February 11. It was a busy work morning around here. Sunny came early and washed clothes, prepared greens, swept floors, and cut and raked grass. Daddy and I continued work on the school cupboard. About mid-morning, Amos and Nuanda came along and worked on readjusting the desks and chairs so they weren’t so high. Mike came shortly afterward, and he helped with the cupboard. Around 11:00, Daddy and I went out and brought the clothes in because the weather was changing, and it was starting to sprinkle. Then Daddy went back to help Mike, and I hung the few damp clothes over the wood stove and in the bathroom and bedroom. I’m thankful that the bottom half of the cupboard is now finished except for putting a latch on the doors. Now we’ll have to figure out how to make the top half. It will be smaller, so maybe won’t be as hard a job (?!?). Nuanda had received a call today from Nehemiah saying that there were thirteen more souls saved yester-eve, making a total now of thirty-four. Praise the Lord, and keep on praying. They are going to continue the meetings as long as they see that the Holy Spirit is drawing men to Christ. From what we understand, there was an American missionary who started a church there. He left ten years ago and has not come back, and he did not train anyone to carry on the ministry. When Nehemiah and the others arrived in Kavieng on a Wednesday evening, they saw a sign board for the church, but no activity there. They started playing Christian music, and people started gathering. Then they preached to them, and that’s when the 21 people turned to Christ. There were only four people left in the church, and they only met together from time to time for prayer. The afternoon’s time (what was left after nap, that is) was given to Bible study and mulling over how to make the top part of the cupboard. This evening, I did a bit more work on English Primer #2. February 12. 51º this morning. Brrrr! We were thankful for sunshine and that the outdoors warmed up quickly, helping the indoors to warm up quickly too. Mike came early this morning to say that Wenera wants him to come up to Minj and bring teacher’s guides so they can start the school. They have students registered to start school in three weeks, I think Mike said, but they don’t have anything to teach so they want us to send teacher’s guides. After Mike left, I finished my breakfast. Worked for a while on the schoolroom. Put a piece of plywood in the corner by the cupboard where there was a big space for a rat to get in and die back there, which we believe one did not too long ago. Then I measured, and Daddy cut, pieces for the top and sides of the top part of the cupboard and found pieces for the frame. Daddy cut a couple frame pieces to put across the bottom front for the door stop; and since they already had screw holes, I glued and screwed them on.. After that, we went outside in the sunshine for a little while. Then I sat down to relax for a while before dinner, and used that time to finish the Bible study in Deuteronomy chapter 8. Enjoyed a little bit extra-long nap today. Then Apekio came with bananas which she had gotten for us at market. The afternoon and evening hours were spent mostly on the second English primer. Nehemiah called this evening after our supper to ask for our prayers. He said that one more had gotten saved, making a total of 35, and that he would be preaching again this evening. “And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (II Timothy 4:18) “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.” (II Peter 2:9) February 13. Was busy in the kitchen the first part of the morning — making pancakes; washing, peeling, and cutting up potatoes and a kaukau to make mashed “taters” for today’s dinner. Gave time to Bible-reading and prayer as well, and later another challenging study in Deuteronomy. Later in the morning, I cooked and mashed the “taters” and prepared a skillet full of chicken and gravy. We still had leftover pumpkin for veggie. Much of the rest of the day, I worked on the Revelation study for chapter 16 and completed that early this evening. Amos helped Daddy carry the chair and computer up to the top of the airstrip this afternoon; and, praise the Lord, He gave a good connection for sending the two pages of the quarterly newsletter. This evening, we listened to a sermon from Job by Pastor Surrett. It was entitled “Unshakeable Faith.” Then we sang a few hymns and prayed together.
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February 9. The night was warm and so was the daytime even though fog hung around for quite a while. We did do a little work on the cupboard today, but limited ourselves because we got so tired out yesterday. Daddy helped me finish putting the middle shelf together, and then I found lumber and measured and marked it so it is ready to cut for the top part of the lower shelf area. After that, I sat down and rested for about fifteen minutes and then set to work in the kitchen getting dinner. Forty-five minutes should have been plenty to prepare pumpkin and spaghetti, but it took over a half hour just to cut and peel the pumpkin. I don’t think I ever saw such a hard pumpkin. It took the arm muscles a lot of work, and made me feel hot and tired, so I was very thankful once it was done. I will not buy that kind of pumpkin again. I set that on to cook, and it didn’t take long to cook the spaghetti noodles and make the meat sauce. After nap, I washed my hair, took time for a little Bible study in Deuteronomy, printed more pictures for outreach class, and cut up a popo. “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.” (Psalm 28:7) February 10. Very heavy rain during the night. By noon today it was hot and humid, a sign that more rain was coming. The Lord sent us a little rain late afternoon, but there is a big line of black clouds across the western and northern sky and thunder off in the distance this evening. This morning, Daddy helped me work more on the school cupboard. We nearly finished the bottom half. Tomorrow the fathers of the prospective school children are supposed to come and do some work on the schoolroom. Dallas called Daddy this morning. He was hoping to do more preaching at market, but is having trouble with his throat so won’t be able to this weekend. He said that when he preached yesterday at market, a lady got cross and came up to him and gave a kick to his water bottle, spilling all his water. The Lord gave him grace to respond kindly. He is thinking of spending another month there before coming back to be with his family for a while. Daddy also received a call from Nehemiah. The had planned to go to Musau today; but the Lord greatly blessed their meeting in Kavieng yesterday evening, and 21 souls were saved. So they are going to stay in Kavieng through Sunday and hold meetings each night from now through Sunday. Then they will go to Musau on Monday. Nehemiah said he believes the Lord is calling him to a permanent ministry in Kavieng. There is a great need there Recently, I got more journal notes from Mom. These are for February and are a little more recent. So, I have skipped the ones from December and January in order to catch up a bit. :-) February 7. Praise the Lord for a nice sunny day. We went outside in the sunshine for a short while, but a cool wind came up and I could not stay out. Am still hanging onto a cough and other symptoms of a cold since I was sick a couple weeks ago. Daddy helped me start building a cupboard in the schoolroom to put all the papers and other school supplies. We worked on that throughout the morning except for times out to rest a few minutes, get a snack, go out in the sunshine. Before and after nap, I spent time in Bible study in Deuteronomy chapter 8. After SCMS opening exercises, I cut up the rolls into sandwich slices, cut up a cucumber and a tomato, filled the filter pitcher, and made myself a cucumber sandwich on a corn cake. February 8. The Lord gave us a warm day today and a nice morning for hanging clothes outside. Thank you, Lord. Sunny came and did the wash again as Judy is still not back from town. She also started cutting the grass as it is getting pretty high. Daddy and I started doing more work on the schoolroom cupboard. Then Mike came, and Daddy had him work on the new light switch again first, to see if they could figure out the problem and get it working. He tried a couple different things and finally hit on the right one. Praise the Lord, the new light switch is now working. After that, Mike helped us with the cupboard. It seemed like we did a lot of sawing, drilling, nailing, screwing, etc., but didn’t accomplish much in three hours’ time. We got the bottom shelf put on and started making the frame for the middle shelf. By the time we sat down for dinner, Daddy and I were both wiped out for some reason. We didn’t really do that much either. Mike did much of the work. Daddy still felt weak after nap and didn’t know if he would be able to get through teaching, but the Lord gave him the strength that he needed. Elijah had taken a few pictures of the Bible study ministry when he was up at Wenera’s place so he let us copy them into my computer to use in the quarterly newsletter so we were thankful to get some extra pictures to go with our newsletter. “13) Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: 14) But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13,14) Hello to all. Thank you so much for praying for Mom and Dad. Last night we got an email from them with some prayer requests:
The main prayer requests are: - Joy in the midst of trials - Teaching Anna Jean missionary training classes - Encouragement and strength for Anna Jean (she faces a lot of opposition, even from others who claim the name of Christ) Continued faithfulness and fruitfulness for Wenera, and for Mike and his family, and for Nehemiah. Pray especially for Mike’s family as they have gone to serve in another area away from Owena. This will be an adjustment, especially for his wife and children as they will be away from home, family, and familiar surroundings. Pray for them in their ministry and also that they would find good friends there and the children would have good companions to play with. - Wisdom in future planning for the missionary training school - That we’ll get our boxes of supplements and supplies soon. (They are waiting on an airplane to come from the Wycliffe base. Recently, only MAF planes have been flying in there. They could really use the items in those boxes. Please pray they get them soon. Thanks.) There are also some important prayer requests involving the missionary training school that I am not free to share. Pray for guidance, protection, wisdom, and provision. Thank you all so much for rejoicing with us and praying with us. God bless! November 26. It must have rained for 6 1/2 to 7 hours yesterday afternoon and evening, and “The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook.” (Psalm 77:18) Much dirt was washed down the mountain from the rain. The ditches along the mountainside need to be dug out better. Sunny did a little bit of dirt-moving so she could plant flowers along the fence where rain came through. The rain built up dirt in the ditch along the fence and created a ditch where there shouldn’t be one. Sunny also put black dirt on top of the little garden for more nutrition for the flowers. Before that, though, she washed and hung out clothes, swept floors, and filled the wood box. The skies were full of clouds, and there wasn’t much sunshine or wind to help dry the clothes, so we are thankful they dried pretty well anyway. Judy came and practiced her typing for a good while. She needs a lot of practice in order to pick up speed. For my computer work, I moved ahead to John and Acts to see if there were any new words for the dictionary. After Sunny left work, Daddy and I went outside for some fresh air and a wee bit of filtered sunshine. We noticed that the rain had washed away all the dirt off the water pipe that Mike had covered up the other day after he fixed the leak where he had accidentally cut the pipe. So Daddy got the shovel and carried dirt from a short distance to recover the pipe. I went and found stones to put on top of the dirt that was on top of the pipe. Amos saw us working out there and came up with his shovel to help. We were very grateful for his help. He also went up to the middle of the hill between our house and the GBC church house and cleaned out the ditch there that hadn’t been cleaned out for ages. Now when there is a heavy rain, the rivers of water should branch off into the ditch and run downhill outside the fence instead of running through our yard and washing away soil. This evening, Mike, Amos, and Dallas came, and we talked about whether a person should go out to do missionary work even if a church won’t send and support them. We looked at a number of Scriptures together in the book of Acts as well as the great commission verses in Matthew. There were only a few drops of rain today; but in the afternoon, the Lord sent us chilly, howling, mighty winds. November 27. Another day with little sunshine. We went out for a stretch around 10:30 and patched up places where the fence wire had been cut. We talked with Nuxawai a bit after we had finished patching up. He said that rooster and two hens belong to him. Nuxawai went on down to meet his wife at the garden; and when we turned around, lo and behold, there was Mr. Rooster and his two hens roaming through the yard. How did they get in now? We had quite a game of chicken chase before the last of the three, the rooster, finally made his way out. And where did he go out? Through a normal space among the wires of the fence. Well, I guess we really need some chicken wire (we only have pig wire), but chicken wire is quite a bit more expensive than the pig wire. It was after 11:00 by the time we got back inside, and we had had our workout for today. I had the carrots all peeled and ready to cook, but still needed to cook spaghetti and spaghetti sauce. Wanted to make some rolls for myself, too, to put my sauce on. So we decided we would have lunch at noon and dinner this evening. Took a break from computer work today and spent time after nap painting and finished in the evening. Just had a couple more pine trees and the rocks to paint on the scene that I started in town. I had stopped painting when I got sick because too much eye work bothered me, and I hadn’t had a chance to get back to it until today. Tomorrow it should be dry enough to varnish. There was a meal to prepare for supper, too, and quite a stack of dishes to be washed afterward. Praise the Lord for the young men who are catching the vision for preaching the gospel. This afternoon, Lemek came with a group from Emmanuel Baptist Church in Waisara, and he preached at Anyauntapeq. And after that, Nehemiah and Dallas headed to Marivo to do public preaching there November 28. Another mostly cloudy day. Today, I spent time on the Revelation studies and completed the study of the first five verses of chapter 14 — a delightful study. Started on the next section from verses 6-13, but the evening turned out to be extra busy so wasn’t able to get too far on it. I also put two coats of varnish on the painting and took some pictures of it. We were just getting ready to sit down for supper this evening when there was a knock on the door. Five men had come to talk — Amos, Mike, Nehemiah, Rex, and Dallas. They all came to see about ordering Thompson Chain Reference bibles for Nehemiah, Rex, and Dallas. Amos and Mike already have the TCR. Also Mike brought back Daddy’s old TCR that he had been using until he got his new one. Nehemiah snatched it up so he can use it while he is waiting for his new one. We also talked to the future SCMS students about getting together Wednesday after lotu (church) to have orientation for classes and decide when to do the work that needs to be done on the classroom. Nehemiah said there is a young man from Bulolo, too, who would like to come for missionary training. Those five men had no sooner left when Nuanda came along. We told Nuanda about meeting with the students on Wednesday since he plans to be a student. While Nuanda was still there, Elaisa came along. He too wanted to order a TCR. When Nuanda heard that these others were ordering, he wanted to put an order in too. He has an old copy that Daddy left with him years ago, but it is falling apart. It was going on 6:30 before everyone had left. We had supper, did dishes, heated bath water and washed up, had bedtime snack, and had our bedtime devotions. The evening had gone by lickety-split, and it was now time for bed. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) November 24. The Lord gave us a hot dry day, but not so humid as it has been. After breakfast and quiet time, I enjoyed a little Bible study in Numbers and then a short study of the sending/going out of missionaries in the book of Acts. Dallas came early to cut kindling and Mike came to finish cutting the grass on the south side outside the fence. It was hard work as the strong grass that turns red in the spring was getting thick over there. A little later his family came along and helped him, especially with raking and carrying the grass away. I went outside for a while to enjoy the sunshine and be with the family while they were here. After a while, Lewis came out too. Dallas left as soon as he had finished cutting kindlin’ as he and Elise are making kaukau gardens on the other side of the mountains. It was around 11:30, I think, when Mike and his family left. After I came back in from some time in the sunshine, I worked on the dictionary for the Pidgin New Testament and also spent time on it this afternoon and early this evening. This evening, I was just finishing up fixing a picture for the dictionary and was ready to head to the kitchen to wash the dishes when Nehemiah came to the door. So, we sat down with him while he gave a report on his evangelistic trip. He had many opportunities to preach. Rex didn’t preach, but had time to give his testimony. They left from here November 1 and traveled south to Bulolo, making stops at many villages along the way. Sometimes they walked all night. Nehemiah spoke publicly in places where there were no churches. In other places, he had been invited by pastors to speak in their churches. Between Bulolo and Lae, he had the opportunity to speak at Zenag Farms, and in Lae at the SIL compound. There were ten people who made professions of salvation during their trip. One of them was a grade 12 student whom he directed to a church in Bulolo. There are many places that just need someone to go and stay there to start a work.* When Nehemiah left, we reheated the dish water and then put bath water on to heat while I was washing dishes. I was thankful there were only a few dishes this evening. *Please pray for more laborers, even some raised up from among the people of Papua New Guinea and among the Owena people to go and do the Lord’s work in needy areas. November 25. In Judy’s computer lesson time this morning, we talked about and practiced picking up speed as well as retaining accuracy. I had her do a one-minute and a five-minute speed drill. She definitely needs lots of practice yet. Before she left, I gave her a study sheet for a quiz which will be the next thing to do before going on to learning more letters. Later in the morning, we went outside for some exercise and time in the sunshine. Morning computer time was spent working on the Bible dictionary. This afternoon, I cut Daddy’s hair. Wan came and closed off more little spaces under the fence that the rooster found he could get under. That is the most stubborn rooster we have had around. Others in the past would stay out after they’d been run out a few times, but not this guy. And we don’t particularly appreciate being awakened before 6:00 a.m. or during nap time by a rooster under our window or under our house. They don’t exactly have a very pretty song. This evening I worked on writing more computer lessons. About mid-afternoon and on through the evening, the Lord sent us some pretty powerful thunderstorms. Mike came for music practice, but nobody else showed up. He stayed and stayed, waiting for the rain to let up. Finally left a little after 9:00 when the rain had slowed down a bit. “The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy.” (Psalm 145:8) (Please pray about a situation regarding the land. I cannot give details regarding this, but the Lord knows and can take care of it.) November 22. A lovely morning. Sat outside in the sunshine and spent time in prayer. Afterward enjoyed time in Bible study in Numbers. Whipped up some very overripe bananas with almond milk, vanilla flavoring, and chocolate chips to make some ice cream. It turned out to be more like ice milk after it was frozen, but it tasted good anyway. Praise the Lord for helping me to finish up the work of adding the blanks to the Kristen Famili (Christian Family) lessons. Started organizing the notes on “Independent Baptist” into a publisher file. Got out the music keyboard and played for a while before our devotions together. It had been a long time since I’d done any playing. November 23. Judy came early this a.m. and did laundry. Then she had her computer lesson. Wan came and worked in the yard, blocking places under the fence where the rooster crawls under; cleaning out the ditch on the east side outside the fence; building dirt up on the old garbage hole* and on the new as the dirt had settled too much. I had a smoothie for the first part of my breakfast, and then worked on making banana muffins and granola while Judy was busy at the computer. About mid-morning, the muffins were done, and I relished a couple of those for the other half of my breakfast. The second half of the morning, I got the table of contents made for the Pidgin New Testament and started getting ready to set up the dictionary. In the afternoon, I got out the sewing machine and the rest of the afternoon and evening, I made curtains — one for the window in the pantry-storage area, and one for each of the two windows in the mission school room. The foursome were here this evening practicing music — Mike, Dallas, Sunny, and Judy. Nehemiah and Rex are on their way home this evening, so they and the rest of the ensemble should be joining the four for practice on Thursday evening. “23) Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: 24) And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24) *Garbage hole – There is no trash service in the village. Any trash that can be is burned. Other things, like food scraps and things that won’t burn in the fire, are buried in a deep hole. |
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