesus lived a life that we could never live and died the death that we all deserved…”
“When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to God; He had to die to Himself, before He died on the cross. “… not my will but thy will”…”.
“If Jesus’ death does not pull at your heart’s chord…
then Jesus might not be your personal Lord…”
We hope you all had a wonderful passion week! We greatly appreciate you all.
Your feet to the Unreached & the country of Vanuatu,
For the past month and a half, we have had the opportunity to share at a couple of new churches, preach at a church several times, and get more contacts. Seth has had the privilege to fill in at a pulpit of a supporting church for three Sundays as they are transitioning pastors. It is interesting for Seth to preach in English as he had been preaching/teaching so much in a foreign language… CLICK on the link below to keep reading…
We feel so blessed, as many of you ask us regularly when we are going back to Vanuatu, knowing that our heart desire is to be with the Tiale People. We have officially driven over 20k miles, our car is doing great, and we have had no issues while traveling! Praise God! … CLICK on the link below to continue reading.
Stoking The Fires 