A lot has happened since our last update. We had a busy holiday season as I’m sure many of you did. Addy’s first Christmas was so fun and she loved pulling things out of her stocking and gift bags but seemed more interested in the actual opening of the gift than the gift itself.

Some of you may have heard the news that we have settled on partners for our church planting team! We are so excited to announce that we will be joining with Adam and Anna Ferguson and Jason and Tami Hughes! Both couples arrived in Papua New Guinea in August of last year (2018) and have been working hard to learn the national language and culture.

Adam and Anna Ferguson are not only great friends of ours, they are also family! Anna is Micah’s older sister, and Micah and Adam grew up together as best friends since elementary school. Adam and Anna have 5 amazing kids and we are so excited that Addy will get to grow up with her cousins! They are from Port Orchard, WA and have been a part of Burley Bible Church since childhood. Adam is highly motivated and puts 100 percent into everything that he does. Anna took the linguistics course and will be a huge asset when it comes to language learning and translation. Find out more about them here.

Jason and Tami Hughes graduated a year ahead of us in training and are good friends with Adam and Anna. We have enjoyed getting to know them and their three kids better via video chat almost weekly! They are based in Fargo, ND although Jason grew up in Papua New Guinea as a missionary kid. Jason is very hardworking and willing to do whatever is needed for us all to be effective in our ministry and has experience building houses in PNG, which will be a huge help! Tami is an amazing mother and fearless when it comes to putting herself out there in language learning and relationship building. Find out more about them here.

Leadership in Papua New Guinea has written us and asked if we would leave earlier than we were planning to work through team strategy with our partners before we go through orientation of learning national language and culture, which lasts about 6 – 8 months. Our new leave date is June of this year! We are excited to have a sooner target date on when to leave, but this is also another step of faith as this is less time to raise the rest of the support we need. We are currently at just over 50% of our support and we need to reach 75% of our support level to purchase our tickets for PNG.

We want to thank those of you who have joined our team and voiced interest in being a part of our ministry team; we cannot do this without you! We truly are blessed and beyond thankful for the body of Christ and how God provides for our needs. We have a busy next couple of months as we continue to prepare and share at different churches and with many individuals about our ministry and about joining our team.