First Days of School!

The community gathered on Monday to celebrate the opening of the first Pal School ever! Surrounded by pictures of the action, the center picture is of our first literacy class. Exciting times!

Promises Kept.

When we talked with the Pal people in January 2009, they welcomed us on the basis of four promises:

1. That we would learn their language and culture well enough to communicate accurately and appropriately
2. That we would teach them to read and write in their own language.
3. That we would translate God’s Word into Pal.
4. That we would teach through the Bible and make it clear to them.

Please take a few minutes to rejoice with us that, because of God’s faithfulness and the caring and giving of folks back home, we are keeping those promises.

One of the things that lends real weight to our work here is doing what we said we are going to do. Thanks so much for keeping us here!

Our boys staring their school too – Noah (5th grade), Elias (1st grade), and Tim (3rd grade).

And Sorrow…

One of our good friends did not come to the school opening yesterday. It was not for lack of desire to be there, it was because he lost his 6 month old son in the night. So, after the party, when everyone began to head for home, I went to sit with him and grieve as is Pal culture. We do not know what the cause of death was, but that doesn’t make it any easier does it?

Today, a different young man hiked two hours to our house just to ask me if I got his letter. I said ‘No, what letter?’ He responded that his newborn daughter died last week and he buried her with a letter. He was expecting that her spirit would have written the cause of death on the blank paper he put in the ground with her and then delivered the letter to me. He was hoping to know what thing he had done (or what someone had done to him) that he could make right so no more of his family would die.

Oh how doubly grievous, that our friends would deal with death and deep uncertainty/fear. Continually we live in the tension of wanting to meet immediate needs and long term needs of the Pal people. Would you pray with us for this:

• Speed in the work so that their understanding would be set right
• Specific Pal people to take on roles in the work – we need God to raise up teachers to take over the school program, a few men who will help us prepare Bible lessons, faithful and bright men to help with Translation, and a few more who can be trained in community service (Health workers? Infrastructure?)
• Wisdom to rightly discern what our limited energies and resources should be spent on.

Thanks so much for hanging in there with us.

Nate for the family.

PS: Elizabeth and the boys will be taking a few days out of the bush to have and infected cyst taken care of. Will you remember their travels and Elizabeth’s doctor visit in your prayers as well?