WHAT’S NEW…

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

Check out our newsletter below to continue reading…

Many of you have asked how we celebrate New Year’s here in Tiale land and what the day is like? I hope this video gives you a better idea…

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…

Check out this short video to see what the river looks like: https://youtube.com/watch?v=oPszsBAJ0L8&feature=share

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…

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.

Check out our Instagram to see more pictures and videos: https://instagram.com/stokingthefires?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu, Seth and Nicole Stokes

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

-Seth & Nicole Stokes

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.)

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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

~Seth & Nicole

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.

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

~Seth & Nicole Stokes

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,

-Seth & Nicole Stokes

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.

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