Dear friends and family
It has been a few weeks since I sent out a letter. Two weeks ago we had a week’s holiday then the next week Wendy went up with me. That night we had the last lesson in Romans chapter 8. Whatever difficulties we have to go through God’s love is always there with us.
River crossings are a part of life with these people (in the background of the picture above people are crossing the river). They will often hold the hands of the smaller children and take them across. This a good illustration of how God takes us through our difficulties.
Thursday morning Dolis and Ableso helped me check Romans 11 then Robert came in the afternoon and we almost got to the end of the chapter. Wendy got with Dolis and Ableso for a time of prayer and got some insights into some of their misunderstandings about going to church etc ☹. Thursday night I reviewed all the lessons in chapter 8.
This week two of our leaders, Aaron Luse and Gary Smith went up with me and spent the first night (Wednesday night) there. Both of these men have spent years planting churches in tribal locations and are now helping those who are just starting out. For Wednesday night’s lesson I just did an introduction to chapter 12, then Aaron and Gary gave their testimonies and encouraged the believers. The believers spoke to them about their desire for missionaries to come and complete the work that we started.
The next morning, we crossed the river and went up to the next village. The picture above shows Aaron, Gary and our guide at the river crossing. The people of this village had previously written a letter to the mission asking for missionaries so we wanted to find out exactly what their thinking was. What were they hoping that the missionaries would do for them? One man spoke up and said that they wanted a water supply and a footbridge across the river but we are not sure that this was the general consensus. Another man spoke of wanting to learn to read and write.
Aaron made it clear that they could not promise them missionaries, but if some did come they would not be building bridges, etc. Their work would be threefold: 1) literacy 2) Bible translation 3) Bible teaching. Aaron said that it wouldn’t be good if the missionaries didn’t do what the villagers expected, and then the villagers get angry with them. The picture above is this remote village.
Aaron and Gary were a real encouragement to the believers and us and we appreciate their willingness to come up and view the ‘lay of the land’ up there.
With Christian love from
David and Wendy
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