a BIG commitment!

Back on November 30, we wrote blog posts and emails, updating you about a big survey that our men were getting ready to go on.  It was to be their second survey into Maliyali--but technically this one wasn't a "survey" (the actual survey had been done back in September)...this was a different kind of trip.  Most of you already know the outcome of their trip, but here I want to document it with pictures...

Nathan and David boarded an airplane here in Wewak on December 1.  Along with them was our area leader, Greg.  He was able to take his sixteen year old son Noah along, which was so awesome!  I love the idea of Kaine being able to do these things with Nathan someday.  (by the way, a lot of these photo creds go to Noah--he took pictures with David's phone which was a huge help to the guys!)  So anyway, first, the guys flew to pick up Jonathan (another missionary in a tribe) and Faimpat (a tribal believer in Jonathan's tribe).  Then all those guys flew to this airstrip, to once again begin the ten hour hike to Maliyali.

David, Greg, Noah, Nathan, Jonathan...and Faimpat is the guy with the plaid shorts.

A LONG hike, complete with some epic vine bridges!  I'm excited to try crossing one of these very soon! 😬

Among the Maliyali people again!

The guys really weren't sure what to expect--it had been 2 months since they had been in for the initial survey.  But one thing they did NOT expect, was that the Maliyali people had been working so hard to clear land for our families!  They didn't even know for sure if we were coming back to live among them, but yet they worked super hard to clear all this land.  When our guys saw that, they were super encouraged by the level of commitment the Maliyali people showed to us through that.  So thankful!

They cleared this area for a helipad.

I mean, look at this!  This is another point of view.  In this picture, David was standing on the edge of the helipad, looking back towards the village.  You can see the area that they cleared for our families to build houses!  So awesome.

The guys had some small meetings with land owners, and then they had THE BIG MEETING.  When I think about it, it's really amazing.  We went through four years of training, and this right here has been our goal and purpose--committing our lives to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to a remote tribal group.  Wow.  So humbling and so amazing.  

In this big meeting, Greg talked to the people again about the specific tasks that New Tribes missionaries do.  (Learning their tribal language, teaching them to read and write it, teaching the God's talk, and translating the Bible).  This had already been talked about back in September, but now Greg was talking to the people as our leader.  He was basically handing our families over to the Maliyali people.  He talked to them about the commitment they needed to make to us--a big commitment to teach us their language, to provide us with land for our houses, to protect our families, etc etc.  

Nathan and David signed a contract, to do those four things that Greg mentioned.  And representatives of all the nearby villages signed it, too.  It was a contract of mutual commitment--us to them, and them to us.  This is no small thing--it's HUGE.

After that, they showed David and Nathan the land that they will be providing for our families to build houses on!  Here is Nathan, marking the land for our house.  The people are continuing to clear away trees to prepare for housebuilding. 

Our guys standing in front of the land they have allotted for us.  So cool.

After the meetings and formalities were done, the guys had time to hang out with the people.  It's weird that me and Emily haven't been to Maliyali yet!  But we will be soon!  I'll tell you about that in another post!

Is this not GORGEOUS?? This will be our kids' backyard very soon!  I can picture our kids and Calvin and Louise, running around with all these Maliyali kids.

Our new family :) 

Thanks for praying, everyone!  We have seen God answer countless prayers lately--for years, we have been praying for "our" tribe...we are so thankful that we can now pray for them by name!  Please join us in praying for the Maliyali people.  To God be the glory!

Maliyali, here we come!

We are so thankful to announce that we have chosen "our" tribe!  God has led us to Maliyali...the one that Nathan and David first surveyed back in September. We have spent MUCH time in prayer and discussion within our team, and with our leadership.  We feel confident that we want to spend the next decades of our lives among the Maliyali people.  For God's fame and our joy. We are feeling very thankful, excited, and VERY overwhelmed.  Thank you for your continued prayers and support! We need it!  There is a lot that goes in to allocating into a remote jungle tribe...we will share more of that in the future.

Please check out this video, which we already shared on facebook.  It shows the last survey that our men took into Maliyali, in which they told the people that we are coming to live among them.  David did a fantastic job on it!
 Click here to watch it!

We love you all so much, and we thank God every day for the love and support you give us!

our first tropical Christmas!

Thank you for your prayers for our family during this Christmas season!

We are doing well.  Of course, we miss our family and friends back home, but God has been so good to us here in PNG.  We are coming out of the holidays now, and we aren't feeling sad...just thankful!  (and a bit overwhelmed, but that has to do with our near future which I will be telling you about sometime soon!)

Anyway.  Our Christmas was filled with friends, the beach (that was a first for us! We can't do that in an Indiana winter!), Christmas cookies and other good food, games, gifts...and most importantly, talking to our kids about the REAL reason we celebrate Christmas.  And the fact that Jesus came to earth for ALL peoples--this theme is all throughout the Bible!  So cool and so humbling.

Now for some pictures...

The kids at the church we attend just LOVE to shower our kids with attention...and gifts.  Lol.  I think especially since it's Christmas time.  I love this mask that Daisy's friend gave her!

Our kids got the opportunity to be in a Christmas program here on base!  What a blessing.  We are so thankful they could be a part of this!

The whole cast, along with the amazing Miss Stephanie who directed it!

A couple of weeks ago, we built a "snowman" at the beach!  Or at least, the closest thing we can get to an snowman ;) 

Our Christmas weekend started out with our first Team Christmas.  Have I mentioned before how incredibly thankful we are for David and Emily?  We hit the jackpot with these teammates...we just love them.  Dave and Em, we loved our team Christmas and we can't wait for many more!  Chad and Martha, next year hopefully we can all celebrate together!

After dinner, we headed outside to play a really funny reindeer game...haha!  We laughed so much :) 

On Christmas Eve night, we started doing some family Christmas stuff with our kids.  Nathan created lots of games with prizes, just like my dad does at home...sniff:(   Our kids had a blast, and so did we!

On Christmas Eve we all slept in the living room...even though I so desperately wanted to go up to our bed!  Lol.  I did it for the kids, even though I KNOW that rats come in our downstairs at night.  Thankfully I didn't hear any--that was God's kindness to me!

Daisy broke out our new blowup boat...haha!  She slept great, even though to me it just looks HOT! 

On Christmas morning, we read the Christmas story and had a little church service.  Then we opened gifts.  Both my parents and Nathan's parents spoiled our kids by sending over packages...the shipping on those is NOT cheap!  Thank you to our dads and moms...you made our Christmas very special :)

That afternoon we hit the beach with the Rimestads and some other friends. Again, that was our first time ever going to the beach at Christmas!

Daisy and Lou--the cutest little mermaid ever!

 We took Daisy's "bed" to the beach...the first time we used it in the water!  Of course, it ripped, which isn't a surprise because we got it in town pretty cheap, which is a recipe for disaster here in PNG.  But it's all good... the kids still had such a good time!

Thanks for your prayers!  We really appreciate all of your prayers...and we NEED them!  We have a lot happening in these next few months.  A lot of really good things, but really BIG things.  So keep on praying!  We'll update again soon!

Maliyali Survey #2--Tomorrow!

We have a big prayer request for you!

Remember how Nathan and our partner David went to do a survey of the Maliyali people group?  (I blogged about it here).  Well, we have been praying SO MUCH about all of this (and so have all of you!), and talking to each other, and talking to leadership...so much thought has gone into this.  Our team is excited about the possibility of moving to Maliyali to plant a church!  Praise God, because this is a BIG decision!  However, it's not 100% set in stone.  We have one more step before it's final, and this step is happening TOMORROW.

Tomorrow (our time, so actually Wednesday night your time)...Nathan and David will be traveling back to Maliyali, along with our NTM leadership (his name is Greg Greenlaw--an awesome leader!  He has already been there and done the church planting thing, in another tribe along with his wife Heidi!).  Also, they will stop in Yifki (another tribe, see this blog post if you forget) and pick up Jonathan Kopf (missionary in Yifki) and Faimpat (a strong believer in Yifki).  Lol!  How's that for a ton of info for you to sort in your minds?? 

Anyway, these five guys will fly to a bush airstrip and then hike the 10 hours to get to Maliyali.  The purpose of this trip?  Well, it's pretty big!  Here are some of the purposes of the trip:

1.  To reconnect with the people.  It's been about two months since our guys were last in there.

2.  They will have a big meeting, where they will remind the people of the four things that New Tribes does:  Learn their language, teach them to read and write their language, teach them God's Word, and translate God's Word into their language.  These are the only four things we say we will do.  (note:  many times, tribes want missionaries because they hope we will bring them stuff, or cargo.  We need to dispel that now, to make sure they aren't having false expectations.  Sure, we will probably bring some things that will benefit the Maliyali people, but that isn't the MAIN reason we are going there.  I hope that makes sense!)

3.  To make sure they are still wanting missionaries, as well as:  

• Are they willing to give us land to build on?  
• Trees.  We will need many trees to build our houses, and many times the trees are tied to different clans or sometimes spirits...so we need to ask them about getting trees to build our houses.
• Are they willing to help us build our houses?

4.  In addition to asking the people these things, our guys will be scouting the area to see check out the ideal location to build our houses, as well as a helicopter landing area, etc.

5.  Greg, our boss, has an important role.  He will be very clear with the people, that if we do move into their tribe, it will be their job to take care of us.  Such as, helping us learn their language, as well as protecting us from trouble, etc.  He will even have a contract for them to sign (in the national language).

6.  Hopefully, we will make a decision!  If everything goes well, our guys will most likely be telling the Maliyali people that we want to come and live with them!  This is huge.  It's what we've been training for, for the last five years!  And finally, we're here.  It feels unreal!

We hope you are all excited about this, too, because we absolutely wouldn't be able to do this without you!  Your prayers and support are making this possible.  Would you please continue to pray, and specifically pray for this trip tomorrow?   The guys will be gone from December 1-5.  We will let you know how it goes!  

Here is David and Nathan on the last Maliyali survey.  They make a great team!  We only wish Chad (our third partner) could be with them.  We can't wait for Chad and Martha to join us!

Just for fun, here are Nathan and David during our missionary training in Missouri.  Back in the beginning, before we ever even partnered up together.  Slaughtering chickens together then...who knew they would be hiking the mountains of PNG together someday?  

This is the kind of land our guys will be hiking across (for ten hours!).  Please pray for that hike, too!

Here are the guys from the last survey, so you can put some faces to the names.  On the left is Jonathan Kopf, the missionary from Yifki.  The guy in the hat is Greg, our area leader.  Then Nathan and David.  Faimpat is missing from this picture, so I'll be sure to post one of him next week :) 

Sweet Maliyali people.  They have been asking for missionaries for SIX years! 

Thank you for your prayers!  We appreciate you all so much!

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.

for those who are wondering...

We're still doing well:)   And we are still praying and talking with leadership about which tribe God is leading us to!  Hopefully we can share some details in the coming month...but for now?  Thank you for praying!  We NEED your prayers!

In the meantime...here's what we've been up to:

Trips to town!  We absolutely love the town of Wewak!  And when we take family trips to town it's a very hot, sweaty and somewhat tiring event :)  But we love it anyway!  And the people here LOVE our kids--that's an understatement.  Especially Daisy...she melts their hearts!

We are getting involved in a local church!  I usually end up teaching Sunday School, but I'm okay with that because I want to be in the Sunday school class with our kids, anyway.  So it works out well :)   And after church, our kids always have groups of kids surrounding them!  Our girls love it :)  

Daisy sitting by her friend Shekinah in church :) 

I tried my best to make it feel like fall at our house...haha!  It was worth a try!  It still feels like hot and humid summer :) 

Daisy fell off of Halle's back the other day...poor girl face planted on the ground :(  She went to town with Nathan a couple days after it happened--talk about drawing attention!  All the ladies at the market were so worried about her!

Speaking of Daisy...she (and Layla) continue to LOVE playing with this sweet boy!  My girls love Calvin!

Nathan had a tropical ulcer on his ankle.  He's on antibiotics and it's looking much better now :)  Sorry about the picture, lol!

Speaking of Nathan, he continues to make his parents laugh even living on the other side of the world!

Our crate made it here from America!  Yay!  It was so fun to find some of our things that we had almost forgotten about!

We had a small tub of (more) legos--the kids were so excited because we had totally forgotten that it was on the crate!

Also on that crate?  A rug!  It may seem like a small thing, but having a rug makes our home so much more homey!  And...it totally smelled like an American store!  Emily and Halle loved smelling it...haha, we were all sniffing it :)

Speaking of Emily...she's such an amazing aunt to our kids!  We are so thankful for coworkers who love our kids!  

It's pretty pointless to straighten our hair here...it just get frizzy and it is SO hot that we need to put it up anyway!  But Emily did it for my girls anyway :) 

Speaking of some awesome coworkers...we love these guys!

Even though we haven't decided for sure on a tribe yet, we have been working on tribal house plans.  Thankfully we have an architect right here on our base, who has worked hard to help us draw up the blueprints!  Thanks Jay!

Lately we have been so intently talking with our teammates and leadership about future plans...and we realized that we NEED to be intentional to keep our kids in the loop! We have always said we want to have a family ministry and we still feel strongly about that! So we took Kaine and Halle out tonight and had a good, honest heart to heart conversation with them. We were encouraged because they were very open with us...about their excitement but also fears. Our prayer for all of our kids is they they will have an intense burden for the lost and that they will see that Jesus is so worth it and so much MORE beautiful and appealing than all the comforts in life! Like we learned from some wise friends--we are NOT sacrificing our family...we are sacrificing AS a family! I love that and I pray that our kids will always feel a part of this! #makinghimfamousinpng

Last but not least...we took a five day break up to Goroka (in the highlands...land of cool nights and hot-but-not-humid days!)  It was a much needed break, and I think Halle's face in this picture sums it up:  pure joy :) 

 Layla and Daisy got a chance to go to school up there!  We were staying on NTM's main base called Lapilo...there is a school there, and this was Layla's and Daisy's first time getting the "real" school experience!  Kaine and Halle wanted to stay home from school since they were on a "break"...lol.  Such smart kids :)  They had a good point though! So we let them stay home.

Our kids had a great time reconnecting with some friends from missionary training in Missouri!  The girls all had a blast playing with rhinoceros beetles one day...yuck!  Halle doesn't look too sure about sitting beside them :)

Thank you all for praying for us!  We need your prayers, and we will keep you posted on what the Lord is doing with our team here in PNG!

hello from halle--"A Midnight Adventure"

To see another of Halle's posts, you can click here or here...

Once again, comments from me (Rachel) are in red!  Love my sweet little blogging girl :)

Here's Halle's story...
Okay, I want to tell you about an adventure I had last night...

It happened after I went to sleep, there was a huge thunderstorm that woke me up.  And the lightning was too bright, and the thunder was too loud that I got scared.  So I went to my parents' bedroom.  They were asleep so I woke them up. (I actually wasn't really sleeping, either...it was a big storm!)  Then I told them I was scared so they said I can go in their bed for a little bit.  And after about an hour, the storm stopped and I got out to go back into my own bed.  

Then I needed to go to the bathroom, so I walked to the bathroom...and I heard flap, flap, flap.  I was scared, but I went in anyway (she's braver than I would have been!) and I closed the door behind me, then I saw a thing running behind the laundry basket!  And first, I thought it was a toad, but then I saw its long long tail so I knew it was a rat! (Sick!!!! Come on, rat, why would you need to be upstairs in our house??  Gross.)  So I ran out and said, "Mom! Dad! There's a rat in the bathroom!"  So my dad took a wooden rubber band gun and he went in, and me and my mom heard BANG BANG BANG!  And we heard the rat squealing loudly.  And so about one minute later he came out of the bathroom, and he had the rat in a toilet paper roll, and he went downstairs and threw it away outside.  (Can I just take a second to give a major shout out to my hubby?  For real...he beat a rat to death with a toy gun!  Yep, I'm pretty proud of him!) 

My mom was glad that she didn't see the rat--she told me I was very brave! (Halle WAS brave!  I'm super proud of her, too!)

Me and my mom are sad that we didn't get a picture of my dad holding the rat...so instead, here is a picture of me and my (super strong) dad.  

I think they make a great (and intimidating) rat-killing team, don't you? ;) 

Thanks for reading my blogpost!  I'll write again another time.

Love,

Halle