Dear Praying Friends,

Thank you for your prayers for Florence, Ilaia and Vanessa’s babysitter; she responded to a morning message in early April and received Christ! Her B’hai parents visited shortly after her profession of faith and asked some very good questions spending the night. Pray that Florence will have a testimony that reaches her whole family. Philip, our neighbor from the Vocational School came to salvation this spring too; we have prayed for this since moving into the Baimuru! Philip became a friend and regular church attender early on, but we are so blessed to have him as an eternal brother! I would appreciate your prayers for Grace, a new teacher at the Vocational School, who has been attending since Easter. She recently told Pastor Danny how his Sunday messages had been challenging her, and she wanted to sit and visit with him and Neddy.

Things began well concerning the sawmill agreement for Pastor Danny’s flooring. As the business is new, we did have to supply fuel for running the mill up front, but this was being deducted from a reasonable timber price as each order was delivered. We made an order in April, one that would finish up the flooring and make doors, sent several containers of fuel with the owner … and then he vanished for over 6 weeks! When he returned, he said he had had a personal matter to attend to. We have been able to finish Pastor’s flooring and have been putting up the woven blinds that make the walls. Next we will get the rain collection tank in place.

The Bibles were delivered and distributed at local high schools. We did not see salvation decisions at the actual events, but the Bibles were received with great appreciation. We hope fruit will follow as the owners of these new Bibles are encouraged to read them and carry them to church!

We continue to get exciting reports from Maisa, Ricky, and Murphy! All are involved in some phase of building. Ricky had the wonderful blessing of leading his 20 year old son to Christ around Easter. This week the male students and staff took two overnight mission trips, one to Murphy and another to Maisa, carrying some supplies and encouragement. Ricky is having a hernia surgery, so please keep him in prayer for a quick and uneventful recovery.

Thanks to some generous Christmas offerings, Trina left for a three week trip to the States at the end of April.  Although the trip included the blessing of seeing grown children and toddler grandchildren, the primary purpose was to rejoice with our youngest son Ben as he received his MA in Biblical Exposition from Pensacola Christian College. It was a great trip, but we had quite a challenge getting her home to Baimuru. Our rainy season came earlier than expected, and the airstrip closed.  This was complicated by the fact that in the past month, Baimuru has gone weeks at a time without internet/phone service. As it turned out, God gave us 15 minutes of phone service, after Trina had been over a week in Port Moresby without being able to contact me. Not much information was exchanged, but at least I knew where she was, and she knew that she would have to return home by road and dinghy. It was a long six weeks apart from her, but I found a lot of joy and refreshment in teaching on the Hebrew names of God while covering the Romans lessons of the Chronological Bible teaching! Thinking about God and His work is always encouraging!

This second term will end June 22, followed by a two week break. Trina and I do not plan any extended travel over this break, as usually both the weather for flying and sea travel are bad. It will most likely be in September that we next go shopping!