The Valley Next Door
There are a lot of factors that go into deciding where to put a team of church planters.
We consider language and language vitality, other mission activity, and potential outreach of other church plants. But ultimately deciding where to serve is up to God’s leading, and how He is preparing the hearts of a particular place or community.
We go on surveys to find out many of these things. We spend time hiking, driving, flying, or canoeing into locations to spend time with the people, hear their stories, and hear about their needs.
In the highland mountains of Papua New Guinea, the “D” people first heard the Gospel from a team of church planters years ago. They came to a saving understanding of Jesus and have been growing in their faith. The thing is, the “D” people are miles away from any other healthy church that they could fellowship with. They feel isolated and alone in their faith and that brings its own set of trials and struggles. They don’t yet have the ability to send out their own missionaries to other language groups while they’re trying to lead and disciple their own church and other “D” villages.
This was the purpose of the survey back in the beginning of February. We went to evaluate if one of the language groups neighboring “D” would be viable for a missionary church planting team. Nathan went on this survey with with two missionaries who worked in “D” and two “D” national church leaders. We spent 3 days hiking from “D” into the valley of the “U” people. We had heard that some villages were wanting to hear what was taught in “D”, so we went to gauge their interest and gather important language data.
We hiked a total of 18 hours on this trip but only traveled a distance of 12 miles to visit 3 separate villages! The mountains were rugged and extreme.
In the bottom right area you can just barely see two men walking on the trail.
We hiked through multiple villages to both share what Ethnos360 does as an organization and to hear from the people about their needs. What we found was an area in need of the Gospel. These people have heard of God and Jesus, but they had no idea really who He is and why Jesus died for them.
Would you be praying for the “U” people? This survey was just to gather information. We aren’t sure if these are the people God would send us to or not, but we are open and willing for the Lord to use us in any way. It looks like doors are opening in this area which is exciting. Pray we would continue to seek the Lord’s leading.
