NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

We want to praise God and thank you for helping us be able to go to Australia.  We didn’t realize how much we needed that time of refreshment physically, spiritually, and as a family.  I have been able to sleep well at night without waking with headaches and both of our backs are feeling stable.  Pray that we can maintain better health and be faithful to our exercises.  Most of all we both feel a renewed passion for the Lord, for ministry, serving, and for loving the people God brings our way.

Before going to Australia we received news that more changes where possible with dorm students and wondered if we may be doing something completely different when school begins.  So we prayed a lot, left it in the Lord’s hands and tried to enjoy our trip without worrying.  Another family had to go back to the U.S. unexpectadly.  The question we had to ask as a dorm team was whether or not it would be wiser, possible, and more efficient to squeeze everyone into one dorm.  This would make us available for other ministry needs.  However, there were a number of barriers to this plan because of parent requests, and certain student’s needs.  So after much evaluation we all felt led to keep with the plan.  We will have two girls to start and two more midyear making a total of four.

We are also excited about the other opportunities we have to serve here because we are a smaller dorm.  I will continue to do the mail run on Tuesday’s, and I am teaching P.E. from 1-2pm four days a week for the elementary and will have Ellaina and Ben in my classes.  I am also involved in a meeting next week to help with the direction of D-Groups (these are Wednesday night bible study groups for the teens).  We are both interested in leading a group and investing in these MK youth on a deeper level.  We will be looking for other ways to be a help to the Bittner dorm whenever possible as well.  Next week we will host them and join together in a dorm “Family Night”.  This past week was busy.  We met with parents, helped the two girls move in, finished a few fix-it projects, celebrated Katelyn’s 5th birthday, inventoried everything in the kitchen so the “dorm” could buy it back from us (we operate under the dorm budget during the school year which we all pay into as part of the dorm), picked up students from NTMA (flown in from different tribal locations), restocked the fridge and cupboards with food, and ran many different errands in preparation for school and the dorm.  In other brief news!  The elections continue to be a source of tension and safety concern in the country.  There has been anger between nearby villages over the voting which has resulted in them having to close a nearby national school for safety as well as other threats to villages and their means of transportation creating fear and tension.  However, things are calm and safe in our little community.  This strife is not directed towards us but between the nationals, and their family lines.  Keep praying that everyone will “kamap wanbel” (become united together and at peace).

 

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2012 at 9:25 pm and is filed under Ministry, News Article. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.