as she looks down on the beautiful and lifeless form
of her firstborn baby, a little boy,
born just a few hours earlier during the previous night.
Mark, the grieving Dad, tried to cover his aching heart
with keeping busy, making the little coffin for his son and
the saddest moment: putting that perfect, little body into the coffin
and nailing the lid on and putting it into the ground.
We talked to them a week ago today, had them over for lunch after the Sunday morning meeting as we had been away during the birth and death of their little son. They were in the kitchen with us helping us to get lunch ready and we shared tears together and talked all about the events of that night and about the following days and nights and about what they were feeling and thinking.
One of the things that we asked them was, “What has God used to comfort your hearts in this time since your baby died?” Mark told us about how the story of Job keeps coming back to his thoughts and heart and how he keeps hearing God saying to him, “Trust Me just like Job trusted Me.”
And Aysa said God keeps saying to her, “Keep on, go through this.....keep trusting Me.”
We were so blessed in the midst of heavy hearts and tears to see Mark and Aysa trusting God through this time. They have been married for less than a year, and both of them are involved in ministry. Mark is a bible teacher and goes out each week to teach in the outreaches and Aysa is training to be a scripture teacher in the schools.
So please pray for them as you think of them in the rawness of their grief and pray that they will continue to have hearts that trust God no matter what.
“He heals the broken in heart,
And bindeth up their wounds.”
Psalm 147:3
Aysa’s heart is grieving and wounded but God is healing her, binding up her wounds and her spirit is still strong and her and Mark continue on serving and trusting.....
PLEASE PRAY for continued healing for them and for each one here whose heart is broken and wounded.
This is the old church building in San Acquino – which looks pretty pathetic but this was the venue through which almost 100 people listened each week to God’s Word, where they heard the Gospel for the first time, and where they started growing in the knowledge of God’s will for their lives and in their desire to serve our Lord Jesus!
But things happened - they outgrew this building, someone stole the tarp off the roof.....
But God worked marvelously and provided this beautiful block of land
for the believers in San Aquino. And here is their new church building
going up – a beautiful solid, building – nestled in a quiet place, near clear running
water, close to the village, but enough distance that the noise will not disturb
them as they study His Word.
This will be the center for their meetings and for their bible studies, for teaching the children,
gathering for prayer, discipling groups of women, training new bible teachers – of which there are an abundance of inSan Aquino. The church here is thriving and is very fertile ground for the Word. Already the local church leadership though young in the Lord, are showing remarkable ability to teach and disciple and there is a growing hunger in this place amongst the unbelievers to join this band of believers and to find out what has happened in their lives as there is such
evident changes and wonders happening in their lives.
God is building His church......not the building but the people......and He is also providing them with infrastructure and buildings needed like this one. San Aquino is about 45 minutes drive from Lapoc on a ROUGH road - it is becoming an outstation of the work here and additional buildings are probably going to be built here as we continue training and sending out teachers (and hopefully missionaries)
from there.
We are hoping to build more church building like this in other places where the number of believers is growing later on this year. As you can imagine, it is a huge job for Paul, getting the materials together, coordinating the purchasing of and trucking of innumerable loads of cement, roofing material, hardiflex, gravel, sand and on and on.
Ben and Leonie have arrived here in Lapoc!!!! THANK YOU for all your prayers for them: For their preparations For their wedding For their travel For all the details that had to be worked out...... After all your prayers – well....here they are!!! And now, they need your continued prayers. It is not easy to be plunged into a new country, into a remote village, into a place where there is nowhere to go out, no places to shop, no family or friends around, everyone speaks a different language, you have to make your own bread, and you see things and hear things every day that sound and look foreign......and all this on top of not even having been married for a month yet!! Ben started classes on Monday and Jubab has been really enjoying having Ben for his teacher!!!
It is nearly the end of their second week of school and everything is going great. Leonie has been doing a marvelous job of organizing their first household as a married couple and baking bread and settling in. Today they will be happy to see some of the landscape more clearly as for the first few days all they saw was fog. Thank you for your continued prayers for Ben and Leonie and praise God with us that because they are here, we had a huge week on the translation and were able to work 10 hour days!!! We got a whole chapter of Romans finished by yesterday as well as updating our Tala-Andig dictionary which we use extensively while we translate. And today we made a lot of progress into our second chapter for the week!!! All this because Ben and Leonie are here as without them on the team, our progress on the translation would be seriously slowed down.
Thank you for all your prayers over the years for the fantastic teachers who have team-worked with us, Julie, Jessie, Jane, Barb.....and now Ben and Leonie!! God is SO AWESOME!!
Often times as the missionary you get to hear all the bad news.....people’s problems, people’s sickness, people’s needs, people’s struggles.......and sometimes this gets a bit tough for the missionary and the missionary can start to feel burdened, heavy and downhearted. So when times come like last Sunday afternoon when we hear about the amazing things Jesus is doing in people’s lives......it is like a revival in our souls!!! These times are the times of being lifted up on wings of Eagles.....
The setting was my Ladies’ Fellowship Group’s Christmas party. I meet once a month with the Lapoc Central Group and there are about 24 of us in the group. Most of the ladies I get to spend my time with on a regular basis are ladies who are in ministry: the scripture teachers, the wives of the church elders and teachers, the missionaries. But in my ladies’ group, I get to spend time with a different group of women – women who would mostly be called ‘lay-women’ I guess - and it has been a joy to get to know them and to interact with them.
During our afternoon together last Sunday, we sat in a circle and each of us shared what Jesus’ birth means to us personally. I can’t record all of their testimonies for you but here are some of them:
Beloved Sister #1: (a 19 year old converted lesbian) Head up, eyes looking straight at us, voice clear and confident, she said, “Jesus’ birth has changed my life. You all know what I was before but because Jesus was born on this earth and died for me, He has turned me around. My life is so different now and I am so thankful to Him!!” This dear sister is married and has a 9 month old son now.
Beloved Sister #2: (a 26 year old, wife of a murderer. Her husband is currently in prison and she is raising their 3 daughters alone.) Eyes pouring with tears, voice choked up and unsteady, pausing from time to time as she broke into sobs, she said, “Jesus’ birth brought me from the darkness into the light. And even now that I am in the light, life is still so miserable. If I didn’t know Jesus, if it wasn’t for His strength getting me through each day, I don’t think that I could be here anymore as life would just be unbearable. He is the reason I can keep living.”
Beloved Sister #3: (young wife and mother of 4) Very shyly, as she hardly ever speaks in a group, she said, “Jesus’ birth has transformed me. You know my character before, how horrible I used to be, but Jesus has changed me. I am so thankful to Him – that He was born and that He died to save me!!”
Beloved Sister #4: (in her 40’s, mother of 7, used to be addicted to alcohol and gambling, knows what it is like to fall in the ditch unable to get up because she was so drunk) Funny, loud, bubbly, she was the MC of our time of sharing. She said, “If Jesus hadn’t come to die for me, then oh my (approx equivalent to the Tala-Andig ‘Hooooo-aahhh)!!!!!! where do you think I would be right now, that’s pretty clear isn’t it? How hopeless and dark my life was before Jesus saved me. Jesus’ birth meant life for me, and just think all these years went by since He was born, but He had a plan for us didn’t He, and He sent our missionaries here who showed us the way.....and we still mess up even though we are saved and even when we know the truth and we still disobey, but He just keeps teaching us....”
And so the meeting went on – sister after sister describing how Jesus’ birth and His death for them has changed their lives, and there we were sharing tears and laughter and praising the Lord together in a very special way. It was one of those ‘highlight of the year’ moments and I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Paul all about it. And he straight away said that I should share it with you too so that you could be as blessed as we are to hear about and to be a part of such a wonderful work that our Lord Jesus is doing in our dear sisters’ lives!!!!
