Labor and Delivery; New Birth at its Finest

This woman (leftmost) may lay claim to two very special firsts for our Pal friends. She is the first likely woman Pal believer and she is most likely the first Pal believer to be led to faith by another Pal believer, her husband Kulut. By all indicators, she will not be alone in either of those categories for long. The man in the center of this picture has been very hungry for teaching and is likely a believer as well. His wife is right there with him!

 

⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

(Act 2:46-47 NIV)

The Word of God does its work and does not come back empty.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have seen a marked difference in the kinds of questions that our Pal friends are asking us daily. It has gone from, “Is there something that I can do to have God help me on my hunting or in my garden?” to, “What am I going to do about my sin?” and “How do I actually put my trust in Jesus?” We attribute this completely to the power of the Word of God. Remember that our friends have been steeped in animistic thinking their whole lives. They have been taught that they are to obey a certain set of rules and by doing things they can manipulate the spirits to help them. They naturally want to carry this kind of thinking over into how they see God. As we have taught them about God’s mighty power, we’ve emphasized and highlighted that to do “church” or ceremony in order to have God send you stuff is absolutely false. He is absolutely in authority and absolutely complete in His knowledge; He can be trusted. They are getting it. We think that we have between 5 and 10 believers at this point with many more just waiting to hear the end of the teaching.

 

Nate taught a lesson about how we tend to care more about how others see us than about the truth about how God sees us. As you can see we’ve still got most of the original crowd who started with us 10 weeks ago. We have been sad to see a few depart, but the vast majority have stayed to listed to the life giving message.

 

Opposition

There have been a number of hard things that have come up lately in the community that we’d very much appreciate your prayer for. For one, a measles epidemic has been going on in PNG for the last few months and seems to have arrived here in Pal in the last 2 weeks. We’ve seen at least 10 children with the symptoms and many more with the potential for infection. For many of us from the USA this it may be a bit of a shocker to think that kids are losing their lives from something that we all are vaccinated for, but it is happening. There is no more vaccine in PNG and many who have been vaccinated have only been given one of the two required doses. We have been helping to support the care for the sick here by providing some hot drinks, cool cloths, and encouragement for the parents to care for the affected with food and water. (Traditional Pal treatment for high fever and or diarrhea  is withholding fluids.) Please pray for our friends as we are only 10 days from the final evangelistic lessons.

 

I had a dream. I am worried that we are going to hold on to this talk, and some will talk about us behind our backs. They will say that we are doing all kinds of bad things. What are we going to do? – Nolemak

A few of the guys have asked about how they will deal with those who will be saying that God’s Word is false and that we (white missionaries)  are lying to and tricking our Pal friends. It has been comforting to them to look back at what God’s Word says about that. How there will be persecution and there will be opposition, but that how God is faithful to take care of His people. We’ve also asked them if they’d rather have the fake peace that other people are offering (as long as they do what those people want) or the true peace that comes from trusting in God’s Word. Our friends have not hesitated to say that God’s Word is the sweet thing for them, that they will trust Him. Please pray with us for them that they may stand firm when opposition does come.

 

Elizabeth sits and chats with some ladies who stuck around after the review session on Friday. This has been one of the sweetest times of fellowship for us in our 5 years here in Pal.

 

This Week

Monday -  Chris will be teaching on the transfiguration of Christ. That the disciples got to see His glory revealed. We’ll  be focusing on His equality with God and authority over the earth. This in leading up to His presentation of Himself as the Messiah at the gates of Jerusalem (our Thursday Lesson).

Tuesday – Chris will be teaching that Jesus is the only way. He’ll be talking about how God’s promise to Adam and to Abraham had only one possible fulfillment; in Jesus. He’ll go on to talk about Jesus’s power over death by teaching through the raising of Lazarus.

Wednesday – Nate will take over and teach on wealth and greed. How wealth does nothing for the rich after death and about how when we are alive it is the time to hear God’s Word and believe it.

Thursday – Nate will be teaching on the healing of the blind man and drawing parallels between the man’s condition and our own spiritual darkness. He was helpless until Jesus stepped in. We’ll talk about how Jesus calls the least of men to follow him – the ones that others would pass over. We’ll also do the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Friday – Chris will take back over and teach on the last supper. About how Jesus was taking the time to prepare himself and his disciples for the hard road ahead.

 

Thanks so much for praying faithfully for us and the work here. We truly believe that God has been using each one of you to add Pal friends to His kingdom.

 

Grace,

Nate for us 5

 

O God, your ways are holy. Is there any god as mighty as you? You are the God of great wonders! You demonstrate your awesome power among the nations. Psalm 77:13-14