Last weekend we had the opportunity to go into a tribal location as a family with some of our friends.
After a 3 hour road trip we arrived at the village that was next beside the road.
The church in this location has been established about 20 years ago and is now a community of about 200 believers. In their tribe as a whole they have 10 churches in other locations.
We sat down with the believers and talked for hours with them picking their brain and learning from their experience as Christians in PNG. They come out of the same background as the people that we want to reach with the Gospel one day!
Their own language is spoken a lot but they all understand and most of if not all speak Tok Pisin. Because of some people that married into their community but came from other language groups they just started a presentation of the Gospel in Tok Pisin and we had the opportunity to attend!
They are teaching 5-6 mornings a week and it will take them 2 1/2 months until they reach the Gospel going from Creation to Christ.
It was so refreshing to talk with some of the believers there and gave us an encouraging picture of what the final picture might look like of what we’re aiming for!
We’re looking forward to visits in other locations too!
As some of you might already have heard NTM USA has changed their name to Ethnos360.
There are several reasons for that.
Dear Readers,
Why have we changed our name to Ethnos360 from New Tribes Mission USA? Because we’re positioning to reach a changing world.
Our founders had a vision for reaching the world: “By unflinching determination we hazard our lives and gamble all for Christ until we have reached the last tribe regardless of where that tribe might be.” (Brown Gold magazine, Issue 1, May 1943)
That’s a far-reaching vision. A vision that represents God’s heart for the world. A vision that’s worth you and me getting passionate about and working together to make a reality.
That vision hasn’t changed, but the world has. We face new challenges, and we are learning to face them together — relying upon God to unite His people to overcome them for His glory.
Ethnos360 is the name that anchors us to our foundations and points us to our vision.
Ethnos is the “nations” that Christ referred to when He commanded His followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19) and “…that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all the nations…” (Luke 24:47).
360 represents the entirety of the globe — all 360 degrees. Our goal is to go wherever in the world is necessary to see a thriving church for every people, not only to focus on one particular type of people group.
Our vision is the same today as it was 75 years ago. As we move forward, we’ll draw from those lessons God has taught us in our 75 years of ministry to pursue new opportunities opening to us. Opportunities to reach a
changing world.
Together let’s continue to embrace God’s vision of reaching the whole world as you and I passionately pursue Him and His goals.
E2 is in full swing here and we are doing village visits almost everyday now to get to know the surrounding villages. Check out what we did this morning:
We made it to Madang! We will spend the next 4 months here and will learn a lot about PNG and its people! It will be an incredible time full of excitement and new things to learn! Our boys are already having a good time here even though it was quite hard to say goodbye to their old friends. They are excited to explore our new home and already made some new friends! We appreciate your prayers for the next couple months!
Exciting days here in Papua New Guinea! Right now we are learning to work in a lot of different areas we’ve never worked before! It is exciting to learn to do carpentry, transport crates, fix computers, work on bath rooms, etc. But even more exciting then just learning new things is working among national believers here! Here is a little story about how the PNG Independence Day went down.
On Friday 09/16/2016 was the National Independence Day for Papua New Guinea. We and some friends went by car to the town of Kimbe, the Capital of West New Britain. While we were driving to Kimbe we saw countless people walking to other Independence Day Celebratios as it seemed. Most of them dressed in the National Colors of Papua New Guinea (Black, Red, White?, Yellow) and carried flags.
There seemed to be some kind of celebrations in a lot of places where we went by. All the stores were closed.
We finally arrived at around 10 am in the city of Kimbe and after waiting in the car for about 10 minutes (because there were just speeches going on) went to a big field where a lot of people had gathered.
There was a stadium on the side where some people where sitting. The stadium was kind of fenced in with an open gate.
We were standing in the crowd trying to see what was going on.
The people next to us were very kind and one of them even offered to share her umbrella with us to protect us from the sun.
Then the signing and dancing started. It seemed like that they had separate groups that took turns to dance in and out of the gate and in front of the stadium. The dancers seem to wear traditional clothing.
There was something said from the stadium before each group and after each group.
After a while the people became tired of not seeing because the groups performed right in front of the stadium – so most people couldn’t see much the people moved into the space in front of the gate.
After continuing to watch from here a man came out and asked us to come with him and invited us to sit in the stadium.
They asked us to sit down and even offered our kids a bottle of water (we had forgotten ours in the car :-)). The dancing and singing continued for a while.
On the road we also saw trucks that were decorated and driving around celebrating.
After a couple hours we drove back. Not sure how much longer the singing and dancing continued.
Please pray for us as we continue to get to know PNG culture! Pray for us as we work on building relationships with the people here and work to learn Tok Pisin!
