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.