Blessings

I have a number of blessings to report from the past week. First, Jeff
Owens, another missionary here, made a trip to the coastal city of Lae
to get a bulldozer part repaired. That trip went quite well and he was
able to get the part fixed so that the bulldozer could resume work.
While in town, he picked up a man from America who is visiting for a
couple of weeks to help with the airstrip work. They flew into Nomane,
our nearest airstrip, where Brother Randy met them with the truck for
the normally 2.5-3 hour trip home. They hadn't been on the road long
when the ball joint on the steering arm broke, rendering the steering
completely unusable. Thankfully, a lady nearby had a short length of
chain link fence that she was willing to part with for a little less
than 3 U.S. dollars. They used the wire from the fence to "repair" the
broken ball joint. Of course, our roads aren't exactly smooth, so the
wire kept breaking and having to be redone. They had to stop five more
times to rewire the joint. But by the grace of God, the last repair
held for quite some distance so that they didn't have to rewire it
after dark had fallen and made it home safely. So we were quite
thankful for the watch care of the Lord through all of the difficulty.

Also, by grace of the God, the mission team finally went out this
week. Four men and three women went a day's walk away and ministered
in seven different villages doing preaching services and Bible clubs
for the children. I haven't heard all of the report yet as our
afternoon service today will be dedicated to a report from the team
leader and testimonies from other team members, but the team came back
fired up and eager to go out again on another mission trip.

We will be having a baptismal service this Wednesday. It will be an
all day affair with preparing the food for the mumu (cooking food in
the ground), going down to the nearest water for the baptism, then
coming back to the church to eat the food that should be ready and
have a brief service. We have eight people being baptized -- two men,
three women, and three teens. Please pray for the testimony of that
service to the unsaved community and a genuine understanding in the
hearts of those being baptized.