Greetings all,

Soon it will be lift off day! (We just received word Ed made the flight successfully) This last week has been busy getting ready to go but slowly things are coming together. I will appreciate your prayers as I depart our local regional airport for Dallas Tuesday morning in order to catch the 13-½ hour flight to Tokyo, then another 7- ½ hours to the Asia Pacific. The flight over the Atlantic is the long one so I am hoping for only a mild headwind so we can get there a little more quickly.

My time in Asia Pacific will be busy with a Wana Bible conference along with meeting with a number of missionary teams who are working in other language groups. We like to take our Wana pastors along with us when we make these visits as they have a lot of insight we don’t have when it comes to working cross-culturally. I will also appreciate your prayers for Jeanne as she holds things down on this end and that things will run smoothly for her in my absence. My plan is to be gone for 30 days.

In this email, I have included pictures of one of our first pastors in Wana, Pa Napen. He is considered a pastor emeritus now but still stays active and helps in the church and in outreaches as much as he is able. He is also passing the baton off to his children as he has two of his daughters and sons-in-law who are serving as missionaries in other areas. Recently Pa Napen came down with an appendicitis attack and had to be flown to the provincial capitol for surgery. The upside of this is that he has been able to visit both his daughters and their families while there, as one daughter serves in the capital city, and the other daughter in a tribal group only about an hour’s drive away. Enjoy the pictures!

Pa Napen and his granddaughter Reni. Pa Napen was instrumental in planting a church in the Wana village of White Rock. He also serves as and elder emeritus at his home church in Wana. Here his granddaughter is keeping him company while at the hospital.
Pa Napen with his daughter Tina. Tina and her husband Arta serve on our Wana Team in the Provincial capital – dorm parents to 15 Wana kids! After Pa Napen was released from the hospital Tina took him up to the Da’a Tribe where the other daughter and son-in-law serve as missionaries with our mission organization.
The real reason for these pictures is to show off a drawing that his granddaughter Reni just finished of her Grandpa. Wow – what an artist! One thing I have noticed of the Wana is since coming to know the Lord as Savior they now show much more affection for their loved ones than they used too. I am sure they loved them before, but it is just more apparent now.

Thanks for being a part of our ministry through your prayers – we really appreciate it.

God Bless,

Ed & Jeanne Casteel