Aaron and Erika Weatherl Assisting Church Planting in Papua New Guinea July 2011
Hello from Papua New Guinea, Thank you to each one of you who give, pray, and encourage us so we can be here to help plant churches in PNG. The Lord is working and people are coming to know Jesus. A few weeks ago, a Mengen man came to know the Lord. There has been a church in that tribe for a number of years, but after observing the believers, he saw that the Gospel message was real and he wanted it. Another language group, Siar, the missionaries started teaching about God for the first time in the Siar language July 5th. Pray for the missionaries that the Lord would protect them, give them strength and wisdom. Pray for the Siar people that they would understand the truth and accept it. Two weeks ago, Aaron went into the Nakanai tribe and gave Ben the missionary, his final language and culture evaluation! Yeah! He is now ready to start translating Bible lessons into Nakanai. They will go on home assignment before they begin teaching, but it won’t be long and another tribe will hear the message of salvation in their language!
June family picture
Our kids are on school break and enjoying a more relaxed schedule. Rachel is reviewing her Algebra 1 this summer so she will be prepared to take Algebra 2 this fall. She missed the first one due to be being on home assignment a year ago. She also has been babysitting, and Rachel and Micah helped with inventory in our supply department. Last week Aaron took Rachel, Micah, Joel and some friends from center to a WWII site. I am trying to balance their time with work and fun, as all fun usually ends up with not so good results.
saying goodby to coworkers
We have been through some major changes in the last two months which has been rather difficult. Our missionary school here is now closed down, due to lack of teachers and an administrator. The options for next year are to home school, send Rachel and Micah to the mainland into a dorm, or do a home school co-op. We, along with 4 other families, chose the home school co-op. We do have one elementary teacher, and also 1 high school teacher who will be teaching in this home school coop. We are so grateful for these 2 teachers who are willing to stay and help us with our kids’ education. For English and History, the oldest 2 need to use a home school curriculum, but other than that we can use the resources here. This has been a learning curve for Aaron and I, making sure that whatever our 2 high school kids do, will be accredited. Thank goodness for the internet!
Another change is that 2 of our leaders have stepped down. We greatly admire and respect these men who have been such a blessing in our lives. We are thankful that they want to continue on here in different ministries.
As a result of the changes here, it affects our ministries as well. I (Erika) may not be working in the library next year, or if I do it will be less than before. I will be helping out where I can in our home school co-op. Aaron also has an added role due to less men in leadership during this time. He, along with 2 other men, have been asked to be on a Center team to oversee certain aspects of our center here. Please pray for us as we are facing new things this coming year.
PRAY
- Siar and Nakanai men, women and children to come to know Him.
- Wisdom in schooling our children next year.
- For teachers and an administrator.
- For the school to reopen in one year.
- For us to rest in God, and to be an encouragement to our co-workers.
PRAISE
- For the 2 teachers who are here to help with the homeschooling.
- Health and safety this last year.
- New believers.
Merry Christmas
MERRY CHRISTMAS
We wish you a very merry Christmas. Thank you for being a blessing in our lives in Papua New Guinea.
We are praising God for allowing us to be a part of fourteen missionaries in formal orientation to the country and helping them through Tok Pisin Culture/Language Acquisition. Four of them have been able to complete this and move on to their full time ministries. God has blessed our region with a great support structure and personnel to meet the needs that are here. We are honored to be a part of this church planting team in the Islands region of PNG.
We are looking forward to the arrival of a lady from our home church who will be teaching in our school for 4 months. Uphold Emily in your prayers as she makes the preparation to travel in mid-January.
Warm wishes from PNG, Aaron, Erika, Rachel, Micah, Joel, & Grace Weatherl
Fall Update October 22, 2010
LIGHT
A light is starting to shine that cannot be extinguished. The Akolet is a small tribe in the islands region of PNG. The Truth has started to dawn in the heart of one man, Gili, and soon the hearts of those in his village.
Some of our fellow missionaries are presently translating the Bible lessons and Bible passages to get ready for teaching the whole village. In the process, Gili, their main helper has clearly understood the Truth.
Praise God we now have a brother in Christ among the Akolet people and hopefully soon a whole village.
OUR HAPPENINGS
Erika is working as our housing coordinator for the next couple of months. I have 12 full time students working through Tok Pisin studies.
Our crate arrived at the end of September and Erika is so pleased to have her new, larger, stove.
Changing out the smaller stove of 15 years on right
Aaron's surprise 40th birthday party
PRAISE:
Settling back in to PNG and center life well.
New believers in several tribes in PNG. God is raising up His church!
PRAYER:
Aaron and Micah are getting over their first case of Malaria in over 5 years.
Pray that God will give Erika wisdom regarding what new ministry to take on after the housing coordinator returns.
Pray for wisdom in raising our 4 children – we love having teenagers but we want to do our best.
We Made It! Aug 1, 2010
3 different airlines and 4 airplanes later we arrived at the Islands Region Supply Center safe and sound. Thank you all who have been praying for us on the travels. Here is a photo of us in Fiji getting ready to check in.
Traveling
Everything went really well and we were able to make every connection we needed to. Our luggage arrived at the same time as we did so that is a huge praise. When we were being picked up from the airport, the couple that was helping us, was also on the lookout for suitcases for other missionaries who had arrived the day before. Thankfully for them two of their three missing suitcases arrived on Wednesday.
We arrived on Monday evening and by Saturday we were pretty much unpacked and settled in. The kids helped a lot on Tuesday, and Wednesday they were off to school. They are enjoying their new teachers and their new and old friends. Joel and dad are cleaning up bat dung in one photo.
In a few days I will be getting together with one of the men who has been helping out new missionaries with acquiring the trade language and PNG culture. We will set up a plan for how to proceed from here on out. Therefore in the next few days I will get ready for that meeting and do some maintenance for our mission.
The last photo is of the kids wearing their PE shirts getting ready for sports on Thursday.
Final Furlough Update July 19, 2010
Shipping Crate
Well Furlough has drawn to a close and we said our last goodbyes at church today. It was hard saying goodbye to new and old friends; you are all so special to us and we will really miss you.
It was a very good year and we thoroughly enjoyed getting to see everyone that we were able to. For those of you that we did not get to see, we are truly sorry we missed you.
Since our trip to Canada, we built, packed and shipped a crate, and we are nearly done packing the house. Battle Ground Baptist church took up an offering and it covered the total for the shipping of the crate. Wow, thank you all very much! The crate is four feet tall, four feet wide and ninety two inches long. It was a family affair to pack the whole thing.
Thank you also for praying for our visa and passport work that needed to take place. We were able to have everything back in hand on Friday the sixteenth so we are good to go July twenty third. J We will have a 12 hour layover in Honolulu and then on to Fiji at midnight. We are supposed to arrive in Fiji at five in the morning. Thankfully we have one full night to get caught up on our sleep before heading to Papua New Guinea the next morning. Please pray for safe uneventful flights, good connections, and that all our luggage will arrive as well.
A big thank you to all who gave financially, gave a computer, gave numerous other items, loved us and encouraged us so we would be prepared emotionally, spiritually and physically to go back to Papua New Guinea. We could never do this on our own.
Building Crate
Our children have made some wonderful friends this year through Battle Ground Baptist church and La Center School. Thankfully there is Face book and email to stay somewhat connected these days. They are going to miss their cousins and friends as we head back for another three years till Rachel graduates from High School. L
July 1, 2010 update
We Arrived Home Safely!! Thank you to all of you who prayed and gave for this journey. It has been a long one but we were so blessed and encouraged by all that we met. Hope we were able to be a blessing as well. We put on over 4500 miles and some extra pounds as well. J Somehow I thought we had left all of the rain behind us in Washington, but it seemed to follow us most places we went. It was evident that the farmers in Canada were in need of much sunshine, as quite a few of the fields were more like ponds.
We are thankful that we were able to see most everyone we that we had hoped to see. It was a good visit with family and many of our friends.
We are now gearing up to return to Papua New Guinea. We purchased the tickets for travel and we will depart July 23 out of Portland, OR. We will arrive in Papua New Guinea on July 26th. Thank you so much to all of you who have helped make that possible through the many gifts and prayers.
In the next 3 weeks we will be cleaning and packing. We are going to ship a crate over so we need to get that organized as well. Please pray for those last minute details that need to be completed before we depart. We do not want to forget any of them.
Step of Faith – May 2010
“I have never been in a bank before.” Several of our children said this to us the other day. I thought how is that possible, but then, given our lifestyle and moving around, we hardly every take a trip into a bank. 99% of all our transactions take place online these days. There are certain things that we will have to make sure they know before we let them go from home when they graduate. It is hard to believe that we have only three more years for Rachel. Life keeps marching on.
A huge milestone and step of faith for Joel and Grace this year came with their baptism April 2
Grace Baptism
Joel's Baptism
5th. Rachel and Micah have enjoyed being a part of Track and Field this year. Micah went to districts in 4 events yesterday too. Both Rachel and Micah have made the honor role this year and Micah was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society. The Lord has consistently provided work for me to keep me out of Erika’s hair. J There have been very few days where I have not had some work. One great privilege is to be able to have my dad work with me some now that he is retired. It gives us some good father/son time. The ladies Bible study is done for Erika and she has been shopping, sorting and packing for our trip back to PNG. We have really enjoyed getting to know so many folks this furlough. The time has been a refreshing break from the workload overseas.
We are making tentative plans for arriving back in Islands Region Supply Center in Papua New Guinea mid July. The dates are still being worked on as we have not been able to purchase our tickets yet. We are pulling our children out of school early to go up to Canada to see family, friends and supporters. We leave June 7 for a 4500+ miles road trip, and we will be gone for 3 weeks. We plan on stopping in Milwaukee WI, Steinbach MB, Endeavour SK, several places in Alberta, Kelowna BC, and a few more stops in Washington state before coming back home.
In the mean time we are hoping to pack up a crate for shipping some articles back to PNG. People have asked us what we need before we head back to PNG. We are hoping to get a couple more computers for the family. With the older children needing them more and more it almost becomes a necessity to have them for school. Do you remember the day when those things were not a necessity? The rest of the main items would be a stove, vitamins, shoes, and other miscellaneous items. If you want some more details feel free to contact us on our email address found below.
In the recent weeks we have received multiple emails from our coworkers in Papua New Guinea stating the large work load that awaits us once we get back. J The main task that awaits Erika and I will be assisting 25 adults through their National Culture/Language Acquisition process starting right after we are moved into a house. This will be our main area of responsibility. I will be helping train several people to work as language consultants as well.
My prayer is as Jesus commands to be praying for Matt 9:38, “Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth labourers into His harvest.” It has been exciting to see God raising up several within our church and our supporting churches to go forth as labourers. One man will be going to New Tribes Bible Institute this fall with the possibility of going full time overseas. There is a young lady who is in training to be a teacher, who wants to come over in January for 6 months to help out in the school, either on the mainland or where we are. Another couple from a supporting church is sensing God’s call to Papua New Guinea so they would like to come and visit in January as well. We see how God is using the testimony of the believers in PNG to lead others into missions.
Pray that God would continue to raise up labourers for His Harvest field.
Please be praying with us as we are looking to the Lord to see our support level go up. Unfortunately one of our supporting churches had to drop us due to the tough economic times.
Praise God with us: Please pray for:
A good furlough year Safe travels on our trip to Canada
Safety in work for Aaron Tickets for PNG
Children are doing great Shipping a crate – and the items to go in it.
God is raising up more labourers Support level increase
Special 15 – March 2010
Fifteen is a decade and a half. To some it is a long ways away to others it seems as if fifteen years can fly by in a hurry. On Friday we celebrated Rachel’s 15th birthday.
Rachel turning 15
She has grown into quite a lovely young lady. It is so nice to see her desiring to follow the Lord. Since we are home, she was able to celebrate her birthday with her cousin Jessica who is only two weeks older than her. They seem to get along like two peas in a pod. It is great for them to pick up on their relationship where they left off 3 years previous and be able to go right along.
We too are recognizing that we have been working in Papua New Guinea since 1995 and this September will mark our 15th year there. We wanted to say a huge thank you for your support for us over the years in many different ways. We take that trust and seek to use it wisely and see His name glorified. We are so honored to be a part of the church planting effort in the islands region of Papua New Guinea. There are so many wonderful things happening there and Christ is establishing His Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
We have had some opportunities to share in our supporting churches and at two schools. We have seen several people show a definite interest in missions since we have been home. That is so exciting to see the Spirit move in each person’s life to bring about that point of change where they are willing to submit to His will for their life. We have even been able to see my employer come to know the Lord. Be praying for him and his wife as we have the privilege of mentoring them until we head back to PNG.
When school is out in Washington we plan on visiting family in Canada and then returning back to Washington state prior to our departure. As our plans stand now we will be heading back to PNG in July. Pray for safety as we travel and that God will continue to orchestrate all the details together with our PNG visas and everything else so we might be able to return to PNG as planned.
Sept 2009 post
We are really excited to be home and enjoying the nice fresh fruit and veggies that you can get in the northwest. It is so hard to go fruit picking and only walk away with having picked a portion. Now if we could just convince some of our kids to eat the fruits. I guess if you didn’t grow up here you would not be accustomed to it.
Our trip back to the USA July 9, was good and restful as we stopped enroute for a couple days of R&R. We had 10 days to move into a house and get settled before our trip to Kelowna, BC. While we were up in Canada there was a wildfire not too far away, but thankfully we were spared any problems apart from soot on our van. We had a great time with Erika’s mom and husband,2 sisters and a brother with their families. We spent the time catching up and going and picking more fruit. Apricots, cherries, peaches and more. J
We have been able to catch up with some of our family members but not all. Hopefully it will not take too long till we can get together with everyone.
We have several churches lined up for speaking engagements so far.
September 13 – Vista Community Church Ridgefield, WA
October 4 – Fellowship Bible – Kelso, WA
October ? – Battle Ground Baptist Battle Ground, WA
January ? – Hockinson Community Church Brush Prairie, WA
March 25-28 – Belmont Baptist – Virginia Spotsylvania, VA
The other weeks in between are open. Please feel free to contact us for more details. Our Cell # (360)600-5740. Or contact us by email.
We would love to be able to speak in your small groups or care groups or simply get together for a cup of coffee.
Praise:
- A wonderful rent free house in La Center
- Provision of many household furnishings already.
- Children are settling in to school, Rachel is even going out for Cross Country.
- Great times reuniting with family
Prayer:
- Children will be able to withstand the peer pressure at school. They jumped from a totally Christian environment to a public school. Yikes!
- Provision of a good job during furlough time to help those ends to meet up. J
- We can be a good witness and testimony to all we meet. This especially includes our kids in public school.
In Him,
Aaron, Erika, Rachel, Micah, Joel & Grace
Weatherl
Aaron's sisters and Brothers except 1
“God loveth adverbs; and careth not how good, but how well.” I was really challenged today in reading Our Daily Bread devotional by this proverb that the Puritans used. Looking at Colossians 3:8-17 is a very good way for me to remember what is really important in life. How often we get caught up in the doing of things and not the spirit in which we do them. With our children we are making sure that they have a good attitude in the midst of their chores. I know that this goes beyond just the chores but touches every aspect of our life. We want everything we do to be done with a right heart and spirit. We desire to be pleasing the Lord and glorifying Him in everything we do. Our Christmas time has been one of enjoying the fellowship of our family and soaking up those calories. Whew I think we can slow down on them now! We were able to spend some time at a cabin on Mount Hood and play in the snow. What a treat. For the first time we had the privilege of having all but one of my family at our house for Christmas. I believe we had around 40 some people in our house for Christmas day. It seemed like our whole week between Christmas and New Years was filled with activity and now we are glad to have the kids back in school and things resume to normalcy. We have six more months of furlough and hope to head back to Papua New Guinea in July. Please be praying that the visa and work permit renewals will go smoothly this time around. New Tribes Mission has to renew all the visas and work permits of the missionaries who work in PNG every 3 years. That all comes due March 2010. Last time this took a lot longer than expected. Since this process is going on we are not allowed to enter PNG until we have those renewed travel permits in our hands. Lord willing it will be completed before we need to do any traveling. Thank you for remembering this in your prayers. We would also ask that you would pray for a believer in Lavangai tribe named Mandes. She is very sick now and looks to have a terminal illness. I have placed the update regarding her at the bottom of this email.