Hello!

We thought that at the writing of this letter we might be welcoming spring back into our lives but it doesn’t appear that is happening. We have had so many consecutive days of freezing cold weather that the sewer pipes at our church froze up leaving us with quite a dilema. We are hoping that it can be cleared by Sunday morning. This is definitely not a problem we face in Asia Pacific! Maybe if March comes in like a lion we will have a lamb to look forward to at the end of the month. 😊.

Since our last letter Jeanne made a two week trip out to Ohio to spend some time with her sister, Janet, who is under going chemo and radiation treatment for ovarian cancer. We were glad she could make this trip and be an encouragement to Janet during this rough time in her life. Jeanne’s mom is doing much better after her hip break in November. She finished her regular physical therapy a few weeks ago and is now able to get about with the aid of a walker.

New canoe construction

My plans are still set to depart for Asia Pacific on March 19. It is shaping up to be a busy time as I and another of our consultants will be teaming up with some of our Wana leaders and making some consultant visits to a number of our missionary teams in the Central Region. I am then looking forward spending a full week in Wana where we will be conducting a Wana Bible conference and spending time with the church in the village of “Wo’o nTowu”, which translates as “sugar cane head.” As stated before the helicopter is down for repairs so I will be taking a motorized canoe into this village for the very first time! I am taking along a inflateable life vest which I am hoping stays dry for the whole trip. This will, however, not be the first time I have been on this river. In October of 1978 we made our first survey to the Wana people. During our return trip we hiked down to this river and boarded bamboo rafts and took a day to float back to civilization.

With the coming trip I have been making plans for the activities which have included preparing for teaching out of the book of Philippians. During our last conference we studied in depth the first chapter so will be beginning in Philippians 2 this time. An item of praise is that we “think” we have finally come up with an successful format of the book of Genesis combined with all the O.T. portions which we have translated from Exodus on. What we thought would be a fairly easy job turned into a bit of a nightmare but finally after combining two different software programs we feel we have the format we are looking for. I might have lost a little more hair on my head in the process but it was worth it! While in Asia Pacific we will be talking with the printer and hopefully get the printing process under way. We will probably print at least 600 copies to start with – enough to put one copy into the hands of all our church families.

Jeanne and I want to again take this opportunity to thank you so much for prayers for us and our ministry with the Wana people. Thank you for being our co-workers as we seek to reach Asia Pacific with the Gospel and see the Word of God placed into their hands.

May God richly bless,

Ed & Jeanne Casteel