NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Praise For:

1.  The lives of Rose and Alua were spared.

2.  Good outreaches at the Kakwa location.

3.  Fairly decent hospitals about 45 minutes to an hour drive from us and for our mission doctor that we can call or email for advice.

4.  For continued progress in Translation.  For consistent helpers in checking.

5.  For our support team, financially, prayerfully, and physically.

Prayer For:

1.  Wisdom in dealing with Medical needs that arise – we are not very trained in medical things.

2.  For God’s provision of a newer vehicle for us, for Heather and Ilai, in His time.  In the meantime that our truck would keep running without too many problems.

3.  Our main generator has broken down and is too big and heavy to put in the truck and take out for repair, that someone will be able to come and figure out what is wrong with it and be able to get the right parts to fix it.  In the meantime, we are able to use a gasoline generator that isn’t nearly as cost efficient.

4.  For the right job for Heather.

5.  For Ilai, some decisions to make about where to live and a more consistent job especially now that it is getting colder.  He does most types of construction work.

6.  Continued healing and strength for Alua and Rose.  For Gena and Rose with the loss of their son who was still born.

7.  Lord willing, Jim will have a check of Matthew in the New Year sometime.

8.  2012 elections in PNG which often result in tribal warfare and a predicted drought which is detrimental to their livelihood.

“Great multitudes followed Jesus and he healed them all” (Matt. 12:15 KJV).  Even though our primary goal is to help the Dom people spiritually by providing them with God’s Word both in teaching and in written vernacular form their physical needs are ever before us.  We can not heal them miraculously as the Lord did but we provide what medical help we can everyday.

We are not physicians.  We do not operate, give injections or suture wounds.  We do provide primary care and first aid through our little “clinic” here at our home.  Coughs, colds, sores, tropical ulcers, infections, malaria and wounds of every sort are the daily routine in the afternoon.  From newborns to the elderly the Dom people of the community come to us for help since the nearest hospital is nearly two hours walk away.

We are also the de facto ambulance for the more serious “gotta get ‘em to the hospital” situations that arise.  Sometimes it is life or death.  This was Alua’s situation not long ago.  And then recently Gena’s wife, Rose found herself in crisis after the tragic still birth of their son.  Praise God that both times the weather and road conditions allowed us to get them both to professional medical help.

We have lost track of how many times we have made such emergency runs to both the larger hospital in Kundiawa (the nearest town to us) and to Nera Gaima Medical Clinic (previously mentioned).  Both are good hospitals that we are very thankful to have available.  Both are also a long walk away from here and subject to weather and road conditions for us to drive to in emergencies.  It goes without saying that it is all in God’s hands.

As you can see it is imperative that our vehicle is kept running.  However it is nearly twenty years old and itself in need of constant “medical” attention.  The years of rough, off road use has taken its toll on our Toyota Hilux.  At the present we have no mechanic down at our field office (3 hours’ drive from here) to do any major repairs so we are driving by faith so to speak.  Needless to say that we need to replace our vehicle as soon as possible.

Speaking of vehicles, both Heather’s and Ilai’s vehicles are down, making things difficult for them.  So we would appreciate prayer for wisdom for them in what to do.  We would appreciate prayer also for Ilai to know what to do with his future.  He has really only two choices of location, both with problems, but he is trusting in the Lord to work things out.  Heather needs employment that suits her class schedule.  Ilai needs a consistent on the books job.  He has been able to get work here and there but nothing consistent.   Brian and Terra are busy with work and two boys.  Darren loves his job looking after the two men that he is a caregiver for and he is ready to start his online seminary courses.

Translation is moving along.  Lord willing, in January, Jim will have Matthew checked, Jude, James and Hebrews are ready to check, and he is working on getting Luke, John and Revelation ready for checking later in the coming year.

2012 is election year in PNG which is always followed by fighting here in the Dom as they are poor losers.  Also climate scientists are predicting a severe drought which will cause garden food shortages.  Papua New Guineans rely on their garden produce to survive so a drought is a very serious thing.

We arrived back on the field August 7th.
We made a couple of trips up to check out our fallen house. (See pictures under House Building).
On September 7th, we moved up to the Dom. Since our house was not really liveable, we slept in our former clinic across the road from our house, as it had a small tank for water, a toilet, a kitchen sink and a room to sleep in. (See pictures) We were still cooking over at our house and mostly spending the day there as our 12 volt power system was still working.
Had a lot of hassles with the landowner and a lot of anger and jealousy over the possibility of us moving away from this area. But God gave us the strength through it all.
We spent the first weeks tearing down our old garage, what was left of it, finding a new location to rebuild as we deemed that the land our house was on was still shifting.
We cleared and leveled the land and fixed the road into the new location which was about 50 yards down from our former house. We had a lot of helping hands from our church friends.
Officially had the new landowner – Bapka – sign a statutory declaration saying he gave up all rights to our house when we were done. It was ours to do as we saw fit in the end.
The first team came and built our garage September 20-24, getting our garage finished.
We moved our things from the house to the garage, but not without words of anger from our former landowner claiming it was all his.
October 11-23, another work team came up and tore our house down, moving the walls in sections and got the house enclosed. A lot of rain so some of the walls got a bit warped, but not too much damage.
Jim enclosed his office and finished the veranda floor.
November 17-24, the plumbing was put in, the power finished and cupboards and most of the doors put on.
We moved into our house in the afternoon of the 24th, at least enough so we could sleep here. It rained so couldn’t do more than move the stove and our bed.
On Thanksgiving Day, we ate leftovers and moved the rest of the stuff from the clinic. Thank you Lord.
We spent the rest of the weeks finishing things like painting and had the Cottams over Christmas and they helped us finish up some other things inside.
We began back into our ministry in the New Year!

Greetings from PNG!  We arrived safe and sound, Saturday the 7^th after a long but uneventful late night flight from Los Angeles (and a tearful goodbye to Darren and Heather who met us at the airport).  Praise the Lord there were no hang ups or problems with anything along the way.  We made all our connecting flights and breezed through immigration and customs in Port Moresby.  For the time being we are staying at our PNG Highlands Headquarters in a cozy little guest facility while we sort out our affairs and make plans for the future.

Has it only been a three weeks since we arrived?  It feels like a lot longer as our days have been full with all the details of settling back into PNG life.  Of course, we won’t really be settled until we are back living in the Dom permanently and that sad to say will not be for a little while yet.  Judy and I went up on Friday the 13^th just for the day to see the house and all our Dom Christian friends.  (Thankfully, our Christian friends had repaired our road down to our house so we could drive to the gate.)  It was an emotional time for them and us.  We love every one of them so much.

It was startling indeed to see all the damage in person.  We definitely will not be able to merely repair the house where it stands.  Both the house and the garage will have to be torn down and rebuilt for sure.  The ground right next to the house is also beyond repair.  It is now a big sink hole.  And it turns out that what we thought was an earthquake was actually one of those PNG massive land shifts that happen from time to time due to heavy rain and the unique geology of the country.  The result being a subterranean slippage that causes the top crust to sink and follow gravity downhill.  According to our Dom friends, it had started early in the evening and continued all night.  So praise the Lord they had time to run away to safer ground.  The effect though was much like an earthquake; all that power and energy knocked the house down!

We met with our Highlands leadership yesterday and discussed our options.  We will have to move and rebuild but the question is where?  We have inquired from both Gena and Kapia Joseph about possible parcels of land that may fit our needs but the pickings are rather slim.  There are only a few Dom people we can trust to be good, honest land lords and they have only so much usable land to offer.  So we are still weighing our options in that regard.

Very soon Jim will make another trip up to the Dom by himself to investigate further into all this.  He also needs to start getting our little clinic set up as a place to live for a while.  The clinic is rather small, 12ft by 16ft but it has a shower/toilet room and kitchenette.  We can make do for as long as we have to.  We are tentatively planning on moving up to the Dom the first part of September and stay in our little clinic-turned-cabin while we take the house apart and rebuild wherever the Lord leads us.  We just want to be back in the Dom among our people.

In the meantime we are keeping busy here at our PNG Highlands headquarters.  Unpacking, repairing our truck, doing all the paper work PNG requires, shopping for building materials and getting to know our potential new partners, the Wuests, who are living here at our headquarters  just across the way from us.  Plus Jim is already doing translation related work here in our apartment as he has time.

We have many challenges as you can see.  Please pray for us that we will know God’s leading and have peace about which options to take.  Please pray that we will learn to trust the Lord ever the more for all our needs and that we will rest in His timing.  We are so thankful that God knows all things and we just want to learn what we are to learn through all of this.  God is good all the time so we rest in His goodness.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support.

Jim and Judy Burdett

Dom (dome) Tribe, PNG

Praise the Lord!  We are going back to PNG.  We have a late night flight out of Los Angeles this Thursday the 5^th and arrive Saturday (PNG time) the 7^th.   Two days later we celebrate our 30^th wedding anniversary!   Soon after that we will take our truck up to the Dom and reunite with all our Dom Christians who haven’t seen us in a long time.  We will inspect the house and property and evaluate the extent of the damage.  Please pray for wisdom and insight from the Lord as we try to decide whether to repair or rebuild and if we rebuild where the Lord would have us do so.

 As excited as we are to return to PNG we are equally saddened to be leaving our children, grandchildren, family and friends here in the USA, many of whom are in very difficult circumstances.  Pray for us that we will continue to learn the grace of trusting the Lord for them all, especially our own children.  Our children all have employment for which we are thankful.

 There is always a time of readjustment in returning to PNG especially after being gone for 21 months.  We would appreciate prayer that we would adjust quickly.  We are excited to be returning and to see what all God has for us in the coming months with regard to our house situation, the Dom Work, concluding the Dom New Testament translation, etc. 

 You all are such a part of our team.  Thank you so much as we could not be effective without you.  Please keep the emails coming or letters.  They encourage us a lot.  Our email address will remain the same:  jim_burdett@ntm.org (there is an underscore between jim and burdett).  But please remember that we will be back on a slower system and also our emails will be limited to 100 kb.  Larger emails will go into a large file which we can retrieve later so don’t stop sending pictures, just realize that you will get a message saying the file was too large.  But we will get it.  If you included something urgent, then resend just that part without the picture. Please don’t let the size limit stop you from emailing us.  We so want to hear from you.

Greetings from sunny, hot Southern California.   Our deputation travels have brought us full circle back to our home town of Yucaipa where we are staying with old friends enjoying their fellowship and hospitality.  We praise God for safety over the 17,000 miles that we traveled during the 4 months on the road.   Until we return to PNG, God willing, at the end of July we will be dividing our time between here and El Cajon (two hours away near San Diego) where Heather and Darren live. 

We have about four weeks to sort, pack and get some things ready for shipping.  Time seems very short.  Some have asked about tickets for our return to the field.  We have made tentative bookings but are not in a position yet to actually purchase tickets.  We are also waiting on our passports and visas to come back from the PNG embassy in Washington DC.  We mailed them almost two weeks ago but there was a bit of a snaffoo with FedEx and everything is running late.  So we just give it all to the Lord and wait upon Him.

In the meantime we stay busy not only getting ready to go, but visiting with so many of our wonderful friends both here in Yucaipa and down in El Cajon.  We also will have the opportunity to share our work in a NEW church in the area this Sunday.  What a blessing!  Jim is also picking away at some translation related work on the new laptop computer that a sweet Christian couple donated to us just recently.  Jim’s old clunker had suddenly and finally died (fortunately everything was backed up on a thumb drive) as we were traveling so this provision is a huge help and blessing.  The Dom New Testament will be polished up and finalized for printing using this new laptop.

There has been no new word from the Dom regarding our house so we assume that no news is good news.  We still do not know which direction God wants us to go regarding our house, whether to stay and fix it or to move and rebuild.  We do have an account set up for funds for repairs or rebuilding.

Ilai is working for now for which we are thankful but he needs a more permanent job.  Brian is still working, but it is a very stressful work environment.  Darren is volunteering at camp this month.  Heather just recently moved to a house of a lady from church, sharing a room with a friend.  She is taking one college class this summer and working 30 hours a week at her job.  

Thank you so much for your prayers and interest in our travels, family and work.  Continue to pray as we return to PNG for another term, Lord willing to finish up the Dom New Testament for printing.  We are excited about what God has in store for us in the months to come.  We will keep you posted as things develop.

Praise:

1. God’s goodness.
2. Van continues to run well on our thousands of miles of travelling.
3. Good meetings and visiting with friends.
4. People who stand behind us faithfully in prayer and support.

Prayer:

1. Employment for Ilai and additional work for Darren.
2. Continued safety in traveling and that our van would continue to run well.
3. Our house situation in the Dom, for wisdom.
4. Funds for tickets, relocating.
5. Jim’s computer jus
6. Partners to join us.

Greetings from rainy Seattle.  12,000 miles and 26 States later we find ourselves here in the Pacific Northwest visiting Judy’s former home church and many old friends.

For those of you who do not receive our email updates, on April 18^th a very powerful earthquake knocked our house down in the Dom, destroyed our garage and basically up heaved the ground all around our home.  Some of our people also lost their houses and food gardens and find themselves in dire straits.  Our house is still intact but damaged.  To what extent we do not know yet.       (See pictures of house).    

In light of what has happened many are wondering what our plans are for when we return, God willing, to PNG in July. The short answer is that we are still praying about it.  We basically have three options.  One is to stay put and repair the house as best we can.  

Another option is to move and rebuild in Kapia Joseph’s village near where we lived and ministered for our first 12 years.  No doubt Kapia and the Christians there would welcome us back gladly.  However we are considering another option which is to relocate to an entirely new area of the Dom where the true Gospel has not been made known.  The area we have in mind is near enough to ‘..’ so that the Dom Christians there can participate in evangelizing this new group (who happen to be their traditional enemies).  We are excited about this idea.  It would be a huge step of faith and a bit scary to tell the truth.  But if this is God stirring our hearts to move in this direction then we can go in confidence.  We simply must wait patiently until we return to PNG to assess the situation.

Our leadership feels that the land is now unstable and it would be best to move.  If we truly do that and we are at this point heading in that direction, we are looking at a huge financial and physical undertaking of getting what materials we can from our present house and moving it and rebuilding.  The materials have already been used at least twice and a lot of them would not be re-useable again.  In light of this, many new materials would need to be purchased. 

There have been a number of folk wanting to help so we now have an account for this purpose.  Please send any gifts for this made out to New Tribes Mission with a separate note that it is for the CIP Burdett House PNG-Field Fund.  Thank you so much for your love, interest, and prayer regarding this. 

We do not totally understand why at this point in the Dom work this would happen, but we rest assured in the fact that God is all-knowing and we can trust in His sovereignty and bigger plan that we are not always aware of.  Nothing takes God by surprise. 

Because of what happened in PNG with our house, we have felt the urgency to return to PNG sooner than planned, returning in July instead of September.  Unfortunately, we have had to cut out seeing many people that we were planning to see.  It was not an easy decision.  Please be praying that we get our visa, ticket money (about $4,000?), relocating funds and for the Dom Christians to understand why we are moving, etc.  Also Jim’s laptop of several years has just crashed so we will need to get a new one.

Your missionaries to the Dom,  Jim and Judy Burdett