Thank you so much for your love, prayers and gifts!  We are deeply grateful for your part in helping to share the love of Jesus with the Hewa tribal people of Papua New Guinea.

 We are coming home! We were able to purchase airline tickets and our plans are to arrive in Phoenix in early July for a six month home assignment. We can’t wait to get back together with family and friends. Between now and then though, there is a lot to accomplish so please pray for us and for our Hewa friends.

The Hewa airstrip project was previously reffered to as high priority, but it has now been bumped up to urgent status. We recently received news that because of a drastic shortage of NTM missionary pilots in PNG, we may lose our helicopter pilot some time in the next few months. If we no longer have a helicopter pilot we will not be able to receive necessary supplies and  emergency medical help in time of need. This may make it necessary for our families to temporarily move out of the tribe to town which could hinder our ability to minister with the Hewa people. We now see an urgent need to change gears and go full speed into airplane runway construction here in the village. If you have been considering giving a financial gift to help with the airstrip project, now is the time to give as we do not have all the necessary funds to fly our tractor and related items into the tribe, and yet this needs to happen this month. Please ask the Lord to provide the finances and also safety as we try to build an airplane runway in the jungle.

A group of our Hewa friends gather each morning for literacy class and then in the afternoon for airstrip construction. Susan is now overseeing Faimpat and Fato as they are teaching about 30 students how to read and write each morning. It is exciting to watch as the students work hard to learn to read in the mornings and then work on the airstrip in the afternoons, and then later excitedly return to the classroom to keep studying late into the night! Thank the Lord with us for the many people who are eager to attend classes so they can read the Bible!

Not only is Susan busy overseeing the village medical program and school, she is also teaching preschool classes to Mikenna, working in our garden and attending to her chickens! Since the cost of transporting food to our location on the helicopter has been so expensive, we have been growing a lot of our meals and taking care of chickens so we can have fresh eggs and meat. Susan deserves the Super Mom of the Year award!

New Testament translation efforts are continuing to progress. Recently we flew with Yanis, Yoke and Buka to the costal town of Wewak to meet with a translation consultant to review my work in the book of John. Our meetings went well and John 1-9 is now approved for printing, PTL!. We hope to have I Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians, Philippians, I Timothy, Titus and other books reviewed and approved before our return to the States in July. We would appreciate your prayers for this daunting task.

Thank you so much for partnering with us in the effort to share the love of Jesus with the Hewa tribal people. THANK YOU!!!

Jonathan, Susan & Mikenna