Dear Fellow Laborers,

Happy New Year! We hope you all had a very blessed Christmas and that your new year has gotten off to a good start. We had a wonderful time together on Christmas day as my parents, Jeanne’s mom, and my sister and her husband from Dallas were all here for a big ham dinner with all the trimmings. We then enjoyed reading the Christmas story and exchanging gifts with one another.

Jeanne and I are looking forward to spending a belated Christmas/New Years with Geoff & Tina this month down in Peru, thanks to many accumulated airline miles. Jeanne and I will also be celebrating our 40th anniversary while there. We feel totally blessed that the Lord has made it possible for us to visit them like this during the middle of each of their 4 year terms on the field – making it not so long between seeing them.

One of the highlights of this past year was to see an old Wana gentleman named “Pa Wee” (Pa Whey) come to know the Lord. As I mentioned in previous correspondence I was able to sit down with him and have him give me his testimony at which time he told me he wanted to be baptized. Well this Christmas he along with 9 other believers from the village of “Kawedo” made a public statement of their salvation through water baptism. We praise the Lord for what He continues to do in Wana land and for those who are coming to know the Lord as personal Savior.

Our Wana co-workers, Esron & Nita Panius, along with Miyanto & Rone Kaku left for the tribe the middle of December so they could spend Christmas and New Years in their respective home villages. We were thankful they could get back into the tribe and visit many of the churches during this time. We were hoping to get the “reading check” of Genesis done before they left but missed it by 4 chapters. We should be able to finish that up this month and then it will be ready for the doing a final check by our mission translation checker in September. Translation is a tedious process to say the least and gives us a glimpse of painstaking task the scribes of old went through to make sure nothing was added or taken away.

I am making plans to return to Indonesia on March 12 for another six week trip. We have a number of things planned which includes another church wide Bible conference, visiting Wana churches and outreach areas, and also making some consultant visits to other missionary teams. Some funds have already come in for this trip but still needing to trust the Lord for another $2500 so will appreciate your prayers for that.

We also want to take this opportunity to thank you so much for your prayers this past month. It has truly been a blessing to partner with you as together we seek to expand the reach of the gospel in Asia Pacific.

Blessings,

Ed & Jeanne Casteel