The Pal Team….The Lockwood and Claasen Families during our recent trip to Madang

Dear Prayer partners-

We recently returned from two weeks of meetings and work with our partners in Madang. It was an awesome time to see the Lord’s hand at work and His mighty provision for our team! Several things were accomplished:

• We had a meeting with some of the leaders of the Pal people group and formally told them that we would be coming to Pal as soon as possible. Lord willing, we hope to build and move in during September and October of this year.
• They made an agreement to let us use the land we will be building our houses and the helicopter landing spot on!
• Nate and Mason traveled as far up the road they could go and found an ideal spot for a helicopter shuttle spot. Having a safe place to shuttle building supplies that is closer to Pal will save us thousands of dollars.
• Our partners were given the exact amount of money needed to be able to start the building process for their very basic, bare-bones house. (Our general plan is to build as simply as possible and use local materials wherever possible but not have to rebuild every 2-3 years).

Thank you for praying for us! At certain points during our two weeks we were exhausted from making what seemed like hundreds of decisions…working through conflict (not a lot, but a normal amount!) with our dear friends and partners in the work, feeling the weight of the fact that our decisions now could impact eternity for the Pal people. WE NEED YOU as part of our team to be lifting us up during these crucial months as we prepare to move in.
We have one more term of school to finish out and are excited to finish well. In the next two months I’ll be sorting our house and preparing to move, finishing up Kindergarten with Noah and beginning preschool with Tim. We look forward to settling back into our Madang center in June before we begin building in September.

Kid Stats:
Number of loose teeth: one (Noah’s bottom right)
Number of bananas consumed in a day by our family on average: 9
Number of intricate Lego creations made daily by Noah and Tim: 3 to 4