Praise God:

• For Adam's safe return from Akolet land on June 17th after being stranded due to a shortage of aviation fuel. A plane that uses another kind of fuel was found to get the guys and bring them back.



• For Adam's trip to Akolet being profitable. The people there are still very excited to have us come and are continuing to clear ground for where our houses will be built.

Please Pray:

• For the continued shortage of aviation fuel. This makes all travel plans extremely difficult as we still do not know when the fuel will show up. (The latest shipment is already several weeks late.) Pray for wisdom as we seek to adjust our travel plans to the fuel shortage.



• For the work ahead of us as we prepare all of our house-building materials and try to ship them from Hoskins to Akolet land. Pray for Adam and Ryan as they go in to do some preliminary building.



• For strength and encouragement during these next stressful months of transitioning from our life here at the mission base to life in the bush.



• For the hearts of the Akolet people to be open to us and the message that we've come to bring to them eventually. Pray that we as missionaries would form good relationships with the people.

Please Pray:

• Please pray for Adam and Jan (a fellow missionary) who flew to Akolet land on Monday (12th of June) and planned to return on Wednesday. Due to a sudden and severe shortage of aviation fuel, they are stranded there for at least a week longer than expected. Please pray for their safety and for the fuel situation to be resolved quickly so that they can make a swift return to Hoskins.

The ticket saga continues...

Life in PNG is many, many things, but it is certainly never predictable. After Adam's drama with going to by tickets from a PNG commercial airline, we thought perhaps we'd seen the last of our ticketing troubles. Since this survey was to be a much shorter one, the plan for the 4 guys was to travel to Akolet land on Tuesday and return to Hoskins on Thursday. As you probably can already guess (why else would we be writing about this?), such was not the case.

With the best of intentions, Adam tried several times by phone on Monday to confirm their flight for the following day. Of course no one was in the ticketing office, so these attempts proved futile. With "Some trust in airline tickets and dependable airlines but we trust in the name of the Lord our God" running through their minds, they arrived at the airport on Tuesday.

"Um....we don't fly to Gasmata on Tuesdays. Our schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Saturday." This was what they were greeted with. The Lord's hand was in it all (did we ever doubt?), and our mission's own plane "happened" to be in the area at that time with a previously unscheduled flight. Our pilot was able to re-arrange his schedule and get the guys to Gasmata barely behind schedule.

This, of course, left them with a further quandary. The original plan was 2 days in Akolet land. Could they stay up all night talking with the Akolet leaders and get done what they wanted to in only 24 hours? Or would they be forced to extend their visit a few extra days and return on Saturday? And, regardless of what day they chose to return, would they actually get on the flight?

As always, God was in complete control, and 24 hours was more than enough time to talk through everything that they needed to. The following day saw the guys boarding the plane which arrived on time and carried them back to Hoskins right on schedule (for once).

And there you have it - the completion of this particular saga, though there will be countless more during our years here in PNG. Remember: life here is many things, but never, ever predictable.

Lobster for breakfast

We as a team had decided to concentrate our time during this trip to the one area of the language group where there seemed to be the most interest last time - three villages at the eastern end of the language group.

We were met at the airstrip by Akolet men and taken to the first village where we were quite literally put on display. The entire group of village leaders had already assembled and told us missionaries to go and sit on the wooden platform that they were all facing. Feeling just a little bit on display, we did as we were told. The village leaders wanted to clarify some things just to make sure they understood what our work would be with them, so they proceeded to "interview" us with questions for about an hour.

The leaders were very happy with what they heard and said, "Well, that sounds really good. Now let's go check out the land where you will build your houses." Which they did, and agreed that after the guys left, the Akolet people would work on clearing land on the site of our future houses. (Right now it is an area dense with 6-8 feet tall grasses, small trees, and sharp, thorny vines.)

Then they proceeded to the second village, where they were previously unable to go due to time constraints. The village leaders there were also in agreement with our coming to live among them, so we returned to the location of our future houses and set up camp for the night.

Dinner was freshly caught fish and taro (a starchy root vegetable) boiled in coconut milk (yum!) followed by hours of conversing late into the night. How amazing to think that the guys we are just beginning to build relationships with could be the future leaders of the Akolet church!

As you may imagine, not much sleeping was actually done. In the morning after the guys "woke up", breakfast was served: 9 massive lobster that the Akolet men had caught the night before. They went on and on about how it really wasn't a very good night for catching lobsters, but they did get a few. Can you imagine - 9 lobster on a bad night? (How do you tell them that they probably had $100 worth of lobster that they so casually fed us for breakfast?)

With that rather substantial meal in our bellies, we said our goodbyes and made our way back to the airport.

Now we make plans to go back, finish up the agreement details that will enable us to begin building our houses in the coming months, and continue to pray for the hearts of the Akolet people. It will still be years before we can clearly communicate the truth of the Bible to them in their language, and in the meantime it continues to be Satan's territory that he desperately wants to keep as his own. The obstacles will be many, so please continue to pray for us, the Akolet team.