Over the past few weeks, we have had many earthquakes, an underwater volcanoes erupt, a tropical storm, and two cyclones (hurricanes) this past week back to back. Through it all, the Lord was gracious in that no one (that we know of) was injured, just minor property damage, many fallen trees, and one very large and impassible river. Our capital of Port Vila and the southern most island(s) got hit much worse than we did; power outages, no water, planes damages, and all travel being grounded for nearly a week. Continue to pray for Vanuatu that God would grant a speedy recovery from these natural disasters.
Cyclones and earthquake, flooding and fellowship… none of the natural disasters slowed down the work God is doing here! Over these past 5 months we have seen the greatest growth of both husbands and wives along with kids and parents; God’s Spirit is at work amongst the Tiale people! As always, we appreciate your prayers! Don’t forget to follow our journey (read our previous newsletter for that information). Your feet to the Tiale people & the country of Vanuatu, -Seth & Nicole
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Many of us remember the phrase “2 weeks to stop the…” etc. Well, last week we had our first flooding of the year, and so for us, that means we are in “lockdown” in Tiale land for a minimum of 2 weeks, if not longer. So even if we wanted to leave for town (which we don’t really need to), we could not go (at least not with our truck), because one or both rivers are flooded. Last week, an elderly person in a nearby village was unable to go to the bathroom, so the men had to carry him to the first river, then lift him over head (because of how deep the water was) to the other side, get a truck to drive him to the other river, then make a raft to help pull him across the second river, only to load him up into another truck and then taken on the remaining 2-hour drive to town. This is the rigmarole that is needed if someone wants to leave our village and get to town at this current time…
Over the past week, we have experienced over 15 earthquakes (and counting)! It all started last week with the first earthquake being listed around a 7.0 magnitude and then almost seconds after that first one there was a 7.2 following (which is the second strongest earthquake in our islands’ history). We spent a good bit of the next day picking up and cleaning up from many supplies and things being flung all over the place. Thankfully there were minimal items damaged and no physical damage to our house. Praise the Lord! Since then, we have had several earthquakes and various tremors each day. (There was even an earthquake as I wrote this update)! You could say that we are feeling a bit “shaken up” these days… Every time we feel one we are bracing ourselves for a big one.. Thankfully no one’s house was destroyed, no injuries, just some minor damage, and many scared kids. The people kept saying “I’ve never felt anything like this before”! With all the earthquakes coupled with the incoming rainy season, many of the Tiale people are trying to fix their houses and store up food and fire wood in case of emergencies. Vanuatu boasts of having the most natural disasters (hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis) over any other country in the world, and this past week we have definitely felt the effects…
Cans everywhere!Thankfully we don’t have breakable plates!We are the blue dot & Doesn’t show all.
Please pray for everyone’s continued safety and health, during this time. If someone were to need medical assistance, it is a rather arduous task to get them the help they need. In all of this, we know God is Sovereign, and we thank you for taking part in our journey.
We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are off to a happy new year… Below is our recent newsletter but stay tuned for more updates soon…
We try to post monthly newsletters, and semi-frequent blogs, as well as posts on Facebook (Seth Isaac Stokes), and Instagram (@stokingthefires) where we try to keep more recent up-to-date pictures and short stories of daily life. Please follow our journey! We try to post often as to keep you involved in our ministry as much as we can! We appreciate your prayers!
Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu
What types of food do you eat for special holidays? Mashed root foods are a must. This style with Taro is very common and everyone loves it. Better get some before it’s gone…
We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your families (if the Lord allowed).
Many of you have asked what we did for Christmas or how our Christmas went… we hope this helps give you a glimpse of what Christmas was like for us this year…
Christmas (and New Year is celebrated the same) here is a long day and starts early. We have bread for breakfast as a community around 5am (which means Seth gets up way before that to bake it fresh) and then church begins at 7am (Seth teaches Sunday school class then the main service begins once Sunday school is over.)
Nicole made the dough… 😱
We added a time of questions and prizes to make Sunday on Christmas more fun. After church was over, we had a big lunch with the community and once everyone had their fill, then everyone was off to the “mandatory siesta”.
Seth’s traditional sweet cinnamon rolls!
Sunday School
Getting ready for lunch…
Pineapple, Sugar cane & sweet girls!
A tradition dish: mashed taro with “gravy” (stay tuned for a video of how it’s made)
Lunch time!
Buffet style! Grab it before it’s gone…
Later that night, we have prayer study (as we usually do on Sunday nights), and then a time of prayer. We added a time of questions and prizes for the kids and youth to get them more excited for the night. This ended around 9pm… needless to say, it was a very different and busy Sunday for us this Christmas.
Bible quiz with the kids
The following day, Monday, we celebrated our Christmas in a sense, called our family, and tried to reflect on the weekend God blessed us with to be a part of… truly, there is no end to ministering here in the bush. We are so thankful to be here!
Happy New Year to you all! 🎉 May the Lord conform us more into His image this next year and may we learn to be better ambassadors of His name in our daily lives. God bless you!
Seth & Nicole Stokes, your feet to the Tiale people
We wanted to share with you all how our Christmas Eve went…
We are so blessed to be able to do ministry and serve the Tiale people on this day. The day (and the whole weekend) was very special; from prayer with the pastors early in the morning (as we regularly do on Saturday mornings), to then hosting our language helpers and their families for a special end of the year meal (chicken wings, rice, and garden food)… we even brought a surprise! Ice cream! It was definitely a first for them to have ice cream in the village.
Our faithful “bell-ringer”!The kids loved the ice cream!The excitement is seen on their faces…One of the cute servers…The meal is ready…
After the meal, Seth and the language helpers sat down and started working through 30 key words from the New Testament to find a general consensus on “what word” in Tiale will be best to use for both accuracy and comprehension for the translation.
The translation committee
It was a blessed day to be able to minister to our friends here and to work on the task of getting God’s Word into the Tiale language.
Thank you for your prayers and support!
Your feet to the Tiale people & the country of Vanuatu
In case any of you aren’t on social media and missed our post… we want to wish you all a very merry Christmas! We love you all and hope you and your family’s were able to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour in a special way.
There is always a bit of wanting to enjoy “traditional” Christmas festivities, but what a better way to celebrate Christmas than serving the Lord in a remote village to a people group who has yet to have the Bible in their language. There is no greater joy than seeing the spiritual fruit that God has produced in them. There is nothing else we would rather be doing, especially on Christmas.
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,
Stoking The Fires 