We are back and thank you!

Dear Wonderful, Faithful, Prayerful, Encouraging, “We Love You” Supporters:

THANK YOU for all you did to help us get to Papua New Guinea and back earlier this year. THANK YOU for your prayers. We attribute our health, safety, lessons learned, vision gained, “coincidental meetings” and success in early marriage while there to many of your specific prayers for us. Our time there was fruitful and we would like to go back. But first, here’s a wrap up of what our 7 weeks looked like...

Amy began learning Melanesian pigin. Ryan refreshed and updated his pigin from the 80s. We dipped into the culture: ate food cooked in an underground mud/banana leaf oven; sat with the women making string bags; helped with their garden work; sat in their yards and homes and chatted some more...

We heard and saw what missionary life is like—the challenges & the Lord’s faithfulness in it all.

We worked in our future roles in medicine & construction/ maintenance. The nurses, doctors, builders, mechanics, pilots, teachers & more enable the missionaries to do their job better because services like heathcare, roads and schools are practically nonexistent in PNG. 

We met missionaries that we will be supporting. These missionaries move in to a tribe’s village and then spend years learning their unique language and culture. Then, they share the full gospel. As a body of believers is born, missionaries disciple them and teach them to read & write. The missionaries tediously translate the Scripture into their language. With God’s Word, the new believers can grow. The missionary’s goal is to leave behind an indigenous, self-sustaining church.

We saw that PNG is very “missionized”, however, very few know or have heard the TRUE gospel. Most churches preach a works-based salvation. Others still follow animistic beliefs and most everyone else follows a combination of the two.

We learned there are now 315 un-reached language groups in PNG. This number was recently reached from all major mission organ-izations in PNG.

We drank PNG coffee everyday!

We hiked through beautiful mountains & valleys and swam in the ocean.

We did NOT eat any bugs.



So, what’s NEXT??

Work, eat, sleep, play, reconnect with you in person, keep learning about what it is to be married folks that honor the Lord. And finally pay off remaining student loans.

We will be sent by The Village Church with New Tribes Mission to
return to PNG in early 2011. This means all of our financial support will go through NTM. We will contact you with more info on when and how to send support to NTM in the next few weeks. Thank you again for being a part, you are in our prayers.

Blessings,
Ryan and Amy