We recently took a trip to Goroka in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. We flew there in our mission’s C-90 aircraft and came home in a Cessna 206. Noah and Micah loved flying and thought it was just great! We certainly enjoyed the cooler weather and lack of humidity there in the mountains, although Tim and the boys were pretty sick the first half of our stay there. Here is a picture of us before we hopped on the 206 to come home.

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Our language is coming along and we hope to finish the first of four stages the end of January. Thank you for your ongoing prayers as we continue to adjust to living here. We need them more than ever as we desire to live wholly dependent on the Lord!

Here are some things that are coming up for us.

- The end of January we hope to finish the first of four stages of learning Tok Pisin (PNG trade language)

- January 20-23 we help another team move into a new tribe (very exciting!!)

- January 29-February 5 we continue our orientation with a trip to the NTM PNG home office in the highlands.

- February 22 we move into a tribe for two months for “bush orientation”. We will be living with and learning from the missionaries who are working with this group. There is a young church there that is already involved in multiple outreaches to neighboring villages! It is a very exciting work and we are thrilled to be able to spend some time with them, be discipled by them, and see the work that God is doing there!

After many hours in the melting hot sun, we made it back home with our goods and food for the next week (and even a Christmas present or two!) with a little time to spare before it was time for me to take the family to a local village I’ve been visiting. I had set up a time to bring the family and so we put on our sunscreen, bug spray, hats and sandals and headed off to the village. The boys love the fact that we have to wade across a small river to get there.

After a couple hours and a very nice visit (and some more language and culture learned!) we headed back home to feed the hungry munchkins. While the boys got a shower, I whipped up some grilled cheese sandwiches and frozen fruit smoothies (a great quick dinner we learned from some friends here) and we sat our weary bodies down to dine! Ahhh!

By now it was nearly bed time so we had our bedtime story (after which Micah walked up to Tiffany and lost his dinner on the floor! Poor guy. He’s not sick so we think he just got a little too worn out today and had a little too much smoothie. He’s fine now.) and to bed they went.

It’s now past 10:30 and Tiffany and I just finished cutting up fruit from the market today (to freeze for another dinner of smoothies), cooking and baking for dinner tomorrow (we’re having a new family over for dinner), making baby food for Anna (from a pumpkin/squash we got at the market), washing piles of dishes, and trying to review some of the language we learned today. There are a few baskets full of laundry staring at us but I think they will wait till tomorrow!

During the midst of our busy night we were reminded very vividly of the reason we are here. Through the pouring rain outside we could hear someone hollering from the village near our house. We learned shortly after that it was a man from the village who said he needed help because his son was dying. It was a stark reminder for us of the reality of life and death. There is no insulation from it here as we are accustomed to at home. We hold the key to their eternal hope and yet we are not able to communicate Christ to them. We are praying for able bodies and minds to learn quickly the Pigin language and culture and for compassionate hearts as we live Christ’s love to them.

The rest of this week will be more of the same. Visiting many people, practicing new phrases, lots of walking, and cramming as much input into our ears as we can handle. The goal for the next two weeks is to expose ourselves to PNG culture and Tok Pisin (PNG national language) as much as possible.

Noah & Micah ready to use their new suitcases

We were told many times through our missionary training that it was important as missionaries to remain FLEXIBLE. Well, I guess we are getting some practice! We’ve been talking with the leadership in Papua New Guinea this week and they have asked us to move our arrival date from September 1st to late October. They’ve evaluated our arrival in light of other events happening there in September and decided that it will be much better for us and them if we come in October.

Although we now have adjustments to make, we are encouraged as we see the Lord guiding us. From the beginning we knew that any plans we make are “subject to change” as God reveals the steps HE wants us to take.

We obviously don’t know all God has planned for us, but we see this as an opportunity to continue building our support team and preparing for the rigors of life and ministry in Papua New Guinea. Having a strong, solid prayer and financial support team is so vital to our ability to carry on ministry there. We are thankful for this bit of extra time to continue building that team and enjoy friendships here before we have to say goodbye.

Please join with us as we daily pray for God to increase our partnership team and prepare our family mentally, spiritually, and physically for life in PNG.

If you would like to partner with us, you can visit this link or send us an email.

]]> http://blogs.ntm.org/tim-lanier/2009/09/25/gods-steps/feed/ 0 http://blogs.ntm.org/tim-lanier/2009/09/09/great-news/ http://blogs.ntm.org/tim-lanier/2009/09/09/great-news/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:08:07 +0000 tim_lanier http://blogs.ntm.org/tim-lanier/?p=58 We have officially reached 75% of our monthly support! Praise the Lord!! We can now begin to look into purchasing our plane tickets for the end of October. We believe the Lord is leading us to take a step of faith and move ahead with our plans to leave in seven weeks, trusting that He will provide the remaining 25% of our monthly support by the time we leave.

It seems like an insurmountable task to raise $1500/mo in seven weeks! But we know that nothing is impossible with God and that the urgency of our task is great. He is the One who parted the Red Sea, brought down the walls of Jericho, made the blind to see, and raised the dead to life. He is more than able to do this. Join with us as we, 1) praise Him for already providing $4600/mo in pledged support, and 2) pray for new prayer and financial partners as we trust Him for another $1500/mo.

Please also be praying with us for:

• wisdom in choosing a date to leave and purchasing tickets
• courage as we begin saying goodbyes and making final preparations
• a continually deeper love for our Saviour

It is amazing to see God putting together such a great team of people who are partnering with us. We are thrilled that God is giving us such a great opportunity to take part with you in fulfilling the Great Commission and reach into the darkness in Papua New Guinea with the Light of the Gospel!

Anna showing off her visa

This week we received Anna’s visa from the PNG Embassy in Washington! Praise the Lord! THAT IS THE LAST PIECE OF PAPERWORK WE NEED to take our family to Papua New Guinea! Now all that is left is to finish raising support and go! I’ve been looking at plane tickets and trying to find the best deals. We are getting very anxious to get over there!

We learned this week that our container that left port the end of July is already in Australia! It may beat us there!

We are praising the Lord for the tremendous support team He is building for us. We’re grateful that all our paperwork has come through quickly. Pray for us as we continue to share our ministry and gather the remaining 27% of our support.

Anna Faith

We are so excited to announce that Anna Faith was born June 8th at 2:49 pm! She was 8 lbs. 2 oz. and 20 inches long. I, Tiffany, usually have very long labors, so it was a bit of a shock to only be at the hospital 2 1/2 hours before she was born! (Labor was about 9 1/2 hours total) The boys absolutely love her and want to hold her all the time. Thank you to all of you for your prayers! We are so thankful for this wonderful blessing of our sweet little girl!

Our container headed for PNG... who will get there first? Us or it?

After many weeks of being very busy with supply buying, clothes shopping, packing, more shopping, more buying, and more packing, we are finally finished! What a relief! Saturday, June 6th, we delivered our crate, trunks, totes and boxes to be loaded onto a sea container bound for Papua New Guinea.

What did we send? Well, we’ve been told there are many things in PNG that you cannot find or are very expensive to buy there. Here are some of the things we shipped:

• 2-4 years of clothes and shoes for the our whole family
• 1-2 years of homeschool curriculum for Noah and Micah
• pots and pans for cooking and baking
• a water filtration system
• power and hand tools for building furniture and our house in the bush
• some toys for the kids
• a few presents for birthdays and christmases

Me packing all my clothes for the next couple years

Packing up the kids toys in plastic trunks.

So what does all this stuff look like? It looks like…

• 1 crate
• 17 plastic trunks
• 16 clear totes
• 11 rubbermaid totes
• 18 miscellaneous boxes

All the stuff listed above that didn't go in the crate.

Closing up the crate after cramming it full of stuff. It's amazing how much fit in that box!

We had quite a time getting the crate closed. It was bulging in all directions. So we rigged up a jig to squeeze the sides shut. Then we had to stand on it to get the lid to close. It was quite a process but we eventually got it closed!

It was quite an undertaking buying several years worth of supplies all within two months time–both in shear work and also mentally allowing ourselves to spend that much money! It has been wonderful to watch God provide each step of the way as we’ve stepped out in faith to ship our supplies ahead of us. Thank you to all of you who are partnering with us through your prayers, financial gifts, and physical help. You are the ones God is using to enable us to begin ministry in Papua New Guinea!

Noah in the crate

We are scrambling these days as it is now May. We are doing all we can to pack up all we’ll need the next four years to get it onto our container by the end of the month. Yesterday I (Tim) built a big crate to load some of our stuff into. We’ve been buying Walmart out of their plastic trunk lockers for the past few weeks to pack with! Hey, at least we’re stimulating the economy! The more we buy and pack supplies the more it makes me wish we could just pack a back pack and go!

You can fit a lot of stuff in this thing!

I don’t know if I’ve ever had so much on my mind before:

• Packing a container for a family of (soon to be) 5 for 4 years
• Preparing to move to the other side of the world Sept. 1
• Getting ready for the arrival our baby girl the first week of June
• Raising financial and prayer support.

It is such a relief to remember that God is the One working all things out for us in spite of our short comings. It is also a comfort to remember His promise to carry our burdens for us. In the midst of what seems to sometimes be chaos I can’t help but be calmed and comforted by the Greatness of our God!

Trunks packed and ready to go

Stuff waiting to be packed and sorted... again

Trunks waiting to be packed. Are we really going to need all these? We'll see...

My two helper ready to go!

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