We are out and about!

Last Tuesday we said goodbye to our friends, neighbors and condo in Bozeman and made a slow lumbering trek to Billings in our 26' U-haul truck. Our plan had been to live in Kim's parents basement until Christmas day and then we were going to drive to Minnesota to see Jacob's family before flying from Minneapolis to Papua New Guinea on the first of January.

The great thing about plans is that they tend to change. Our visas were due in Billings last Wednesday, but never arrived. Upon investigation as to their whereabouts we discovered that some paperwork in Papua New Guinea is not correct. Our visas are now scheduled to arrive in three days to three months, but no one seems to know the exact date and no one seems to be able to do anything about it. That being the case, our new plan (we have found that when planning to leave the country for a year it helps to keep a few new plans handy) is to drive to Minnesota for Christmas, visit Jacob's parents and then drive back to Billings and Lord willing, fly to Papua New Guinea prior to the end of the first week in January.

Throughout this whole process we have been pointed repeatedly to Philippians 4:6-7. We know that as long as we are operating within the Lord's will, our visas will arrive exactly when they are supposed to. We would appreciate any prayers for safe travels to and back from Minnesota and that our visas arrive as soon as possible.

An Update

Things are starting to happen very quickly for us now. This past week we received clearance to purchase airline tickets for Papua New Guinea! (Our support is nearly at 100%. Praise the Lord!) Now we are just waiting for our visas to arrive back from the Papua New Guinea Embassy in Washington D.C. and we will be ready to go as far as the paper work is concerned. In the past few days we have begun to pack up our condo in Bozeman in preparation to move to Billings, where we will be living with Kim's parents for the last few days before our departure. It has been a very busy time for us.

Last weekend we had the opportunity to share at the Evangelical Free Church in Billings. Kim spent several years during her childhood attending this church and it was fun for her to return for a visit and share our plans with them.

















Here Jacob is describing some of the interesting cultures that are found in Papua New Guinea.

















Here Kim explains to the congregation that Papua New Guinea is approximately the size of California and is home to 800 different languages!

Here I am with our Arop-Sissano friend. This exhibit at WordSpring had ten different people groups from around the world displayed in their traditional dress. Also, if you pressed a button they would speak John 3:16 in thier own language. To help us blend in better while we are in Papua New Guinea I am going to dress like this fellow.

We visited the WordSpring Discover Center at Wycliffe and met this gentleman from the Arop-Sissano tribe in Papua New Guinea. A translation is currently underway for the Arop-Sissano people group.

Our Trip to Wycliffe Assoicates Headquarters in Orlando, FL

Kim and I recently had the opportunity to visit the Wycliffe Associates world headquarters in Orlando Florida. We attended a few days of training and received a lot of guidance for our rapidly approaching departure for Papua New Guinea! Praise the Lord, while we were in Florida we were able to change our health insurance provider and thereby reduce the amount of money needing to be raised by approximately $12,000! We also met several people who have been to Ukarumpa and were able to visit with them and see lots of pictures of what life in PNG is like.

Here is a copy of our prayer card. We were able to send out our support letters this week. It will be exciting to see how God provides for us!

Moving forward

We are excited about the new adventure that lies ahead of us: Papua New Guinea. We will be living in a Wycliffe Bible translation village called Ukarumpa. Jacob will be serving there as a civil engineer working on much-needed water projects. Kim will be teaching junior high math at the school there, working with boarding students whose parents are missionaries somewhere in the Pacific islands. It will be great to see how God can use us to serve Him in this way.