theunfinishedtask.com

Near Ketchikan

Dear Praying Friends,

We surely appreciate your prayers for us; we had an incredible time in Alaska! We were so blessed by the solidarity of the Alaskan pastors. They only had good things to say of one another!  The Missions Conference at Bible Baptist Church in Fairbanks led by Pastor Doug Duffett was wonderful and we are blessed to say they are our first Alaskan financial supporters. We had such great meetings and met such good folks, I am sure others will be partnering with us in the future and I know many will be praying! God used the dear Alaskans to complete our Boat Fund goal, including enough for 55 gallon storage drums, initial fuel, and the necessary shipping expenses from Port Moresby to Ihu! The native Eskimos in Selawik could appreciate our need for the boat, and our most special gift for this project will come from the VBS offering at Bible Baptist in Selawik. Be sure and take a look at the pictures from Selawik and the missionaries there, Warren and Gayle Compton, on our website. Although the climate is different (“freezing and frozen” in contrast to “hot and boil”), the Comptons face many of the same challenges in ministry as we will, working with an animistic, tribal people.  Alaskans definitely understand remote travel, and we were asked more about the details of the TTMK plane here than anywhere. Everyone in every church was kind and generous. Two of the useful gifts we received were a leatherman multi-tool and two complete waterproof Bibles!

My Big One Got Away!

Now for some very amazing news – and answers to prayer:

Our 3 year visas have been approved and are in our passports!

God has brought in 91% of our support!

As mentioned earlier, our boat fund is full, and ready for shopping in Port Moresby!

You know we have been praying about heading to PNG in August. We would like to purchase our tickets 1-2 months in advance so we will begin looking for tickets for the last week of that month.  Traveling then will work best with the already scheduled travel plans of the TTMK team.

Prayer Requests:

A full schedule of meetings through July.  Our last scheduled meeting is August 1, and we would like to have the rest of August free to make final preparations, see family, and work on Pidgin. 

Safety on the road – we would like to leave the Explorer still usable for our son Ben!

We returned to the “lower 48” Tuesday, flying into Denver, and headed up to Cheyenne. Every area of my VA checkup was A-OK! Praise God for good health! We are seeing friends here and then traveling to our home church in Rapid City for the weekend before heading out to our last deputation meetings.  Since we will actually leave for the field, Lord willing, from Greenville, SC, this will be our last time in this area for quite a while!

                We love you all, and cannot begin to express how much we appreciate you and your faithfulness!