Gary and Esther Smith tribal church planting Smith Update Jan 2012
Dear Supporting Friends and Family,
Show of hands, How many of you love roller coasters? Ah, many hands went up, but still some did not. Since some people do not appreciate roller coasters we have refrained from sending out an update for a while. I’m referring mainly to our desire to get to the other village for evangelistic teaching. It’s been a roller coaster to say the least. We’ve taken you along that ride and decided to wait to communicate with you all again until we knew something a little more definite. I, for one, love roller coasters and have laughed and cried all along this trip. But for now let’s disembark and take a deep breath.
After much prayer, hiking, and consulting we will do a literacy outreach first. This will give us time to establish a presence in that village and “give them a picture of Christ.” The other village has agreed to build a literacy school and a house for the teachers. All of them still aren’t completely on board with hearing the Bible yet, so we will use literacy as sort of a John the Baptist to prepare the way. Please pray for this to succeed. We don’t have dates yet, but will let you know as things progress.
The two believing villages continue to grow and discipleship opportunities abound. It is so good that we are still here. Some believers still struggle with security of salvation or slip back into old thinking. While others continue to grow and flourish. For example, two married couples (one pictured below) recently desired to make changes in order to glorify God in their marriages. Sometimes the challenges make it tough to be here, but we wouldn’t trade anything for being a part of these believers’ lives as they grow. It’s the greatest joy there is!
Family Stuff: Recently our family got to take a break in town at our mission center. There we have the privilege of seeing a mission doctor and getting everyone’s teeth cleaned by the mission dentist. There is a school there on center and each one of our kids got to go for four days. They enjoyed it very much and loved interacting with other friends. But probably the highlight for Esther and I was the report we received on Caleb. As most of you know he struggles with a learning disability. This has even almost brought us to having to leave the tribe in order to meet his specific challenging needs. However, the Lord has provided a way. There is a trained specialist on the mission center who has given his life to serve missionaries and their children to help them receive the education they need. He could be in the States making much more money and living much more comfortably. But he has chosen to live here and serve the church by helping missionaries. Anyway, he tested Caleb several years ago and revealed Caleb’s challenges to us. We made adjustments but the progress has been slow and painful, especially for Esther.
On home assignment in ’09-’10 school year the Lord provided a way for us to enroll him in a special program called “Discovery,” and the specialist there also tremendously helped us with our specific needs of living in a tribe. Equipped with curriculum designed for these needs, we returned here in 2010, believing that God would improve things with him and enable us to remain in the tribe to serve the Dinangat Church. For the past year and a half we have seen improvement but were reluctant to claim anything as we can’t properly test him. While we were on center we asked this man, Mitch Hoskins to retest Caleb and see how things are going.
Well, the report was great! Mitch, the specialist said that Caleb made great improvements, much beyond what he normally sees! This was a huge affirmation to Esther’s perseverance and patience and Caleb’s hard work. It’s been a tough row to hoe, but it has been amazing seeing God provide all that we need along the way, enabling us to remain here in the tribe.
Likewise God uses each of you to the same end! Thank you for your faithfulness and support all these years. It’s a privilege serving with you.
Gary for all us Smiths in Dinangat
report of survey trip to possible outreach village
Dear Supporting Friends and Family,
We trust that your Thanksgiving was indeed that, full of giving thanks in spite of the long hours of driving or standing over the hot stove, cleaning your house, and then struggling with indigestion (smile). We do have much to be thankful for do we not? However, if we let them, circumstances can overshadow our thankfulness and we focus on the “pieces” of our circumstances, thus losing our peace. This is exactly what happened to me over the weekend. Much to our surprise, the village leaders in village M said they do not want us to come and teach the Creation to Christ story.
Salt Jan 2011 Update
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.
Eph 1:3
“This message is like salt!”
Imagine if you can, eating food without any seasoning at all. (I know some of you poor souls for health reasons live without salt, but perhaps you can still catch the significance of the following.) Not only does your food never get any seasoning, but it’s the same food all the time every day. So when someone comes to the meal with a little salt it’s like honey. Literally, they call it “sweet!” Used to be so hard for me to understand when they’d eat some salt and call it sweet. But it just means, “Man, that really tastes good!” Which helps explain why after Sunday’s message on Ephesians 1 Nonjong got up and said, “Man, this message is like salt!” We take salt for granted, but to them it is really precious. Sometimes I think we take the truths of Ephesians one for granted as well, may it become more precious to us that God has already blessed us with EVERY spiritual blessing in Christ!
A New Church is Born!
The following was just sent to us from our coworkers Jeremiah and April Markley in the tribe. Rejoice with us and listen carefully for the angels!!!!
“All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again,
because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation,” 1 Pt. 1:3
It is with overwhelming gratitude and joy that I write to you tonight to report that there are new names written down in glory! God in His grace and mercy has reached down and snatched several precious souls from the throws of Hell, and claimed them for His own for all eternity! Praise the Lord with us, for He has answered your prayers and for the sake of His Son, enlarged His Bride this week!
Outreach to neighboring village – week 7
Here is the latest on what is happening in the tribe from our coworkers Jeremiah and April Markley….
Along this church planting road, there are many crossroads, where the basis of what you believe concerning certain Biblical doctrine will determine the grid through which you filter all the rest of the teaching. For example, if after hearing the teaching on the Garden of Eden, you didn’t believe that everything truly was perfect before sin, and you believed that death existed before sin did, then death (physical and eternal) as punishment for sin does not seem like a punishment for sin as much as merely a part of life. It would be impossible to understand the gravity of sin in contrast to a righteous and Holy God, and therefore even cancel out a true need for a Saviour.
Remote group of believers being used by God!
Dinangat Update – outreach to begin Jan 17 Sunday evening!
Keep reading to see how they are fulfilling the purpose of the church by exalting His Name, equipping the saints, and evangelizing the lost!
The words sometimes associated with church are unfortunately words like hypocrisy, self-righteous, egotistical, or imposing. I read a book a while ago that summarized the purpose of the church with several words all beginning with the letter “E.” As we have had the privilege of serving in Papua New Guinea we have seen God make this a reality as He has changed lives. He is building His church all over the world. Yes, there are skeptics but the truth remains: His church, His kingdom, advances, and it’s purposes are clearly evident in Dinangat. They are exalting the Lord, equipping the saints and evangelizing the lost.
Sept 09 update
“Who caused this to happen?
Who has controlled history since the beginning?
I, the Lord, am the one. I was here at the beginning,
and I will be here when all things are finished.” Is 41:4 (NCV)
So many times in all our settling back here in the States for our year long home assignment we’ve been tempted to worry or not rest in the sovereignty of our Lord. It’s ironic isn’t it? We can travel across the globe, live in a remote setting, and bring the gospel to a people group all in the strength of the Lord. But we get back here to the land of plenty and it’s so easy to forget the Lord. Is our natural environment, or the lack of nothing, that promotes this lack of faith? I’m not exactly sure and it really doesn’t matter. The bottom line is do I believe God is in control of my life and the history of the world or don’t I? And whether I’m struggling through life in the tribe trying to squeeze out language that doesn’t come natural or concerned about the economy the issue is the same. Will I walk by faith in the knowledge that God is in control and allow His peace to reign in my heart or not?
Wheels and Worship
Dear Supporting Friends and Family,
Just a quick note to let you know that God abundantly provided for us. We are now the owners of a very nice minivan! The story is long and to most boring, but amazing how God provided. After it was all said in done we see His master plan at work. As I drove the van home today I sang to Him in thanksgiving. I know this sounds silly, but if you knew the whole story behind getting a vehicle you’d understand a bit more. But I’ll save you the details. I just wanted to let you all know that God provided and we hit the road tomorrow. That’s right, we got the van today and start the big journey tomorrow!
We made it!
Dear supporting friends and family,
Just a quick note to let you know that the Lord saw us through and we made it to Atlanta on the 12th. We then got moved into the house on Monday afternoon. We just wanted to thank you all so much for praying for our safe journey. We had a wonderful time with our coworkers the Schlegels in Germany!
God provides
Dear Family and Friends,
It is with a happy and overwhelmed heart that we tell you that God has abundantly provided for us to send our kids to Killian Hill Christian School next year!!! We wrote to you all about this a little while ago, asking for prayer. God’s timing was so good as we continued to pray and trust Him each time we worried about schools for next year. We knew God was able to meet our kids’ needs in the public school, but it was a big step of faith to keep trusting Him with that. Every time we weighed the two options, the Christian school seemed better suited to our kids’ needs in so many ways.