Quarantine

Back in March, Micah and our two co-workers, Jason and Adam, flew into Lembena to mill the lumber needed to build our house. After felling the first tree and milling around 100 boards in just a few days, they received news of the developing Coronavirus situation over the satellite phone. Papua New Guinea had declared a State of Emergency due to the pandemic and travel to remote locations like Lembena was to be severely restricted, forcing them to come back to Wewak. For two months, the State of Emergency continued and we prepared as best we could to be ready for when things would open back up and allow us to resume our pursuit of moving into Lembena. Though it was frustrating to have to wait, it was a really good time of working as a team to pursue greater unity and getting to know each other more. We are very thankful for our organization leadership and their desire to honor our governing authorities and to not be potential carriers of this disease to those living in remote areas.

During those two months, we painted the plywood of our future walls, sewed the curtains for our future windows, purchased the materials needed for our future house, reviewed and edited our house design plans countless times, helped with some projects on our base and strategized as a team for future ministry and language study. It was a long two months of waiting and trying to keep busy but we reminded ourselves to view this time as a blessing and use it to strengthen ourselves spiritually for our journey that lies ahead. This “delay” for us was not a delay in God’s plans. It did not take Him by surprise. He knew this was coming and it was part of His plan. We found that to be a very encouraging thing.

Milling Trip

After two months in Wewak, the guys were able to fly back into Lembena and resume milling lumber and building our three houses! It was so good to be back with the people and working toward moving in! The Lembena People were also excited to have us back after so long and almost every day brought us cooked garden food and freshly cooked pig (both wild pig and “house” pig). Eating pig is a big deal for these people and we felt so honored by them, they wanted to make sure we knew that they wanted us there and were happy that we were back.

The trip went incredibly well and, with some help from our friend Travis and the Lembena People, we were able to get so much accomplished on this trip! We were able to cut down several large trees and mill all the lumber needed for our house! It’s a lot of work to mill lumber using just a chainsaw and an Alaskan chainsaw mill and the lumber is still pretty rough but it was a good time of working alongside the people. Also during this trip, our two co-workers houses were able to get the solar systems installed, get running water in the houses and get siding put on the two houses instead of just plastic wrap. Thought this was a long trip being away from families, we were very thankful for all that was able to get accomplished!

Future Plans

After this last trip, we took about two weeks with the families to prep for our next and hopefully last build trip! It has been a long road of waiting and working to move in for our team and we are all ready to move in as soon as we can. Our hope is that with the help of our support team in Wewak, we can get our house framed, set up our solar system and have running water in two weeks. We have all the lumber and materials but there is still a ton of work to do to make this happen. After this two week trip, we plan to move in the families and not have to be separated for these build trips anymore!

We will still have at least a month of work left on the houses and then we will start the long process of learning the language and culture of the people. The people cannot wait for this! They are already trying to teach us how to say things in their language and talking about all the places they will take us and all the things they will teach us how to do. This is a very, very exciting time for us as a team. Please keep us in your prayers, we cannot do this without you!

Ways to Pray for us

• Praise God for all the help we have for this next trip and for God providing the funds needed to finish our house!
• Pray for our next build trip. Pray that we have a smooth trip with no injuries and that we are able to work well with each other and get things done quickly so we can move in soon! Pray also that the airstrip grass has been cut so we can land!
• Pray for the move process and for us to handle well the stress of packing and moving into our new home.
• Pray for the Lembena people. Pray that God would be softening hearts for our future message and for there to be a willingness to help us learn their language and culture.
• Pray that we would have wisdom in navigating the culture, and that we would be able to learn the language quickly and stay humble knowing that we will be making many, many mistakes in both language and culture.

In Him Alone,
Micah, Laura and Adalia