April 2022 Update

Dear Supporters,

In agreement with the leadership of our sending church, Grace Bible in Winston-Salem, we have decided to move up the date for our first furlough. As many of you know and have prayed about, Nate has had several sicknesses in a row and recently recovered from life-threatening sepsis. He’s currently on a low dose of antibiotics to prevent him from getting sick again while we’re in Papua New Guinea. In addition to Nate’s health, our three year old daughter Erin has been having trouble speaking. We were hoping it was just a speech delay caused by moving to a new country and hearing a new language, but after talking to a few therapists, there is concern it might be a condition called apraxia which would require specialized speech therapy.

I’m going to finish out the school year here teaching in PNG, and then we’ll begin the trek home to North Carolina in late May/early June. Although this is a delay that we weren’t expecting when we began this journey, we are confident that God has ordered these next steps for us, and it is our joy and comfort to walk according to His plans.

Please pray with us as we wrap up this next month here and prepare to head home. We should be able to keep in touch with our PNG friends through cell phones and not have to disconnect completely from life here. Pray that Nate especially would be able to continue the friendships he’s invested a lot of time into. We will also be able to continue dialogue with potential teammates and keep up to date with field leadership about unreached tribes that are ready for missionaries. It would be great if we could make some headway with forming a team while we’re in the US, but for now, God has made it clear that we need to focus on the immediate needs of our family. Please pray for Erin as she moves to a country she won’t remember. We feel like moving to PNG was hard on her, and we hope this transition isn’t as difficult. “Kids are resilient” sounds nice until it’s your kid, and you can see all the little ways they’re struggling that everyone else misses. Pray that we’d be able to get Erin in to see a therapist that will correctly diagnose her and we can start on the right road to therapy.

We can’t thank you guys enough for all your support, prayers and kind words as we’ve worked here in Papua New Guinea the past year and a half. We are grateful and thank God for you daily. We look forward to spending time with many of you while we’re home!