praising God...we are "engaged" again!

Do you all remember two years ago, I posted on my blog that we decided to partner with David and Emily?  (Read about that "engagement" here).  We were so thankful for the way that God provided us with such an amazing family to partner with!  (And now here we are, two years later and we we can confirm that the Rimestads are some of the most stellar people on this planet!)

Well.  

God is so good.  So you know how we had two big prayer requests last year?  The first one was that God would show us which tribe he wants us to go to (still working on that one!), and the second one? That he would provide a third family to partner with us.  Well, once again God has ABUNDANTLY provided!  And I am convinced that He was answering many of your prayers--thank you!

We are so excited to introduce you to our third family:

Meet Chad and Martha Earl!

Here's the back story...

Martha was in our class at the missionary training center (MTC).  She was single at that time, and we and the Rimestads loved her!  She truly is an amazing, fun, godly woman.

Chad came to the MTC in the class after us.  So he started classes during our third semester.  A little back story on Chad...he actually grew up here in PNG.  And he is an incredibly humble and godly guy...perfect for Martha!  They actually already knew each other, and... long story short?  They fell in love :)

Fast forward...we graduated MTC, Rimestads went to California to finish raising support and prepare for PNG while we stayed at MTC and took Linguistics.  Rimestads came to PNG in July 2015, then we came to PNG in January 2016.  Also, Chad and Martha got married in January 2016!  And then a couple months later, they decided that PNG was the country they felt God leading them to!

Well, when we and the Rimestads heard that news, we were verrry excited.  Because you see, our NTM leadership here in Wewak was really encouraging us to find a third unit to join our team.  We knew Chad and Martha pretty well already, and we loved SO many things about them!  Seriously, they have so many awesome qualities...but the main thing was that we were very confident that they LOVE JESUS so much.  They have very strong walks with the Lord, and that is absolutely the number one thing we want in our partners!  Because it is definitely the MOST important thing!

So, we began to pray about possibly asking them to partner with us!  (Later we found out that they had been praying that we would reach out to them and ask them!  Isn't God so awesome?)  We emailed them in August and they prayed about it, we sent a ton of emails back and forth...and they said YES!  Thank you Jesus!

Chad and Martha are still in the support-raising season of life--and really just a good time of connecting with their sending church as a newly married couple.  Their plans are to come to PNG in July of 2017, and they will go through the same orientation program in Madang that we did.  Then they will join us in the tribe after that!  In the long run, we know that those extra months really won't matter.  We will be so thrilled when they are able to join us in the tribe, but we also know that the season they are in right now is such an important one!  They are SO worth the wait!

I cannot tell you guys (all of our friends and family back home)--just how much I wish you could meet both of our partners.  David and Em, and Chad and Martha.  They are some of the most amazing people you would ever meet, and we know you all would just LOVE them!  We are so humbled by the Lord's provision for us.  We know that He will be faithful to keep providing for us in the future as well.