| Pray for Open Doors!
Dear family and friends,
“Pray for us, that God may open a door for the gospel, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ.” Colossians 4:3
You may know that the leaders of the Aruamu churches in Papua New Guinea have been praying and looking ahead to how God might use them, and where he might send them as missionaries to other groups.
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For that reason, they have started their own Faith Bible College, so that their own people can be trained to go with the gospel. It kind of blows me away, really.
In January of 2017, when Aruamu translators Steven Dazim and Siria Ransford and I were traveling to the US to do exegetical checking on Old Testament books, we participated in the World Convention in India. At that convention, Steven Dazim met up with people from the Hisportic Christian Mission. They are church planters working in Portuguese-speaking countries. They are wanting to put together a team to go into East Timor, and they invited Steven to accompany them on a survey trip in East Timor, with a view to sending Aruamu missionaries there in the future.
The East Timor survey trip is happening this month. As I write, 2 Aruamu men, Steven Dazim and Jacob Gari are preparing to depart Papua New Guinea to fly to Denpasar, Indonesia to join Tim Shields, Wayne Long and others on the survey team. They will fly together to Dili, East Timor, to work together to research open doors for the gospel in that country.
We know that there are some people groups there with no translation of the Scriptures. Some languages there are Papuan, and would have features similar to other Papuan languages (like Aruamu.) Most tribal groups there have an animistic back ground. Some have a strong overlay of Catholicism, but seem quite syncretistic
Please pray for this survey team! Pray, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “for an open door for the gospel.” (Col. 3:4) Pray for excellent partnership/teamwork for them. May that the team will find favor! May God lead them to the right people. May they ask the right questions and connect well with the situation there. This must be a "God Thing!"
For Kingdom Expansion,
Marsha Relyea Miles
(for Nathan, and for the Aruamu Translation Team) |
