Hello everyone!

In less than 20 days, Christmas will be upon us! We are sure more than one of you has an exact countdown till Christmas, including the hours 😉 We hope that you all are enjoying the Christmas season and cooler weather. This time of year is the hottest time here in Vanuatu, so enjoy the cool weather for us.  We are getting ready to spend a 3-4 month stent in the bush and will spend Christmas and the New Year with the Tiale people. Yes, that will be much different from last year where we were home in the USA. However, we are trying to focus on the Reason for the Season; Jesus, who came to earth to live and die for us, and it is because of what He did in His short life, that we are compelled to do what we are doing. This truth helps keep the perspective when we begin to miss our families during the “Christmas/holidays in America”. We hope and pray that this Christmas you and your family are able to pull away from the busyness of your respective culture and re-focus on why we celebrate this special time; and how that (He) impacts the rest of our year/ life. It is because of the birth of our Saviour that we have hope in this life! We greatly love, appreciate, and miss you all! Your part in our ministry is vital; we cannot do this massive task without YOU! Thank you for allowing us to be an extension of YOU here in Vanuatu. Click the link below to read our latest newsletter.

November-Newsletter-2017

Thanksgiving meal with our ex-pat friends from Reach Vanuatu

Your Feet to the Tiale people in Vanuatu,

Seth & Nicole Stokes

How do we express all of the things that it took to get us to this point? Do we start with our families and influences that led to our late-teen years and making the decision to follow God into missions? Do we talk about our collegiate years and what God did to mold us through that time? Do we contemplate the unique circumstances of how we met and got married, pursuing missions as individuals and then as a married couple in training? Or how about how God miraculously provided the amazing support team to get us overseas? Reflecting upon the time our home church made the prayerful decision of us going from Indonesia, to PNG, to now Vanuatu? Or do we just focus on the supernatural way God showed us the people to work with, the Tiale people, within the first week of arriving in this country…?

That is a lot of questions… we did not even scratch the surface of the emotional roller coaster that this year has been, leaving our family, friends, and churches again… a doctor telling us Nicole might die, to then her being healthy again! Just to shortly transition into the house-building phase; hosting teams come for 5 weeks straight, and then for the past 2 months we finished up things inside the house while preaching weekly and doing discipleship with some of the pastors and pastors in training. We had an amazing ceremony that will be talked about amongst our people for decades; hundreds of people came from over eights villages, all excited for the chance of having a full-time missionary working with them in their need of a Bible and discipleship.

So many things to talk about… over a decade in the making, and now things begin. We are in town trying to finalize things with our one, or possibly two-year visa, please pray for that. And with being so remote, we purchased a satellite so we can stay in touch with the outside world, it should arrive on our island this coming Tuesday. Literally the local cell phone service has not worked for 2 weeks in the past month, and with safety being a priority, that is why we went this route. It was an unexpected expense but well worth it long-term.

And now it begins… no more training… no more schooling… no more transition phase or house-building phase… now we begin the arduous work of learning the Tiale Language. To be an effective Bible Translator, you have to know the language, you have to know the culture and worldview in which the people look through and interpret everything. All the major mission groups and training centers in the world put such an emphasis on this process. We cannot westernize the procedure and “McDonalds” it, go through the fast-lane and get an unhealthy meal. We have to go to the garden, till the ground, grow the food, wait for the process to come to maturity, harvest it and then cook the delicious meal of speaking and thinking in a pre-literate society (unreached people group). This is not an easy or quick process, but we have to learn their language and culture to do an effective translation. God spent over a millennia compiling and writing the Scriptures, we ought to do our due diligence and translate the Bible effectively. We say all of that because we know many people have and will ask, “how long will it take”? The answer is… we don’t know. We are not promised tomorrow and we have never learned an unwritten language before, we have learned two languages together as a couple, both with much help and both being on paper already, and that is why we need YOUR prayer. It is a daunting task, humbling yet terrifying, we are solely putting our trust in God and not our abilities to do this task. Its too big of a job for us to do, we need Him to do it for us. Some people learn a language in one year… others in much longer. Some people have done a New Testament in eight years… others in forty. This is a long-term commitment and it is our privilege to be YOUR feet and HIS witness here in the Tiale territory. So if you are curious our want to ask… “how long”, our answer will be 9-48 years :).

Overall we are doing well, we had some time to recover from the busy house-building phase, and we do miss our families during this Christmas and holiday season. But we are getting focused because once we move in this time we don’t plan on coming out to town for 3-4 months… we are hoping to make some good head-way into language learning by that time. We could really use your prayers and encouragement during this time.

We are truly grateful for your faithfulness to us and the ministry our Risen Lord has given to us. We hope that you had a Happy Thanksgiving and have a Merry Christmas. Please pray for us as we begin this new phase in our lives.

Your feet to the unreached,

Seth and Nicole Stokes

Below you will find a link of a video walk through of our house in the bush. We wanted you all to have a better view of the house. Hope you enjoy it!

https://youtu.be/Z5f-PaM-ktY

Your feet in Vanuatu,

Seth & Nicole Stokes

So what does the inside of our house look like? You may have been wondering. We finally finished working on cabinets, painting, flooring, etc. and decorating it inside and are now ready for the big reveal! We just got to town and will write more updates later on but for now here are some pictures of our house. 

Utility room/solar system “brains”

Guest bedroom

Guest bedroom 2

NL 7-10:17 PDF

Here is our latest Newsletter!

Where do we begin? We know! THANK YOU! Thank you to everyone who gave of themselves in prayer, finances, and coming here to Vanuatu. We seriously could not have done it without you. We know everyone played a part, many individuals and churches backing us, but we would like to give a special thanks to five churches in particular; Harvest Baptist, Bethel Memorial, Journey Christian, Bethel Community and Noblesville Baptist. We are grateful for ALL of you, these five churches in particular blessed us tremendously and we are closing the final pages of this chapter tired yet encouraged thanks to YOU!

Many of you know that September was a month where we hosted three teams back-to-back, it was a flurry of events, picking them up from the airport and driving them straight to the bush, only to start working the next day. It was hard on them and us, we felt badly because we didn’t get to do too many “fun things” with them per se, and it definitely was a work-trip for them all, but each team assured us day in and day out that the choice of working so hard was their decision, and it was their blessing to do so. We never felt worthy of such dedication and love, but we worked alongside them every step of the way. It got to the point where some teams would take 5-10 minute meal breaks, work from 4am-8pm… and by God’s grace, your prayers, and their dedication, the house was closed off by the time team 3 left.

October was a month where Nicole and I began the process of making it a “home”, flooring, painting, staining, double checking most things, constant struggle with water fittings, caulking almost every inch of the house, and then started with putting furniture in it and officially “slept” in our house October 23^rd for the first time. We are not going to lie… we were pretty wiped from all of that. We had our “house-opening ceremony” and then started emptying our residence in town. We have about one more “load “ of things in town and we are moved out for good. We took time off from house-building periodically to make sure the people knew we were there; by just walking through the village, sitting down and connecting with family units, walking to nearby villages, and of course Seth has preached almost every week, if not two times a week. We even hosted two local families already in our house for a meal and fellowship.

Seth and the pig

We plan on leaving today and trying our first “dry run” in the bush for the next 3 weeks. We have running water, and even a washing machine (limited water of course), after that we plan on being in the bush for 3-4 months. We tried several options and are going down the route for a satellite; we need to have good internet service to stay connected with you all. It was not a “planned” expenditure start-up wise, but God is always faithful. So hopefully that comes in the next 2-3 weeks so we can install that and stay better connected with you all.

Seth, his brother, and his uncle

And now… time to share about the ceremony. We finished up the inside, and then the Tiale people began to decorate the outside, planting certain trees, some with meaning, others just for mere “beautification”. We had invited well over 8 villages to the event, more than one language group, several chiefs, some government officials, missionaries from town, and a missionary family from a sister language group. Giving each group a part in the ceremony to make the event a cohesive and very purposeful event. The people were so excited, the translation project has been dream of theirs for almost 2 decades, during which two different missionary families came and left in that time. They are seeking help for the Bible school, the pastors are wanting to be better equipped, and they have never done a ceremony to “kick-off” this event before, in particular they have never announced to the other/rest of the villages this is starting and is for them as well. We are so thankful God gave us wisdom and foresight to plan some things in advance; Pastor Gabriel and Chief Basil took this event seriously, we held several meetings to make sure it went smoothly, purposefully, and prayerfully. We even added some ceremonial things to show appreciation and respect to emphasize their culture.

Nicole and her mother

It was a long/short day, we started off with Seth sitting on a bag of rice… a pig was tied to a post next to him, and then a series of men who Seth calls “dad or uncle” culturally, began to cut and shave parts of Seth’s beard, and then do the same to the pig next to him. The pig is tied intrinsically to the ceremony, his life is to be offered as part of the ceremony, immediately the pig is taken away and killed to be cooked for the meal. This was done to show respect to their culture, as if Seth “grew up as a Tiale person”, and much more, many came to watch the event because they’ve never seen a white guy do this. They were all excited and encouraged that this occurred, afterwards a series of speeches were given by chiefs, pastors, a government official, Jeremy Pinero, and Adam Pike. The speeches really emphasized the people to be encouraged, this process has started, be patient it will take many years, and once received it will be a blessing for an eternity. Much more was said but for the sake of brevity, we are trying to keep it short. The ribbon was cut, the door was unlocked, and then the house was flooded with close to 300 people. Everyone passed through each room with curiosity to see how a “white-man” lives, people were confused and laughed to see a toilet inside their house, but all in all they caught the vision… this is not some bamboo made house like theirs, this is not some temporary shelter, this is big house built to last for decades… they saw the intent and understand we are here for long term. They are excited to have someone here to live amongst them, learn their language, live life on life with them, trying to understand their worldview and culture, it was a day they so looked forward to, if you see the pictures we hope you see their excitement.

Us in our get-up

We hung around for the rest of the day with the people, ate some food, laughed, sighed a relief of its over, brought our blow up mattress in OUR HOUSE, and slept in our house for the first time… we could here some of the leftover crowd chatting away still until after 9pm.

We could not have done this with you, our supporting churches and the Tiale people, this was 2 months of hard work, but it’s done. We will spend these next 3 weeks; connecting, furnishing, making a routine, and getting ready to do this full-time. Pray for us in our transitions, our bodies are tired but our spirits are wanting. Thank you for praying for Seth, his lymph node reduced a little bit this past week, continue to pray for us to have wisdom and discernment in how to proceed. And last but not least, now that we have a house, we can invite you to be our guest.

We love and appreciate you all, your feet to the unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes

Hi there! Sorry for the delay, but we are waiting for after Monday October 23 to post an update. We have been working hard, 8 weeks ago as of today all of our possessions were scattered in the jungle, our delivery truck was on its side, and we were in dissaray not knowing what to do.

In less than a day, our possessions were gathered up, and we started the foundation… 3 teams later from 4 supporting churches, over 25 trips Seth personally drove, countless hours of work, and the help of our Tiale people, we are having our “house opening ceremony” on Monday October, 23. 

We are expecting 30-300+ to come to the event. There will be cutural dances, and much more; a cow, a pig and maybe some chicken as “honored guests”-the main meal. It’s a very exciting time for the Tiale people; they have been wanting someone to help them with a Bible translation, to help them with their bible college, and to help disciple them through the whole counsel of God. We are humbled with the opportunity to answer the call. We covet your prayers for strength and wisdom in doing this overwhelming work our God has called us to do. 

We have had the privilege to preach several times, do some bible studies, disciple, and even help in the classroom already. Seth even got to preach to some of the evacuees from Ambae in town. It’s been a full 2 months. 

All that to say, stay tuned! Next week we will post several pictures of the finished work and of the ceremony. 

Continue to pray for us:

1. Health; we have been working hard and by Gods grace we are doing well. Seth has an enlarged lymph node the doctor is concerned about. If the status doesn’t change in 6 weeks Seth will have to undergo some more tests. 

2. Wisdom as we begin this work full time. 

3. Praise God He is still moving, and there are a people ready for the Gospel. 

We love you all! We are so thankful for all the love and support we received during this time, we so needed it! We truly could not do this without you. 

Thank you for holding our rope!

Your feet to the unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes

To say these past few weeks/months have been quite “full” is to say the least. As we write this, we are getting ready to say “good-bye” to the first team we have ever hosted and ready to greet team number two.

Our House!

For us everything seems so surreal; from less than three months ago Nicole getting life-flighted, to recovery in Australia, a short time to transition, making several trips to the people we will spend the next decade plus of our lives with, to assisting with a conference and then immediately running a conference after that… only to jump into daily shuttles leaving early in the morning and arriving late at night to make preparations for our house, to our delivery truck crashing which scattered our possessions in the jungle. This time has been “full” of blessing also. We have been super blessed by the body of Christ innumerable times, our home church and other supporting churches have stepped up BIG time. We feel unworthy of the love and encouragement, but greatly appreciate it during this time.

Why we have titled this blog “foundations” is three-fold:

1. We were able to help host a firm foundations (creation to Christ) conference, we were able to train, teach and disciple teachers to use the material effectively, we were able to teach over 70 people the “core beliefs” of the Old Testament and character of God through the life of Christ. Such a huge blessing and was exciting to see those whom GOD engifted with the gift of teaching and preaching stand out, we relish the opportunity to disciple them in the future. So many people walked away encouraged and felt “relieved” to hear a systematic teaching, which promotes God as the epicenter of the Bible and not man. One guy said, “before all I heard was teaching like food thrown to chickens, scattered all about… but now I have seen the Bible clearly”. Another man said, “ I have eaten food before… but now I have tasted sweet food (referring to the Bible teaching)”. All that to say, praise God for clarity and the opportunity to teach His Word to people.
2. We have been laying foundations with the Tiale people. They have super appreciated our communication, following up with them, checking to make sure we did not make any cultural faux pas, respecting them, empowering them, and always being ready for opportunities to disciple and encourage. We are doing our best to be intentional and culturally appropriate while in this forever “learning process”.
3. And of course, we have poured the foundation of our house in less than 3 working days, and had a roof on in less than 5 more working days. The progress you see took many trips and many hands, but in reality just 8 full working days…, which is completely, Gods grace.

Sorry for the delayed update, but we have not had a full “day off” in quite some time… (don’t worry, Nicole is finding time to rest) and wont for a couple more weeks! With two more teams coming we are getting pretty excited to have our “own house”. Follow us on Facebook, it is much easier for us to post pictures and small updates while in the bush. Please pray for safety and transitions for those coming, continued health for us (we write this as Seth is struggling with a stomach bug), and that we seek each opportunity to disciple our friends (the Tiale people), while bringing God glory and keeping Him our focus, not focusing on things of this earth.

Thank you all for your love and Support!

Your feet to the unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes.

Well, it’s about that time, it’s time to build! If you are interested in coming and helping us build for either; one, two, or all three weeks, we would love to have you! Here are the preferred dates we would like to have teams come, if you want to come outside of these dates please contact us. I have spent several hours researching what days would be cheaper for people to come from America. I started the departure flights from Dallas, (Fort Worth) Texas and or Los Angeles (LAX). You will have to do your own shopping online, the internet here is slow and it took me some time to load pages. Ideally we would like 7-11 people per week/team.
Team-1: There are a few who have committed to this time already, but there is still plenty of space available. 
Tuesday August 29th- Friday September 8th 

(Framers, Concrete workers)

One day for transition on Saturday, September 9th.

Team-2: We have a team (of 9) coming from Fort Scott, Kansas and are confirmed for:

Sunday September 10th-Tuesday 19th 

(Plumbers, Electricians, etc.)

One day for transition on Wednesday, September 20th.

Team-3: There are a few who are committing during this time, but there is plenty space available. 

Friday September 22th- Tuesday October 3rd.

(Finishers) 

The dates are made in such a way that you get at least 7 working days in Vanuatu, allowing for some transitions, jet-lag, and possibly a nice “fun day” at the end of your trip so you can experience the “beautiful things” of Vanuatu. 
If you are interested in coming, please write us: stokingthefires@gmail.com. We will then send you a “schedule for teams” document, along with a Reach Vanuatu Visitor Packet. Both of which should answer most of your questions. We will also try to coordinate you with others who are coming during the same time, which would make the transitions on everyone much easier.

Please pray we can get the materials ready before the teams come… there have not been bags of cement for almost two months. We are in Vanuatu, pray the ordering and delivering of things to our location goes as smoothly as possible. We would much appreciate your prayers in all of this! Thank you.

Your feet to the unreached, Seth and Nicole Stokes