Meet Our Team! + First People Group Survey Next Month

Mark and Shelbi are from Michigan and California respectively. They met during a gap year missions program in Mexico in 2011. They are sent out by Grace Church in White Lake, Michigan and Paso Robles Bible Church in Paso Robles, California.

Ricky and Kati Sanford
Evie, Mila and Emmett

Ricky and Kati are both from Michigan, though Ricky grew up in Venezuela as a missionary kid. They met at New Tribes Bible Institute in Jackson, Michigan in 2010. They are sent out by Chapel Pointe in Hudsonville, Michigan.

All three of our families arrived in Papua New Guinea in late 2020/early 2021 and started our language and culture learning together in the Madang province before going into separate tribes for bush orientation. Here’s a picture of our class from that year toward the end of our time together.

Now that we’re all back in the Highlands together, we’ve been able to discuss the different people groups in this part of the country that have been asking for missionaries.

There’s a people group located in the Morobe province that we’re especially eager to learn more about.

There may be an opportunity in late September for the men to fly into this area, hike to a few villages and spend some time talking with the people. Please pray for this to happen. Lots of things have to fall into place (and stay in place):

Papua New Guinea as a whole is currently in the midst of a fuel crisis. Our mission’s aviation program has been unable to secure a supply source for fuel. If they aren’t able to find fuel to purchase within the next few weeks, they’ll have to stop all operations and save the fuel they have in reserve for emergencies. This would keep us from moving forward indefinitely.

The guys on our team will be accompanied by an NTM missionary from a neighboring people group and a few national believers who have ties with this “new” people group. Pray for everyone involved to stay healthy and willing to go.

The invitation from the leaders of this people group to come visit needs to stay open.

While we wait to be able to do the survey, we’ve been planning our bush houses, purchasing materials for the build and continuing to serve here on base.

In more day-to-day news, Erin and I started kindergarten last week. It’s going fantastic! Well, it’s going pretty well. Teaching one five year old at the kitchen table is quite different from teaching a classroom of middle schoolers, but we are learning the ropes of homeschooling together.

In our last newsletter, we asked you guys to pray for Erin’s salvation. We do think that as of a few weeks ago, she has become a believer. Praise God! Pray for us as we continue to teach her and help her grow as a Christian.

Many of you remember that we had to come back to the U.S. for a year to get Erin speech therapy and there was concern that she might have a lifelong speech disability. Praise God that she made significant progress while we were home and we were able to come back to PNG last year in a much better place. She’s continuing to do really well with her speech and we’re just so thankful to see her talking with friends and being understood.

We’re also thankful that Emily (18 months) doesn’t seem to be showing any of the language difficulty signs that Erin did at this age. It’s been really sweet to listen to Emily start to talk. We missed out on toddler-speak with Erin, so it’s been extra special to witness these milestones with Emily.

Thank you for your continued prayers and support for our family!

We appreciate each one of you. We will send out another update after the bush trip to let you know how it goes and to share some pictures.

Love, The Clonches