As many of you know, I (Jay) along with 4 other guys took a trip interior from July 30-August 8th. This trip was 2 fold. #1-Help a fellow church planter build his house. #2- make contact with a people group that we could possibly move to permanently to plant a church. The family we were going to help have been there for almost 6 years & have already presented the Gospel & have a group of believers there now. For the past 5 years they have been living in a home that they built when they first moved to the Wano tribe & it was always just a temporary home.
This trip had 2 very big unknowns. #1-We had NO idea how difficult is to build a house in the jungle. #2- We had NO idea how God was going to challenge us for Tribal Church Planting!! I could write a short book on all that happened & experienced in just a span of 9 days interior, but as for this post I am just going to comment on each picture and will email our contact list for of the details of the trip. (If your not on the email list let us know) ENJOY!!
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| This is their meeting for believers in this village. There are no stain glass windows, projectors, or suits here. Just a small group of people, who 3 years ago had no knowledge of their King that came to die for them. Truly a group of people who cherish Yahweh above anything else. AWESOME!! |
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| 2 of the head guys greeting us when we got there.... |
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| This is where the work crew (the 4 of us) stayed. It was about 5ft to the peak & maybe 10-12 ft wide. Had a spot for a 'lil fire inside which kept us warm, but extremely smokey. (Oh & yes it was cold there. It's about 7,2000 ft elevation) |
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| Not a bad spot to build a house, eh? This place was GORGEOUS! We took many coffee breaks just staring across the different valleys |
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| Proof I did something!! :) (well, appear to be doing something) |
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| FINALLY after 7 days of putting flooring down we were able to start the framing. (Building the house took soo much longer than expected primarily because the lumber is hand cut by a tribal guy, using a chain saw & him taking his good ole time. Shortage of lumber was the real hold up) |
This was a guy that no matter who you are....you will love! He spoke some Indonesian so we were able to communicate some, but his spirit was what you fell in love with. He had a spirit of love & peace that only comes from a life transformed by the Gospel. In Indonesia it is not uncommon to see men holding hands. We were talking about other places that have not yet heard about Yahweh & he wanted to hold my hand & of course my buddy Logan had to take a picture of that moment. lol
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| This is where it gets good!!...... As I mentioned before we wanted to make contact with a tribal group that lived across the valley from where we were building the house. (When I say across the valley, I mean we could see their land from where we were building the house but it would be almost 1.5days for us white skin people to hike there & a completely, unrelated, different language than that of the area we were/had missionaries already) One day 4 head guys showed up to meet us & they wanted to talk. They said they had a "big" talk to share with us. We kind of knew this was going to happen but had no idea what to expect. |
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| This guy standing couldn't speak the trade language so the man sitting to his left was translating for him. 3 of these guys have been hiking over to where we were for at least 4 years asking for missionaries. They are a small group that feel like they "have been forgotten", due to the fact that in that area there are 3 church plants currently going on in other language groups, but not in their tribe. These guys are the "Dem" tribe & they know that the tribes surrounding them have already heard the "Creator's talk", but they themselves haven't. One man said, "we fear the day your Jesus comes back, because all of Dem (their tribe) will be destroyed because we don't know the Creator's talk." |
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THIS IS WHY WE JOINED NEW TRIBES! When we heard this, we couldn't help but fight off the tears as we so deeply in our hearts wished we could just tell them "ok, we will go to your village." We wanted to tell them "we will go to your place & tell you of Yahweh.... but it isn't that simple. There is leadership, church politics, and many other hoops we will have to jump through" & we wanted to make sure that we did not lead them on as to if we will/can go to them because they have been burned in the past by other missionaries who said they would go there, & never did. They are begging for SOMEONE to tell them about the greatest love story EVER! Something unheard of is the fact that this tribe years & years ago built their own airstrip hoping for some white skinned person to come there & tell them about Christ. There are church plants that have been going on for over 5 years that still don't have an airstrip, & this one does.
This whole meeting was an incredible display of God's sovereignty in my life. For those of you who don't know, a few months back I was questioning if tribal church planting is truly why God brought me to this country. I questioned if maybe a support role in the city is what God had for me & my family. But after sitting there, and hearing 4 grown men beg for someone to come & tell them about Christ....it was truly God who planned this trip, who planned this meeting, & allowed me to experience it in order to affirm to me that He does want to use me & my family in furthering HIS name to a group that has been begging for years for a missionary interior & not in the city.
Needless to say when I returned home from the trip Briana & I talked about the Dem people and feel that it is exactly where God wants us to minister. With that said there is sooo soo much that goes into allocating permanently to a village but we can begin this long process knowing where God wants us. Unless God does something drastic we are planning on moving to the Dem tribe permanently around Jan 2014. (We plan to take a short furlough next summer/fall)
Please pray for the Dem people. Pray that it's God's will to prolong their lives, long enough to help us learn their language & for them to hear the Creator's talk.
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This guy is crying before he talked to us. In their culture when they have something that is VERY important to talk about, they will often cry before hand.
Maybe you could print this picture out, or one of the other pictures of these guys who came to ask for "someone to come & learn their language & tell them about Yahweh," as a reminder to pray for the Dem. Pray for us as we try to get there as fast as we can. Thanks everyone! |
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