Dear Family and Friends,
We have safely returned to BM for a week now. Wayne came back with the boat while Gail and the kids took a ride on the float plane. Kala’s leg infection is completely healed now. We are so grateful for all your prayers and encouragements during this time. We as a family experienced God’s grace and protection through this ordeal. We trust that God brought us to this island and He is able to keep our family on this island for His purpose despite sickness or any other difficulties.
We jumped right back into language and culture study since we came back. Gail hiked up the volcano with some BM ladies this week and she came back aching and exhausted after six hours of straight up and down trekking. The ground near the top of the volcano was quite hot but a big thunderstorm cooled it down. It was a great time of establishing relationships as well as getting a glimpse of BM culture.
You can pray for some upcoming events for our ministry in BM
- In about a month, we will receive our first language evaluation. It is not a test but a tool to see how much progress we have made. We still have a long way to go but we are staying encouraged and making progress. Please pray for a proper perspective in language study. Sometimes language study can feel like an academic exercise. Memorization, mimicry, listening to audio recordings, breaking down grammatical parts…they are repetitive, laborious and sometimes even boring. Please pray that we will not lose sight of the end goal of being able to communicate the gospel clearly in their language.
- We will start building our house in July/August. We have purchased some of the building materials and drawn up a house plan. We’ll be making quite a few runs between the mainland and the island in preparation for this. Please pray that the building project will proceed smoothly and safely.
- Our team have started discussing the possibility of purchasing a bigger boat due to safely concerns over our little banana boat. A more sea worthy vessel will allow us to travel during all seasons and shorten our time on the water. This is still in the brainstorming stage but all three families feel a bigger boat is needed for our ministry in BM. The Depners (on furlough in Germany now) will return in late June and we will be holding a week long team meeting to address many long term ministry plans and needs.
This morning, we attended another funeral here in the village. There have been six deaths already on the island since we moved in three months ago. Every time we hear a funeral wail is a reminder of the urgency of our task. As we witnessed another soul heading into a Christless eternity, our hearts ache with the finality of heaven and hell. It is not something talked about often in our western churches but it is surely felt here on BM every time a person dies.
A few weeks ago, a BM man came to our coworker and asked…”When you guys first came here, you said you will bring God’s talk to us. You have been here for over a year now. When are you going to tell us about God’s talk? All the religious talks here on BM…I know it’s not the whole truth. When are you going to teach us the true foundation of God’s talk?” Please pray for us as we continue to dig into their language and culture in preparation to share the Good News with BM one day.
Privileged to be serving Him with you,
Wayne, Gail, Abby and Kala
Wayne & Gail Chen Bringing the Gospel to the Biem people in Papua New Guinea 
