True Hope

Some Pal literacy school students came by early one morning… while waiting for me to come along to the school, they climbed the tower the boys had made and were reading our latest Romans lesson. What a cool way to start the day!

 

Breaking with the past

One of the hot topics right now in Mesi-land is how to talk to someone about baptism. While this may seem simple to most of us, for the young Pal church, it is a real issue. There is history here with a denominational group that has, without thorough biblical teaching been baptizing babies and youth here for the past 40 years or so. Lest you be confused about the necessity of the work that we are doing here, we’d like to point out that, as far as it concerned the folks here, their original pantheon of spiritual powers was merely enlarged to include the new names that they had been hearing. Prior to 2015 their understanding of baptism was that it is a power ritual meant to keep children from sickness and to give them spiritual strength for success in life (in this case, gardening, pig farming, and maybe making money).

As our folks have understood first the gospel and then the reason for baptism, we’ve had a quite a number of folks choose to identify publicly with Christ in water baptism. Those folks have now been called to give a report to the heads of the denominational group in our area. This is going to mean our friends will be put in front of a group of relatively highly educated, wealthy people and asked to defend their faith and actions. Think fishermen in front of Pharisees. As you read this newsletter, Liuk and others are at the meetings. Would you take a few minutes to pray for them – for good testimony and careful, reasoned, godly words.

 

This is our post-literacy class. They come on Mondays to practice reading and writing. It has sure been fun to meet students who have learned to read and write in our absence.

 

A Different Way of Thinking

You should know that, at first, our believers were ready to walk into the middle of the meetings and call out the leaders for false teaching and keeping them in the dark. As we talked on Sunday, we encouraged them that a hostile approach could close the ears of others to God’s good news. When we asked them which is worse; being spoken ill of or having God’s word being spoken ill of, they began to realize that, this challenge to them may indeed be an opportunity for the gospel to extend well beyond the borders of Mesi-land.

As they thought more and more about how God steps in to save the unrighteous, the un-deserving, and the rebels, they began to get excited about being His representatives. For them, it’s a whole new way of thinking.

Please continue to pray that God uses this situation for His glory. Also that our friends, as they break ties with this denominational group, will do it in a way that brings honor to the gospel and creates hunger for the truth in the wider community of the Adelbert Mountains.

 

A few more:

·        Praise God with us for the 35 guys who came to our first ‘How to study the Bible’ class last weekend.

·        Praise God for encouraging the hearts of the Pal believers as they trust Him for things like health and daily food.

·        Pray that we are able to maintain under the load of teaching and lesson development.

·        Pray for us for wisdom as we help with critical illnesses (one baby was brought to us with a 106 degree temp, lots of folks have a really nasty bug right now as well)

·        Praise God for the new songs that the church is writing – and that they have committed to teaching them to each other.

·        Praise God for faithful men who have come alongside us to help coordinate our literacy program.

 

In all of these things we know that there is hope in His strength and wisdom alone.

Thanks for your fellowship in the gospel.

Nate for us 5