*Please read the corresponding blog to this project newsletter for more details. Contact us if you have any questions. Thank you for reading.

Project for July Newsletter

***Please read the newsletter that goes with this post.***

We are writing this blog to give more details about the trip: God’s confirmation, the journey, the list of jobs Seth will be doing, our heart in this trip, and more. We apologize for this post being lengthy, but we wanted to be thorough. If you still have questions, please feel free to call or write – we would love to talk with you!

God’s Confirmation

Before we started to head in the direction of actually going on this trip, God prepared the way in several areas. Here are just a few:

• God gave us a “go-ahead” after consulting with our home church’s leadership.
• We have scheduled meetings and God has kept the month of July open as to not have a conflict and miss opportunities to share our ministry and raise potential support.
• Before notifying others about the trip publicly, about one-third of the total cost of the trip came in already!

The Journey

The short-term missions trip in which Seth will be involved in will be on the same island (Papua/Papua New Guinea) in which we intend to serve in the not too distant future. The island of Papua is divided into two countries: Papua, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Seth will fly out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on June 27 to Jakarta Indonesia, which by God’s grace we were able to find a ticket for $1,435! This is unheard of, you cannot do better; the tickets are normally $2,000. Seth will then have to fly to Papua and then will have to take another small plane into the tribe! Both smaller plane rides (round trip) will be about $500 each.

List of Jobs

Seth will be in the tribe known as the “Dem.” He will be in this tribe for over two weeks. Seth has performed various handyman and maintenance jobs and has also been trained by our mission to do various “special” jobs, e.g. solar power, plumbing, etc. Seth will be helping the missionary either work on/finish/build:

-Bed for the couple

-Beds for the kids

-Desks

-A lot of staining

-Plumbing

-Electrical

-Digging for septic systems

-Gathering stones for various jobs

-Hauling lumber from a distance

-Tables

-Stools/chairs

-Many other things!

Our Heart in this Trip

We were initially very hesitant about this trip. Many thoughts swirled in our head. Is this a wise decision to stop our deputation trail to go and serve another missionary on another field? But after several confirmations for this trip, we continued forward, seeing if God would stop it through giving us a speaking engagement or some other reason we could not control. We also decided we did not want to use any support anyone has given us to date. So that is why we put this awareness out there and to see what God would do through His people. We are already one-third of the way there! We know several people like giving to projects, which is why we are writing this letter. This brings us to share about the next topic. We know God will always be faithful to supply for us, and He uses His people to do His work in the supply for others, that is why we are sharing about a need/project.

This trip is close to Seth’s heart for many reasons: the missionary family Seth is going to help is his brother and his family. Jeremiah and Briana Stokes are tribal church planters (along with their children, Eden and Jericho) in the country of Indonesia, serving the Dem tribe. They are moving into the tribe, Lord willing, late this summer. Seth likens this mission trip to that of Epahroditus’s: a short-term trip to assist the main minister with hopes to encourage and relieve physical labor. The missionary (Seth’s brother) will be moving into the tribe with his wife and two children after the house is built. Then he will begin the arduous task of learning a tribal language. After that huge accomplishment, he will then (with his teammates) present the Gospel to the Dem people. Seth hopes to encourage and lessen the physical drain of his brother before that part of his journey begins.

Seth’s mother will also be going with him. Her goal is to watch the children while Seth and his brother Jeremiah are building the house. While she is supervising the children, this will give Briana (Seth’s sister-in-law), an opportunity to better adjust to the people and location and spend much-needed time with the people in order to build relationships and gather language data. This is just part of our heart in this short-term missions trip.

Breakdown ($3,000?)

God already provided approximately one-third of the cost of the trip!

-$1,435 round-trip ticket from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Jakarta,

Indonesia.

-$490 round-trip ticket from Jakarta, Indonesia to Papua, Indonesia.

-Over $500 to get in and out of the tribe (The exact number fluctuates due to

the inflation of gas.)

-If more than the requested funds come in, we will use that towards

electronic equipment (a video camera) and apparel (boots, etc.) that we

were going to purchase before we leave for Papua New Guinea anyway but

Seth will need for this trip. The camera will be used for the updates after the

trip.  🙂 We will keep everyone thoroughly updated on the numbers.

What is Nicole doing during that time?

We figured that since Seth is spending that time in Indonesia with his family, working and serving, Nicole will be in New Jersey with her family, also working and serving. 🙂 Nicole will be with her parents, serving the churches we are connected with in the area, as well as working various jobs (babysitting, secretarial, etc.).

How do I participate financially in this trip?

If you have given to our ministry before, this will be normal. Please send your check to our sending church:

Harvest Baptist Church

224 Harvest Lane

Natrona Heights, PA 15065

-Pay to the order of: Harvest Baptist Church

-In the memo section: Seth and Nicole Stokes

-***Add a post-it note to designate it “Mission Trip.”

–> This will help us keep everything accurate in regards to our support and informing those who want to participate specifically in this project.

*Remember the main goal; presenting the Gospel to people who have never heard the name of Jesus. This is one of the many cogs in a machine that connects your part of serving God to the whole machine working. This trip will affect the missionaries in Indonesia and the Dem people, and may even have an effect on the people we one day serve in Papua New Guinea. Thank you for your partnership, thank you for your friendship, and thank you for reading this lengthy update. 🙂

 “Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour…

and he that ministered to my wants.…”

-Philippians 2:25

Beds slept in: 59
Miles traveled: 32,000
States visited: 15 (plus Canada)
Churches met with: Over 35
*Random tally: 8 nights of sleep missed due to driving (Seth)

Praise God; He continues to grow our support team! We are at an approximate 25% of our support, and have had many churches (5-10) and individuals (5-10) express interest in partnering with us. We are waiting to hear back from them before making anything “official”.

Continue to pray for us as we travel! We will be in New Jersey for all of April, to speak at several churches, to host some small groups, and to serve in various capacities. From there we head to Pittsburgh for less than a week to do the same thing, then off to Indiana for 2-3 weeks to once again…yes, to do the same things (speak, share, and serve). Then we are off to Michigan for the end of May, and then back to PA for the beginning of June! Phew… then, Seth is off to Indonesia for all of July.

Pay attention to our next couple of posts! We will share about the opportunity Seth has to go to Indonesia in more detail, and then also another opportunity we have in October. Since we are not fully supported yet, we will need prayer and support from those who like to be involved in financial projects. Praise God that about 1/3 of the first project is already paid for before we ever notified anyone! Our God is so great that He gives before we ever ask. Thank you for your following with us in this exciting journey!

Have you ever felt “nostalgic”? Was there ever a time you saw something or someone and were overcome and flooded with memories from the past? Nicole had that experience last week. We had the opportunity to share our ministry at Nicole’s parents’ church in New Jersey, and while we were preparing our ministry message, Nicole began to recall person after person who had influenced and impacted her life. Each person and each event influencing her; becoming parts of the catalyst that God would use to draw Nicole and persuade her to go into full-time missions. This church was the same sending-church that sent Nicole’s parents to Colombia. Many of the members were so excited to see that legacy of the second generation going into missions.

This was one of the greatest receptions we have received from a church, with many people who stuck around to ask questions and to make dinner-dates with us so we could share more about our ministry. This was tremendously encouraging to us, it was also freeing to know we were walking into loving hands that were behind us, and behind Nicole before even she knew that she was going into missions.

We hope this encourages you, maybe there is a young person who is going on a mission’s trip and maybe you will support them; financially, prayerfully or through encouragement, you never know what God will do and what He will use to impact a life to serve Him in full-time ministry. This reminds us of the passage in Acts 13; God separated Paul and Barnabas, but the church “sent” them. Place after place in scripture you see God’s people are to have one focus (reaching this world for His glory), and whether you are the sent or the sender, your role is vital in the great task of reaching this world for Christ.

Thank you for your faithfulness in your support and encouragement, we covet your prayers, and are humbled to be your sent-ones.

We apologize for the mis-spelling (you know which word if you saw it) in the last edition of this post. 🙂

We had an opportunity (Monday the 17^th) to share with four college classes at Geneva College about missions and our ministry to Papua New Guinea. This was fun and exciting, a little nostalgic for Nicole (she was in their seats just 3 years ago), and of course nerve racking. This was a very humbling opportunity, but we took it anyways with the hope and intention to challenge young people into full-time missions and raise the awareness of unreached people groups around the world.

We shared in a Matthew class, a Greek class, a Globalism class as well as an English class. We tried to connect each class to their respective subjects. Trying to tie the purpose and privilege of studying the book of Matthew to missions was pretty easy seeing that the conclusion of the book is the Great Commission 🙂 . The English class was a last minute add-in; we tied in the value of literacy and how we have so many tools here in America that we take for granted. We taught the students that typically all unreached people groups are illiterate; meaning they cannot read or write their own language. We take so much for granted here in America, we pray we use our abundant blessings to fulfill God’s task to reach this world with His glory. One of those ways is to use our resources (technology, information, finances, medicine, personnel, etc.) not for ourselves and be a dam of blessings, but to be conduit of blessings and flow to the whole world.

We had a great time at Geneva; we met up with several friends and made other new friendships. God is so good to us, He even provides friends along our journey to encourage us. Only our God could ever be so thoughtful!

PRAY we were able to challenge (even just one person) someone into full-time missions, and that the others were challenged to be a part of full-time missions in some way for a lifetime. Thank you for your constant support and partnership.

Sincerely, Seth & Nicole Stokes, your feet to the unreached. Romans 15:20

We have had many things happen this past month and a half; from fear and concern to joy and excitement. As many of you know (as seen in our latest newsletter) our support is now over 22%! That is very exciting for us as well as for many of you who are already supporting us through prayer and finances.

The past two weeks has also brought some of our tears, to smiles. Our niece Eden (age 5, Seth’s brother’s family; who is in Indonesia) began to get really sick after she and her family went into the Dem tribe to survey where they will build their tribal house. When they got out she had a fever of over 100 degrees for longer than a week. Many doctors could not pinpoint “what was going on” but she was given malaria eradication medicine and began to slowly improve. Also, during that time, Seth’s sister Jennie was due with their third child and the baby was late. This gives us all a scare because she has high-risk pregnancies. We had many crazy ideas floating in our heads like; “is the baby going to live?!… is Eden going to be okay?!… etc”. But thanks to our God who IS rich in mercy and grace blessed both children; Eden is now healthy and Jennie had her baby at a whopping 9 lbs 7 oz, his name is Lazarus and we are glad he came forth 🙂 . We just came back from Tennessee to see our new nephew. It was great to be able to see him!

Our Niece Eden

Recently we had a great opportunity to teach a public 5^th grade class about missions! The class was going through Spanish missionaries in their social studies book and our friend who teaches that class thought it would be an awesome opportunity to bring two missionaries into the class for a day and talk about what it is like to be a missionary. We shared about our training, what we can expect life to be like overseas, languages as a whole, the purpose of being a missionary (being able to share this in a public school was a privilege), showed two videos, and had many questions asked. We hope we were able to speak truth in a clear way to these young children, some of who may never enter through church doors. PRAY for the kids and for the Spirit to work in their lives, that they might have questions for the teacher and any other spiritual influence in their lives.

Continue to PRAY for us, as we will soon begin to travel quite a bit, also that we would steadily raise our support so we can get to the field. We have another opportunity to speak at 3 classes at a local college, please pray we can communicate clearly and challenge these young people into full-time missions! We hope the rest of this update encourages you. Many of you have prayed for “laborers into his harvest”, recently several of our friends made it to PNG to serve full-time in tribal church planting (Hambrices, Bullingtons, Crabtrees, Sanders, and others). Also, several other friends of ours are heading to the field some time this year (Williams, Haynes, Keefes, and others as well). In regards to pilots, one of our closest friends (the Leedahls) head to PNG in the next month, Lord willing they will be our pilots. God has completely blessed them, they started raising support around December two months ago and are pretty much ready to go to PNG! We hope these updates encouraged you, the Lord said He will build His church, and He has been a faithful God.

Speaking at the Public School

Our Nephew Lazarus

Check out our latest newsletter!  Click the link below.

Newsletter-12.13-1.14

Happy New Year!

We have seen more support slowly come in! We were at 0% on September 15^th, and are now at an official 17% (current actual support) with almost 30-35% pledge support! We are waiting to hear back from the churches we visited to make any official number posted, so we will be conservative in our calculations. For awhile now, we thought we would only be able to head to PNG sometime next February, but if we see this support continue to trickle in, we might be able to go to PNG this August?!! We are required to raise 75% of our support before we are allowed to enter the country…so here is the break down that makes it possible. We have over 15% of our support required, that is 1/5^th of 75% but with our pledge support we could be as high as 50% of the 75% requirement…we are only saying this so that you can get excited with us and pray more specifically so that we can begin the visa process once we get to that requirement. Please PRAY! Your prayers could help us get to the field 6 months earlier, which could lead to us getting into the tribe earlier, which means we could deliver the Gospel (The Message that saves lives) that much earlier…and this is what it is all about; being a Christian, leading people to Christ, fulfilling the Great Commission, and changing the eternal destiny of souls!

“The Gospel is only Good-News to those who hear it”.

This season is one for everyone to come together, to rejoice in what the Lord has done throughout the past year, to look forward to what God might do, and to enjoy the “present”. Yes, the time we have now is a gift from the Lord, sitting around and enjoying time with family. We celebrated Christmas this past weekend with Seth’s family; both of his sibling’s and their families got together and relished in the 3 short days. This has not happened since 2002 and only God knows the next time this will happen. The wonderful time together ended Monday afternoon, we were ALL in tears as Seth’s brother (and family) left to go back to Philadelphia and will soon leave in less than a week to head back to Indonesia. 😦 Once there, they will finish up a few things in town and then head into the Dem tribe. They (with their co-workers) will begin to learn the Dem language with the hope of one day being able to present the Gospel in their language for the first time ever in history! PRAY for Seth’s brothers family (Jeremiah, Briana, Eden, & Jericho) as they have many transitions, many new costs and many new trials come their way on this journey as they take their 2 little kids into the jungle.

We are now in New Jersey celebrating Christmas with Nicole’s family and had a wonderful Christmas Eve service(s) visiting 2 supporting churches. This was special for both of us and we are glad we were able to see as many people as we could in such a short time. We will soon head to Virginia to see family for New Years and possibly connect with some churches and individuals only to start back on the deputation trail the first week of January.

With all of this traveling, we had to do some routine maintenance work on our car, so our car received some gifts in the month of December as well 🙂 We put new tires on, a new battery, brakes and rotors. Seth was driving home after replacing the new brakes and rotors with a friend and pulled over to get gas, when he got out he saw one of the rotors smoking and more red than Rudolf’s nose! We contacted our mechanic friend and he had some suspicions of what went wrong and seems to possibly be a new caliber…? It seems our car wanted more gifts this Christmas. We had to drive to New Jersey for Christmas so Seth’s mom let us borrow her car while our car waits in the shop to get fixed sometime this week.  Our friends that helped us work on our car let us borrow their car (what a total blessing!) so we could drive around town and leave Seth’s mom a vehicle to use while we have her car. We are so grateful to have such great friends and family; we really were able to see everyone come-together this Christmas and bless us. We want to say THANK YOU to the many of you who support us; your giving made it possible for us to see God in all of this as these things began to pop-up with our car. This was just a nice taste of how God will watch over us through you when we are on the field.

Seth, Jennie, Sara, Jay

Seth’s Whole Family

We have now traveled to almost 30 churches, and now 2 countries! We were in the Buffalo, New York area to speak at a couple of churches and neither of us had ever been to Niagara Falls, and so we walked across the Rainbow Bridge and into Canada. It was a nice place to visit but home is home :). We weathered the freezing wind and now we can say we saw the falls and got some pictures. That was a nice time and it fell on Seth’s 26^th birthday, so that was a treat for us. God blessed us and allowed our car battery to last 6 years, but it finally went dead and we had to get a new one. God continues to bless us by allowing our car to keep going forward which enables us to connect with more people and grow our support team. We had great reception in New York and connected well with the church, and especially with the youth pastor and his wife.

Christmas is less than two weeks away and we are thankful for each one of YOU and how God has placed YOU in our lives. We pray that YOU are able to keep Christ the center of this season and enjoy your family. This Christmas is extremely special for Seth, this year Seth ‘s sister Jennie (and her family), and brother Jeremiah (and his family) will all be together for Christmas for the first time since 2002! Since both of Seth’s siblings are tribal church planters in Indonesia, this is a rare treat. With us planning to leave for PNG in a little over a year, who knows the next time they will all be together. This is part of the cost of missions, but one we all take with joy to serve our Lord and King.

This past weekend we had another opportunity to share our ministry during the Sunday school hour and hopefully answer any curious questions people have about tribal church planting. We also shared during the main service. Saturday night we were able to participate (along with those that braved the storm) with the church in a white elephant gift exchange and play some fun games. Seth gave a short message with the focus on how this time of Christmas ought to give comfort to those who are Christians, God kept His word from Genesis 3:15 and sent the seed that will crush the serpent’s head, Praise God for being faithful and keeping His promises!

Since we are celebrating Christmas in Pittsburgh on the 21^st, we will head to New Jersey on Christmas Eve, there we will celebrate Christmas with Nicole’s family. We will head to Virginia later in the week to see family and possibly connect with churches and some supporters. The New Year will be ushered-in in Virginia for us, then we head to Michigan to participate in another Missions’ conference and begin the deputation trail full-force.

We are praying for you that you have a great time with your family during the holidays. Continue to pray for our safety as we travel and raise our support team. We greatly covet your prayers, and appreciate your partnership.