Category: Kopf News

October 10, 2018 Hello prayer warriors! Susan and I wanted to pass on a little good news as it is developing here in the Hewa tribe.

Thank you so much for your love, prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

New Tribes Mission is currently celebrating 75 years of ministry, and has chosen and new name! We are proud of the way our mission has maintained its crystal clear vision of a thriving church for every people group, and are excited about how their fresh name is anchored in a strong heritage while holding tightly to their vision for the future. The new name is Ethnos360. To learn more about the anniversary celebration and name change please go to ethnos360.org.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

Thank you for praying with us as we are temporarily living in central Texas. We are making steady progress helping Mikayla get established in the town of Waco where she can be near doctors that provide the best medical care for her connective tissue disease as well as allow her to live close to Baylor University for potential continued education. Thank you for praying for us as we seek the Lord on how best to make this transition. She is currently meeting with a bone doctor in Fort Worth, and although he is not able to provide a cure, he is helping to slow the degenerative effects of her illness. Please pray for her healing, and for deep peace and acceptance for whatever the Lord has for her future.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

We need to let you know about our change of Plans

We recently sent you an email to say that Susan and I have become very concerned about the painful disease our daughter, Mikayla, is enduring and we decided that we needed to have Susan and Mikenna fly to the States to be with Mikayla as she started a treatment program for pain in Washington DC. Susan has now been with Mikayla for a little over three weeks and it has recently become clear to us that Mikayla needs us to be with her for a longer period of time to help her work through more doctor appointments and treatments, and to help her come up with a plan for her next few years.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!!! Jonathan, Susan and Mikenna

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

We just finished a one-week men’s leadership training “conference” here in Hewa, led by Matthew and Bapo from the Kudjip Hospital. This is the third time Matthew has come to teach our Hewa community, and each time he has brought life-changing information in both medical and community developmental areas. In these remote mountains where tribal fighting and un-restrained tyrants have stomped out potential advancement in the past, there is now hope for the future as men are making decisions to follow Jesus’ principles of love and join hands to make a better community. We are very encouraged by the eagerness with which our community leaders are embracing these principles as they are making plans to make a better future for their children.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

We are so sorry for lack of communication! Our email situation in the Hewa tribe has continued to disintegrate and now we have not been able to receive emails for more than a month. We are terribly sorry for this inconvenience and regret that we have not been able to read emails you may have sent to us. The only time we are able to access correspondence is by making an expensive trip to town, so it may only happen every three or four months.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

I (Jonathan) have now arrived back to town to join my family after two and a half weeks in Hewa. It is great to be back together with them and also wonderful to spend time with other missionary families who gathered here for our annual conference for missionaries.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

Mikayla will be graduating from BIOLA University in two weeks! We are very proud of her dedication and perseverance despite ongoing pain. As soon as her graduation is complete, she will turn her focus to a semester of studies to pass the MCAT exams, which are necessary before applying for medical school. Please pray the Lord provides an affordable medical education so she can continue with her dream to become a missionary doctor. After Mikayla’s graduation, we plan to drive to Florida to spend Christmas with Susan’s family, and then to return to Papua New Guinea in late January.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

We are very thankful for a safe and fun filled 4,300 mile trip in October through New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona, and are happy to be back together with Mikayla in California for a short breather. It was great to spend time with many friends, and especially wonderful to attend Micah’s graduation ceremony. Micah is now officially a medic with the Army, and has already been shipped to Georgia to begin airborne school, which includes (I’m very jealous about this part) parachuting out of airplanes!

Thank you so much for your love and prayers and gifts! We are deeply grateful for your part in reaching the Hewa people with the love of Jesus. Thank you!

We are now in California! It was wonderful to visit with the Kopf family in Idaho in honor of my parent’s 50th anniversary, and are now grateful to be in Fullerton where we can spend time with Mikayla during her last semester at BIOLA University. I (Jonathan) am also happy to have the opportunity to participate in an online class this month.

We arrived in America!

We were grateful to be reunited with some family and friends and can’t wait to see more. We are now in Idaho, getting ready to help my parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and then plan to drive to Fullerton, CA where we can be close to Mikayla while she attends her final semester at BIOLA University. We feel blessed to have this opportunity to re-connect with family and friends, and we are extremely grateful for the Lord’s provision of a car and house to live in.

In memory of our Hewa friend, Mifila (photographed in January with two of her three children)

Just four months after I flew to the Hewa village of Fiy to speak up for the lives of the four women who were accused of being possessed by evil spirits they believed were causing death, a group of armed raiders from a different language group swept into the village and murdered Mifila. We are deeply saddened by this news but are encouraged to hear the leaders of that village are asking for help from the police in town rather than planning a retaliation murder.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers for us and our Hewa friends. We are deeply grateful for your part in sharing the love of Jesus with the Hewa tribal people of Papua New Guinea.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers for us and our Hewa friends. We are deeply grateful for your part in sharing the love of Jesus with the Hewa tribal people of Papua New Guinea.

Learning fever has hit Hewa! Right now as we are between teaching new books of the Bible, several people expressed interest in a new literacy course. Susan thought it might be a good opportunity to train more of her previous students to become future teachers, so she offered to oversee a new class. She was shocked, though, when there was so much interest that she had to start two classes instead of just one. Then the small children said they also wanted to be taught so now she is overseeing an adult class, and a children’s class that spans the ages of 6 through 14, and then an introductory class for the small children ages 2-5 (the youngest shown in picture on the right). Susan has chosen several men and women to be her assistants so she can prepare them to become future teachers.

A new baby, and a fresh start.

Matiu and his wife, Saina, had a new baby! He is a healthy and good natured little boy, and mom is eager to show him off to everyone.

That’s not the only beautiful new thing that happened in their lives though, as recently Matiu took a bold step to move away from spirit appeasement practices, to a deeper commitment to the Lord. In the picture above, you can see Matiu blowing on a small flame to burn his bundle of feathers and other things used for spirit dances. As he was burning these things Sunday after church, he announced to the entire group his intentions to follow only Jesus. “I am done walking on two trails,” he said, “trying to go to church while at the same time attending spirit dances. I want everyone to see I am burning the things that tempt me to have a divided heart.”

Unexpected change of plans

Mikayla’s back pain continues to be increasingly painful to the point she is struggling to function well at BIOLA University. Although she has been able to keep her grades up, she is often not able to sleep or eat well and has lost weight due to pain. After prayer and consultation with our mission directors we decided it was important for Susan (and Mikenna) to immediately fly to California to be with Mikayla for her next two months of meetings with specialists to determine the cause of her pain. The results of the recent MRIs showed that she may have some sort of autoimmune problem that may be causing slight degenerative problems with her back. On top of that, she has two slipped discs. The doctors are concerned about the degenerative problems and would like to run more tests to determine what may be causing this. It is sad to hear of our daughter struggling in such pain and we want to do everything we can to help her succeed.

She was tiny, nothing more than skin stretched over bones. She wouldn’t make it through another night. I turned away feeling powerless to make a difference. I couldn’t imagine what we could do when my family was struggling to survive in a rain soaked tarp roofed shelter, rushing every minute of precious daylight to clear the jungle and cut lumber in order to build homes for our missionary team. God have mercy on that poor child.

At the same time we were moving with our co-workers into the Hewa tribe in January of 2000, a sickness was sweeping across the rugged mountains of the Central Range of Papua New Guinea. Among those who died were Fisa’s husband (Fisa is the woman pictured left) and her son Waina’s wife.