Wow! This past month has gone so fast. We have had a very good but busy few weeks with a big move in between. God is so good and we are already settling into our new home. The people here are such a blessing! Click the link below to read our latest newsletter. Thank you for being a part of our team! ~Seth & Nicole Stokes
A Sharks Tale
Yes, we have a shark’s tale…well two of them. On the lighter side, Seth has made really good relationships with many nationals and he has gone out fishing several times now with the men. One day Seth went fishing with the guys, they hooked a baitfish to a floater and let it go, after some time a large fish, so they thought, took the bait and sunk the floater. Eventually, the floater resurfaced and Seth started pulling the string up, all the guys were talking about how it had to be a big yellow fin tuna. Well, once it was close to the top and everyone saw what it was (a 10 ft. thrasher shark), the guys leaped in fear and one man grab his bush knife and almost surgically hit the shark across the brain in one quick and powerful swing. They were all excited! They also caught some mackerel and several other fish that day. They shared their catch amongst them all…and that is Seth’s story of catching a shark.
Another shark tale we will share will allow you to get into the “typical” mindset here in PNG. One day we were at our friend’s house, and we were making small talk, when we asked our friends what was going on with their dog’s tail. We knew the dog had gotten into a little fight and flies landed on top of his skin and it was infected. Our friends began to tell us that they let the dog eat sharks skin and now his “skin was turning into sharks skin”. This is how some perceive things as they have been impacted by their ancestral stories, but they are also occasionally hearing pieces of Biblical truth around town. They are constantly impacted by their former way of thinking. One person we know has several good friends who are pastors and one a shaman. He will tell you, you need to go to a church on Sunday morning but if you get sick you should see the powerful shaman; he can fly like a bird, turn into a dog, kill people and more. These people are educated people, and live close to town, and yet because they have not heard a true and pure Gospel they have not yet experienced the life changing effects of how our very minds are transformed.
That is just the tip of the iceberg, we have been here for 3 months and are just now getting to understand how they really think…this job cannot be done too quickly, or else you will add to their pantheon of gods and encourage syncretism. You can have the right words, but if you do not know how to deliver them through the grid of their worldview, you might as well use another language. We are called to teach others to “observe all things” (Matt. 28:20), and not leave them as babies, ignorant of what God expects from their life, we are called to help grow them into mature Christians.
Trasher Shark
Mackerel
Things to expect in PNG #2
When you go around PNG expect to see a grave in the front yard, it is their culture to keep their family close by and always think about them.
Expect to see everyone talking about malaria as if it’s normal, or to constantly ask “do I have a parasite in my bowel?” is just another normal part of life here.
Expect to see young kids with no clothes run around every where, expect to see 2 year old babies playing with a bush knife and a young 3 year old girl pretend/practice to do house work, cook and garden.
2yr old with a machete
Expect to always be a little confused, they have some words that are quite ambiguous, as well as learning “what brother means”… they have another kind of kinship (your dads brother is your little father).
Expect to see people standing in the middle of the road or see people sleep on the road. When school lets out it is a scary thing, you have hundreds of kids walking home (there are no buses) from school on the roads, and there are no sidewalks…
Expect to always be a little uncomfortable, have you tried sitting down on a 2×4 for hours at a time?…
Expect to see people looking at a tree and thinking how many things they can make out of it. For example, coconut/tree: mat, blinds (siding for a house), fan, bag, firewood, food, oil, parts to the house, tools and more).
We are enjoying the PNG diet plan. In a month or so, we have lost a combined 43 lbs. take away fast food, sitting down (you have to walk everywhere), skipping meals regularly when you are with people, “sweet foods” are hard to find and expensive, add the humidity into it, you have our PNG diet plan. If the Atkins diet, beach body, and P90X are not doing the job, come on over and spend some time with us J
“A tiny group of believers who have the Gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story. “ –K.P. Yohannan
“The drug of the American dream kills the brain cells of eternal thinking”- C. Hickman
Your feet to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes
Hope spring is in full swing and you are enjoying the sunshine again! We are so thankful to have YOU as part of our team. We would love to hear from YOU anytime. Feel free to write us and ask any questions. Thank you for taking the time to keep up with our journey! God is doing amazing things here in Papua New Guinea.
Below is the link for April’s newsletter.
“All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God, because they reckoned on His being with them”. –J. Hudson Taylor
This blog will be a little different, we will keep the names anonymous in the stories we will share…but know this, giants (of our faith) walk among us. Unless you get close to them and hear their story, you will never know what God is doing in and through them, you will never know the journey of how much God has brought them through.
Time after time people have come to Papua New Guinea to serve as missionaries, many come, but many go. This field is not easy: it is hot, there are diseases everywhere, infections and stomach problems are common, and you hear of someone having malaria as often as you see the rain coming during rainy season. This field has an astronomical attrition rate, but there are many times God shows His glory to and amongst His fallible and fragile creations. Here are 3 short stories:
We pray you have been blessed as we have been by these stories of faith building. Our God is worthy of our trust and there is no trial too BIG to remove us from His will and serving Him in missions. Because He is worthy of our trust!
Your feet in PNG to the unreached, Seth & Nicole Stokes
We know what you are thinking, you think we just watched Pinocchio, but we can assure you we have not watched that movie in almost a decade. We have been busy spending a lot of time in the nearby village with the people. Instead of comfortably taking one of the vehicles we have as a mission and going grocery shopping by ourselves (the American style), we went to the village, grabbed a friend and hopped on a PMV (Public Motorized Vehicle). We are trying to learn to do things the way the locals do. It was Nicole’s first time on a PMV, and it was fun! The driver goes as fast (no posted speed limits) as he wants and around whomever he likes. Some of the things we experienced while on the PMV: sitting with 24 people in a 15 passenger van, red betel-nut spit on the windows, no AC, typical PNG music playing, the smell of lots of sweaty bodies close to you, and people loving to “accidentally” bump into us to feel our white skin. This is a great way to travel, it is really inexpensive; to town cost’s about $.76 cents. We went to all of the stores our friend wanted to go to, he showed us all of the “local” stores, and we showed him some places we have found that we liked.
To show our gratitude to some of our friends/language helpers we bought some dough balls (which everyone loves, including us), and a carbonated beverage, he was very thankful. Food is a typical way to show you appreciate them and value their friendship. We walked all around the town taking in the many sights, and then got on another PMV to head home. Quite a fun trip, it was great to learn a more about their perspective of everyday life.
Whenever we have a mealtime free, we usually invite our language helpers here on the base, Joshua and Amelia (and baby Russell) over and introduce them to American food and cooking; they loved looking at Jell-O, it was funny to them. We even taught them how to play the games Battleship and left right center! That was fun as well. Other times we are free we go to the local market to buy some local greens and maybe some small fish, bring some rice, and then go to the house of one of our friends in the village to sit down, talk, and eat. Little by little we try to live like they live, cook like cook. Have you ever tried starting a fire with only wet wood and a close to dying lighter? Seth had to learn. Nicole got to carry a baby the traditional way (in a string bag on her forehead) then she carried the baby and a bag of groceries for close to 3 miles. This is what life is like for most people in PNG. Seth learned how to make a mat (used to sit down, sleep, or rest on) and a fan for the fire both made of coconut tree branches. Seth learned to climb trees and Nicole is learning to make string bags. Time and time again we learn a new skill, the people use a term and call us a “real boy or girl”, meaning: we are becoming like them. They love seeing that process and are genuinely happy to help.
We are making great relationships, and little by little as we learn their language and culture, we try to point them to God, help them with basic hygiene and medical, show a difference in our lives to make them want God, and overwhelm them with love. We will randomly bring things to them to bless them; their culture doesn’t really have the concept of a “gift”. When we give them something freely using words to show it is free and has no strings attached, that they don’t owe us, you can literally watch their face in shock because they have never seen something like that before. It is nothing major, we don’t know their language fluently yet, but each little thing we can do we pray “stokes the fire” inside of them toward our Loving Father.
Your feet to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes
Making a Mat
Cooking a Traditional Meal
Making a String Bag-“Bilum”
A PMV in Town
Greetings friends & family!
We have officially been here in PNG for 2 months and 2 day! The time sure has flown by! We are very thankful to be learning “Tok Pisin”, the national trade language and to be making great relationships with the people. Read our newsletter below to hear more. We could not be doing this without YOU! Yes, YOU! Thank you for being a part of our team! 🙂
Your feet to the unreached in PNG,
Seth & Nicole Stokes
At least we are progressing! When you begin to learn another language you will always learn “words” in isolation first, then you move to sentences, eventually to full paragraphs. From there, you move on up to discourse level with hopes of one day being proficient (meaning you sound exactly as a national, not just with words and intonations, but also with culturally relevant topics and how you present the information in which you desire to communicate). There are 4 levels in which you can gauge a person’s language ability: basic, progressing, capable, and proficient. Within each of those levels (except proficient) there is a range of: low, mid, and high. Giving you a total of 10 language levels. At the beginning of this week, we had our first language evaluation. We were able to get in 30 days of actual language study, and after those 30 days Seth was marked at “progressing low” and Nicole was marked at “progressing mid”. This is awesome and encouraging! Our consultants told us we are marked in a place where we function at ALL times, but are able to communicate at higher levels some of the time. So that means at some point throughout the testing we were reaching other levels of language learning. So at this pace we might become “capable high” in the next 4-6 weeks. Once we can achieve this level we can then start ministering at a more full capacity and then start proactively seeking direction of which people group (tribe) to move into.
Speaking of consultants, we had a wonderful time with all of our consultants. We hosted 2 of the 6 men in our house, one consultant went to bed close to midnight and the other woke up around 5am. Seth loved this time so much; he was up after they went to bed and woke up before/at the same time with them so that he could glean as much as he could from these Godly men. We want to give a special Thank You to Aaron L. and his family who organized the weekend and gave us invaluable tools to learn language and to be able to plant a church that worships our Lord. We want to also thank; Tim, Aaron W., Eric, Brian, Greg, Jason, and Bill for giving us some much needed insight, thank you for sharing and giving us some helpful tools, thank you for your fellowship.
We learned so much this past week and were also given a lot of information about possible works/tribes with which God might lead us to. We are compiling a bunch of data and survey information on many of these tribes. Once we feel like we have enough information and a better understanding of what God is doing and how He is leading us, we will then share that information with you all and then ask you to partner with us in prayer. YOUR insight is valuable to us; please feel free to contact us and ask us questions to help us think through the information we have been given. We will not make this decision without YOUR help in prayer, guidance, and communication. This is far too big of a decision for one person to ever make. We will strive to progress further and further until we learn the national language, and then we will need your specific partnership in making this BIG decision.
Your feet to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes
Language Check & Consultants
We thought it would be fun to share some of the things we see here from time to time that are relatively “normal” (for PNG), but might not be normal for those back in the USA.
In the United States, we pride ourselves in diversity, yes we all speak the same language (with variances), and we have a melting pot of different races spread throughout the continent. Here in PNG, if you do NOT have dark skin, expect everyone to give you a good long glance, you are the abnormal one, so they look.
When you are walking into town or walking through the village it is not uncommon to see a lady carrying a bag (bilum “bee-loom”). In America, this is normal, we call it a “purse” and it holds too much makeup, tissues, credit cards, and money, among other things. It is not only how the PNG women carry the bag (on their head) that is different, but also what is found inside…like groceries…many times a baby. Yep, seeing a baby inside a bag is quite normal here. It can be quite comical (to us) as we walk by a tree and there are some ladies sitting underneath a tree and you see several babies asleep inside string bags hanging from the tree. We are still getting used to this one 🙂
Amilia Carrying Russell in her Bilum
Make sure you always clean up everything, everywhere. PNG is in no short supply of ants, yes, ants. There is not a day that goes by we don’t see ants on our counters, in our kitchen sink, in our bathroom toiletries, sometimes our food, and it is always fun finding ants in your sealed cereal bag, extra protein! You always feel like something is crawling on you. Ants are everywhere!
When you live here in Madang, everyone stops and appreciates the wind. It is quite humid here so every little breeze is greatly appreciated and we thank God for a break from the humidity; the breeze is as close to air conditioning as you get.
Almost everyone has a garden here. There are markets but it is a common practice to have your own garden. We do not have our own house yet so we do not have a garden. Garden produce is the Papua New Guineans main source of food. Everyone looks at us like we are weird since we do not have our own garden.
When you go to the produce market, there are no refrigerated sections; all produce is on the ground with bugs near by and dogs walking about. This is one of the many reasons why you must wash your produce with bleach.
Nicole Buying Greens at the Market
While you are in the market, do not be surprised if you see giant larvae for sale, the locals love them. We can’t bring ourselves to try them…if someone offers one to us, we will do it (for the sake of the Gospel), but we will not volitionally bring this upon ourselves.
“Binatang” or Larvae…Yum?
Talk about going to the market; make sure you drive on the right side of the road, which is the left side. The driver is on the right side and all the switches are reversed, so it takes a little getting use to. One of our friends drove and they forgot they were on the right side of the road (which is the wrong side here), luckily no one was coming on the other side.
The language Tok Pisin has a lot of interesting things about it. It is a very descriptive language: in English we call water coming from underneath the ground a “spring”. In most cases we would say, “that is a spring, or this is spring water”. In Tok Pisin you would literally say, “that non-salt water is non-salt water that comes from inside the ground”. The word they use is a prefix that can denote cold, or clean, or water to wash with or drinking water, or water that comes from a river or lake, or is simply NOT salt water (and they might give the direction of where it is going). Short simple sentences alleviates most ambiguity, it is rather nice. The major thing we find that is hard in terms of ambiguity is the use of prepositions. They basically use one prepositional word for almost everything. Which if you are having a lengthy conversation or having multiple discourses it can be a bit unclear. Other than that, expect to hear many words like: pela, pla, bilong, blo, planti, lukim, tok, and long; you will hear them everywhere and in every context! Seth jokes a lot with the locals about that, they all laugh together.
With some exceptions in the US, you will typically find people who are reserved and mostly keep to themselves. Here in PNG, people are always ready and wanting to help. They always want to help us learn their language and they love teaching. Hospitality and giving up your time for another is common, you can pretty much walk up to a persons house at almost anytime of day, and they will stop what they are doing and talk to you. Being with someone and talking with someone is a huge lifestyle here in PNG. In America, we value alone time and solitude, but here in PNG all things come to a stop if a stranger walks by, maybe they want to just sit down and talk, maybe it is to get away from the sun for a period of time and or maybe it is to drink a coconut.
There are a lot of things we are still getting use to, like not holding one another’s hand in public (men and women do not touch in public), but it is common to hold a member of the same sex’s hand; it is a sign of friendship. Some other things we are getting use to is ladies walk in front of the men when in town for security purposes, cooking from scratch, no microwaves, the power going out regularly, keeping track of the data we use on our phone/internet, always swatting flies and mosquitoes, always taking prophylaxis for malaria, walking most everywhere and much more. All in all everything in our life is new except for each other. Though many things here are different from what we are use to, God is allowing us to have joy and appreciation with most things (we don’t-and probably never will-like the bugs) here in PNG. At the end of each day, we know God brought us here and He has given us a love for the people and the work He is doing here in PNG. Hope you enjoyed reading some of the differences; we will share more another time.
Boiling Coconut Milk to Make Oil
Seth Scraping the Coconuts
Cathy & Family Teaching us How to Making Coconut Oil From Scratch
Your feet to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes
P.S. We have now talked to a handful of people via Skype and FaceTime, feel free to call anytime. If you have Apples products: iMessage/text us at nicolestokes22@gmail.com. We also have received our first American letter a little bit ago; thank you uncle John and Aunt Di! Funny story: Seth was talking with his mom on Skype while we were ay a friends house (a national), and he let his mom talk to them briefly… afterwards our friends were tickled that they got to talk to Seth’s mom and talk to someone in the U.S. for the first time. It is the little things that make people smile.
How Will They Hear?
We have seen some amazing things this done a lot of things putting more than 10 hours a day into language learning; that is a lot for the human brain, and considering it is only light outside for 11-12 hours. We are trying to get this language quickly! We have been given motivation that shakes the soul. We have been in various events and settings, from going about the village, to town, to Bible studies not in our native tongue, and much more!
We were greeted by our language helpers (Joshua and Amilia) when we came back from orientation and they said things like “we are happy to see you…we want to teach you our language…come on over and talk with us anytime”, the translation is not a one-to-one ratio but the message and heart is clear. They want us to learn their language, and they want to help us.
While we were walking in the village I (Seth) was talking to a man, he told me he wants to help me learn Tok Pisin (the national/trade language). He said he wants me to speak his language and to teach me the “right” way (talk straight) to speak. It is a funny saying in Tok Pisin, because everyone says the same thing, it is encouraging. But this is where it turned…he said he has helped many people learn his language, but just when they become proficient in Tok Pisin they leave. He said he loves hearing about the Bible, and wants me to learn his language so I can share about God’s truths…if that is not motivation, I do not know what is? To have a moment of transparency, we looked at Tok Pisin as the gateway to the tribe, once we get there, we can get to where we ought to be, but that is far from the truth. God brought us here at this time to seek His will for not just our tribal work, but to impact the people HE is placing before us right here in Madang. Pray we learn well, so we can share the Message of Christ with these people soon!
We want to share one more amazing experience with you. When we were at the base in Goroka (Lapilo) going through orientation, we were able to observe some “translation checks”. What an amazing and detailed process! The Bible translator first has to submit a “back to English” translation for the checker. A checker is typically a person who has translated a good-bit of if not all of the New Testament into a tribal language. The checker then reads and prepares several questions regarding the discourse analysis and the apparent grammar idiosyncrasies. You can translate word for a word, but just because it is a word within a group of words does not mean it conveys the accurate meaning to the audience. Example: five stones grabbed smooth David. This is a poor example, but it does show the difference in meaning. It is a familiar Bible event, but we would better understand the sentence if it were written: “David grabbed five smooth stones”. From there, there is something that is natural for foreigners to have…presuppositions. Who is David? Where did he come from? Why is he getting stones? Why five? Why do they have to be smooth? When did David do this? Where did he put the stones? Among many other questions that could be given, but that is why we must ask and think through as many things as we can. We have found this to be true in Tok Pisin. We keep looking for words like “for” or “because” but they do not exist on a word for word translation, the same meaning is there, but the exact words are non-existent.
After the checker goes through the back to English process, they move to an indigenous person reading the passage for comprehension. Next, there is another indigenous person listening and then regurgitating what was read. Another person shares their opinions on the text and repeats what the other two people had said (all three people are different ages and genders, the more broad the spectrum the better the testing can be). After that, there are several things done through the national language, and other testing’s of the translations accuracy. After fluidity and comprehension is checked, you move on to the next verse. We were able to listen to 12 verses being checked, this took almost an hour! There was a lot of work that went into the translation before it was even checked; all in all it is a thorough and tedious process. But when it is done, there is such a joy; it is amazing to see a people receive a passage of scripture in their own language and be able to understand it, truly there is no greater thing! The joy of being the first to ever hear parts of God’s Word in your own language, when so many have had it for decades, centuries, even millennia, truly there can be no greater joy. Be excited! Many tribes are getting translations finished and checked right now while you are reading this blog post.
Rejoice, God is faithfully building His church and preparing hearts, pray for missionaries to come to PNG. There is a great decline in missions and sadly, the attrition percentage rate is growing. The church needs to step its game up and separate its people for missions, send them (Acts 13:1-3), and partner with them to reach the lost for Christ. There is too much work to be done and too much opposition to give the Devil and the world another foothold. We need to step away from entertainment, pleasure, and excuses and answer the call for people to hear the Truth of Jesus Christ. I do not know of another place in the world where there are so many people asking for God’s eternal Word, pray we can answer the call to here in PNG before another religion does and sways the masses to an eternal separation from the one true God. Hell is real, and our time here on earth is short, let’s get busy for our King.
Your feet in to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes
*Make sure to follow our Instagram to see more pictures of our journey here in PNG!
Instagram: Get_Stoked_For_PNG 
We have been rushed through many different things these past 4 weeks; we arrived into the country later than expected, we had a week of modules, we spent over 2 weeks at our main base to get acquainted and know our co-workers and our support staff, and now we “officially start” language learning…or do we? We have a few more modules to better understand the language/culture and then it is language and culture learning full-force!
We were blessed for the past 2 weeks and enjoyed NOT sweating. The base we were at for orientation in Goroka (Lapilo) has a beautiful climate, warm and yet cool. We did not need fans over our bed when we slept, that was a nice. Now we are back in Madang (sea level) it is always hot and continuously humid, it is almost impossible to keep your shirt dry. We left for just 2 weeks and we found mold on a backpack, a book, and a couple of other items that were in drawers; that is humidity to the fullest!
Tok Pisin is the national language; English and other Indo-European languages heavily influence it. Understanding basic nouns and verbs is pretty easy for any English-speaking individual. But just because something is similar does not mean they are the same. Take for example the name “Seth”, fairly simple, one vowel and a consonant cluster, basically just one syllable… simple right? Well, in Tok Pisin they do not have the “Se” sound in their language, they have a “Sh”. They also do not have the theta sound or the “th” sound, but they do have a “t”. So, when we go out and share our names in the village they say “Shet” instead of “Seth”, and half the time the vowel sound changes, so what we thought was an “easy” word in a language that is so similar to our own, it actually comes out and sounds more like a profane word in our English language (which in Tok Pisin is not an actual word they use). That is the beauty of language for you, it is too late we wish Seth would have introduced himself as “Isaac” (his middle name), but the name has spread already throughout the village, so now we go around just correcting vowel glides when people say Seth’s name 🙂
Thought that would be a fun and interesting tale to share, so a name is not so simple and a shirt is never dry here in Madang. Please contact us anytime! We are getting use the Internet here, and sometimes it is non-present, but we will get back to you asap! Feel free to iMessage us at nicolestokes22@gmail.com any time! We love you all and covet your prayers!
Your feet to the unreached in PNG, Seth & Nicole Stokes
Amelia One of Our Language Helpers
Our Ride to Goroka
Verse of the Day
Stoking The Fires 