14 days and counting!

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:17:39 -0700

Today marks two weeks until we step onto a jumbo jet bound for the South Pacific! It’s hard to know what to think or feel, frankly. Excitement is certainly present. Awe fills our hearts as we think of the many miracles God has done to bring us to this point. Fear is a reality we must contend with. Stress is constantly knocking as we pack and finalize our life here in the States. Fatigue is no stranger with the fall nights now coming sooner but our days growing longer. And Joy is a welcome comfort as we find Rest in our Savior’s patient and constant care.

Thank you for the constant prayers, encouragement and support so many of you have given. We thank the Lord for you and for your involvement with us in what God is doing in PNG. To Him alone be the glory!

Great News!

Wed, 9 Sep 2009 17:21:14 -0700

We have officially reached 75% of our monthly support! Praise the Lord!! We can now begin to look into purchasing our plane tickets for the end of October. We believe the Lord is leading us to take a step of faith and move ahead with our plans to leave in seven weeks, trusting that He will provide the remaining 25% of our monthly support by the time we leave.

It seems like an insurmountable task to raise $1500/mo in seven weeks! But we know that nothing is impossible with God and that the urgency of our task is great. He is the One who parted the Red Sea, brought down the walls of Jericho, made the blind to see, and raised the dead to life. He is more than able to do this. Join with us as we, 1) praise Him for already providing $4600/mo in pledged support, and 2) pray for new prayer and financial partners as we trust Him for another $1500/mo.

Please also be praying with us for:
- wisdom in choosing a date to leave and purchasing tickets
- courage as we begin saying goodbyes and making final preparations
- a continually deeper love for our Saviour

It is amazing to see God putting together such a great team of people who are partnering with us. We are thrilled that God is giving us such a great opportunity to take part with you in fulfilling the Great Commission and reach into the darkness in Papua New Guinea with the Light of the Gospel!

Anna's Visa is here!

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:09:15 -0700

This week we received Anna’s visa from the PNG Embassy in Washington! Praise the Lord! THAT IS THE LAST PIECE OF PAPERWORK WE NEED to take our family to Papua New Guinea! Now all that is left is to finish raising support and go! I’ve been looking at plane tickets and trying to find the best deals. We are getting very anxious to get over there!

We learned this week that our container that left port the end of July is already in Australia! It may beat us there!

We are praising the Lord for the tremendous support team He is building for us. We’re grateful that all our paperwork has come through quickly. Pray for us as we continue to share our ministry and gather the remaining 27% of our support.

God’s steps

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:33:53 -0700

“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
Proverbs 16:9

We were told many times through our missionary training that it was important as missionaries to remain FLEXIBLE. Well, I guess we are getting some practice! We’ve been talking with the leadership in Papua New Guinea this week and they have asked us to move our arrival date from September 1st to late October. They’ve evaluated our arrival in light of other events happening there in September and decided that it will be much better for us and them if we come in October.
Although we now have adjustments to make, we are encouraged as we see the Lord guiding us. From the beginning we knew that any plans we make are “subject to change” as God reveals the steps HE wants us to take.
We obviously don’t know all God has planned for us, but we see this as an opportunity to continue building our support team and preparing for the rigors of life and ministry in Papua New Guinea. Having a strong, solid prayer and financial support team is so vital to our ability to carry on ministry there. We are thankful for this bit of extra time to continue building that team and enjoy friendships here before we have to say goodbye.
Please join with us as we daily pray for God to increase our partnership team and prepare our family mentally, spiritually, and physically for life in PNG.
If you would like to partner with us, you can visit this link or send us an email.

Anna has arrived!

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:47:31 -0700

We are so excited to announce that Anna Faith was born June 8th at 2:49 pm! She was 8 lbs. 2 oz. and 20 inches long. I, Tiffany, usually have very long labors, so it was a bit of a shock to only be at the hospital 2 1/2 hours before she was born! ( Labor was about 9 1/2 hours total) The boys absolutely love her and want to hold her all the time. Thank you to all of you for your prayers! We are so thankful for this wonderful blessing of our sweet little girl!

SEE MORE PICTURES HERE

Goods Away!

Mon, 8 Jun 2009 15:48:30 -0700

After many weeks of being very busy with supply buying, clothes shopping, packing, more shopping, more buying, and more packing, we are finally finished! What a relief! Saturday, June 6th, we delivered our crate, trunks, totes and boxes to be loaded onto a sea container bound for Papua New Guinea.

What did we send? Well, we’ve been told there are many things in PNG that you cannot find or are very expensive to buy there. Here are some of the things we shipped:
2-4 years of clothes and shoes for the our whole family
1-2 years of homeschool curriculum for Noah and Micah
pots and pans for cooking and baking
a water filtration system
power and hand tools for building furniture and our house in the bush
some toys for the kids
a few presents for birthdays and christmases

Packing up all my clothes for the next couple years

Packing up the kids toys in plastic trunks

So what does all this stuff look like? It looks like...
1 crate
17 plastic trunks
16 clear totes
11 rubbermaid totes
18 miscellaneous boxes

All the stuff listed above that didn’t go in the crate

Closing up the crate after cramming it full of stuff. It was amazing how
much fit in that box!

We had quite a time getting the crate closed. It was bulging in all directions.
So we rigged up this jig to squeeze the sides shut. Then we had to stand on
it to get the lid to close. It was quite a process but we eventually got it closed!

It was quite an undertaking buying several years worth of supplies all within a two months time--both in shear work and also mentally allowing ourselves to spend that much money! It has been wonderful to watch God provide each step of the way as we’ve stepped out in faith to ship our supplies ahead of us. Thank you to all of you who are partnering with us through your prayers, financial gifts, and physical help. You are the ones God is using to enable us to begin ministry in Papua New Guinea!

SEE MORE PICTURES HERE

Precious Cargo

Tue, 5 May 2009 10:47:15 -0700

We are scrambling these days as it is now May. We are doing all we can to pack up all we’ll need the next four years to get it onto our container by the end of the month. Yesterday I (Tim) built a big crate to load some of our stuff into. We’ve been buying Walmart out of their plastic trunk lockers for the past few weeks to pack with! Hey, at least we’re stimulating the economy! The more we buy and pack supplies the more it makes me wish we could just pack a back pack and go! :-)

You can fit a lot of stuff in this thing!!

I don’t know if I’ve ever had so much on my mind before:
Packing a container for a family of (soon to be) 5 for 4 years
Preparing to move to the other side of the world Sept. 1
Getting ready for the arrival our baby girl the first week of June
Raising financial and prayer support.

It is such a relief to remember that God is the One working all things out for us in spite of our short comings. It is also a comfort to remember His promise to carry our burdens for us. In the midst of what seems to sometimes be chaos I can’t help but be calmed and comforted by the Greatness of our God!

Trunks packed and ready to go.

Stuff waiting to be packed and sorted...again.

Trunks waiting to be packed.
Are we really going to need all those? We’ll see...

My two helpers ready to go!

When are we leaving??

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:02:26 -0700

So that’s the big question...when are we leaving? The answer is September 1st--Lord willing! There are two main things that need to happen for us to meet this date:

Receive baby’s passport with visa from PNG Embassy
Be receiving at least 75% of our monthly support

We’re relying on our BIG God to make this happen by September 1st.

We have a small window of time when we can go. We cannot go during the end of September - beginning of October because of a regional conference taking place. And due to permit renewals for all NTM PNG missionaries there is a blackout time between January ~ July 2010. So we must arrive in Papua New Guinea by December lest we wait another 6 months!

Please be praying with us that all will come together by then!

Leaving God a way out

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 14:50:16 -0700

“And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” 1 John 5:14-15

I read this passage this past week and God convicted me of my lack of faith in prayer. I realized that in the past whenever I have read this passage or others like it I’ve interpreted them with a certain amount of qualifications surrounding the truth God is communicating. I thought about it for a while and realized why I did that--to give God a way out. It may sound ridiculous, but that is exactly what it is. When I pray and “let [my] requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4: 6) I pray in a way that allows God a “way out” incase He doesn’t “come through.” Can you relate?

As a result I’ve been challenged to pray with a child like faith that asks and expects with no qualifications. Too many times we place God in a box with our expectations. But we cannot do that...God is an outside-the-box God whose thoughts are not our thoughts and whose ways are not our ways (Is. 55:8-9).

Join with me in praying boldly and expectantly as we seek God’s will in our lives.

-Tim

Our Container is a Go!

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 14:15:21 -0700

After months of searching and correspondence and inquiries, we finally have a sea container secured to take our supplies to Papua New Guinea the end of May! Not only that but it also leaves Oxnard (only 2 hours from us) and arrives in Madang, PNG right where we will be living so we won’t have to freight anything to or from port! God is amazing!

Here is what we have left: (note some dates have changed)

Obtain work permits
Obtain visas (entry permits) for our family
Ship supplies - approx. May 25th we’ll take or supplies to Oxnard for loading
Receive remaining 51% monthly support - we’re boldly praying for:
75% by May 1
100% by July 30
Obtain visa for our new baby after she is born
Buy plane tickets - as soon as we receive our newborn’s visa (end of August)
Depart September 1st for Papua New Guinea

It is a step of faith for us to ship our belongings without certainty of when we will follow. But we know we serve a great and mighty God is able to get us to PNG this September. So we are praying for a few specific things...would you pray with us?

Please pray: 1) Praise God for supplying a container that meets our needs; 2) God would miraculously supply our remaining needed support; 3) In all this, God would glorify Himself mightily!