Today we have a special treat. We have our missionary partners to Papua New Guinea to come share with us during this hour. But before I introduce them, I'd like to read a passage and then pray and give a little bit of introduction. In Acts 1.8, very familiar passage, as the Holy Spirit comes on the disciples, it says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth and to Papua New Guinea. So, and we are so happy to have our partnership with the work in Papua New Guinea. Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord God, we thank you for this new day. We thank you for the gift of your son given that we might have new life. We thank you that you are sovereign over all things. You are the one that's building the church and your spirit is the one that changes lives. And Lord, we thank you that we have this opportunity to hear about the work in Papua New Guinea and meet the Miller family. Thank you for how you have prepared them for this work. And Lord, I ask you to bless our time together. And as we worship you today, as well throughout this morning, Lord, may you be exalted among us. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. So I just wanted to give a little history of our involvement with the work in Papua New Guinea. In 2014, an organization called Finistere Vision at the time sent three families out to Papua New Guinea to begin a work in the Finistere Mountains in the village of Mawarororo. I said that right, didn't I? That's always a debated way to spell it and say it, but moraro, we'll say. And to the Doe people. And at that time, two families went into the village in about 2016, 2015, 2016. the Can family and the Dodd family. And we as a church began supporting the Dodd family in 2016 after they had gone into the village. And the Lord had plans for them that nobody expected and they moved out of the village towards the end of 2016 and did not return. And so at that time in 2016, God was preparing the Mitchell family to go to Papua New Guinea and we were able to connect with them before they went to Papua New Guinea to join the Kan family in the village there. And we had opportunity to meet them here before they went. And through various circumstances in their lives, God has called them to a different ministry back in their homeland in South Africa. And so, and that was in 2023. And just, and now we hear this, A newsletter post from Finisterre that was posted in January 31st of this year. It said, Zach and Cassidy Kahn, those who are in the village. have been persevering without teammates in their village for a long time. But by God's grace, they won't have to do that much longer. Josh and Autumn Miller served in Papua New Guinea previously as missionaries for a brief time. This gives them a wonderful advantage when it comes to language and culture acquisitions since they are already familiar both with Papua New Guinea culture as well as the trade language. Lord willing, they are planning to head out to join the Kans in the village of Mararo in the spring or summer of 2025. Will you pray with us for the approved paperwork and adequate support levels so they may so they would be able to join the cans as soon as possible. And we have been praying for that. And today we have the millers with us to share as they are on their way to Papua New Guinea. So I want to introduce Josh and Autumn Miller and their son, Rowan, who was just born in November. So we're glad to have you here and come and share with us. Thank you. Well, good morning, everyone. Switch sides there. We're excited to be here with all of you. It's a unique reality for us to have a church that's already started supporting us, and then we come and share with you what all is going on. That's the first time for us, I believe, but I would say it made it more exciting to get here and get to see the faces of the people that are supporting us, that are praying for us, put some faces to names as well, a few names we've heard already from this body of believers. And so thank you for having us, and we're getting really excited about this opportunity to share with you. We also acknowledge, per the little history Gary just walked all of us through together, that you're not a, I'm going to say, ignorant church of this particular work that's going on. You've been a part of it for an extended period of time. So I'm expecting some of what we'll share will be information that you're like, oh yeah, I've heard that before. But there might be some things as well that for some individuals that maybe haven't been aware of the ministry there that it'll be new to them. So it'll be a little bit of a blend, I'm sure, but we're looking forward to sharing with all of you a variety of things. One, a little bit about us, since you haven't gotten to know us yet. A little bit about the process of reaching an unreached people group. Walk through a little bit of our first two and a half years of time we had in Papua New Guinea already. Talk also about the uniqueness of our role stepping into Maui, that location, it's hard to pronounce, and so on. So a little bit about us, first of all, as you heard our names, Josh and Autumn Miller, we're both originally from Ohio. Now, not in the same area of Ohio, different areas, but the Lord ordained that we got to know each other better in missionary training school. So we both went as singles to missionary training school. We were wanting to go to the mission field and thought we were just going to go as singles. But during that time there, the Lord brought us together and we ended up getting married right after graduating missionary training school. and then went through the process of, for me, ordination and then support raising. Back in the beginning of 2020, we headed off then to Papua New Guinea. So we do have experience there already and looking forward to get back. Some about Papua New Guinea and its geography, its location, for some of you may not know, I like this because it helps people locate where it's at on the globe. It's very common for people to mix up Papua New Guinea with Guyana, South America, or Guinea, Africa. So get to know where it's at if you're like me and you got that confused before. Right above Australia, this specific region that the mission we're part of focuses in on, you can see the topography there, the mountainous areas, and then the lower areas, is the Finistere Mountains. That's really where the name comes from for Finistere. It means literally the ends of the earth. And believe me, it feels a little bit like the ends of the earth sometimes when you get up in those mountains. Very steep. You can see those mountains go right up to the water so sometimes when we travel back and forth before we're on the Pacific Ocean and you're going from sea level up to 13, 14,000 feet inside of 30 miles. It's cranking. So it gets very steep in those areas. Mountains, variety of appearance. You see the tropical jungle look to it. Very steep and rugged in different areas. That road is not a common sight in the Finisterre Mountains for the most part. It's just helicopter only getting in there. This is a picture we took up in those mountains. That's a garden actually. I practically stepped on people's garden food, you know, crunched it, because I didn't know what I was seeing. But after a while, your eyes start developing, realizing, oh, this is a garden. As you saw on the previous map, PNG is a lot of coastal area. There's a lot of islands. It's an island nation as a whole. Half of the main island belongs to Indonesia. Half of it belongs to Papua New Guinea. So it gets a little confusing sometimes when people say, oh, they were at Guinea, or New Guinea. I'm like, Indonesia or Papua New Guinea, because there can be confusion there. A lot of coastal area like this you'd see, a lot of coral reefs, gorgeous sea life at times when you find those right areas. All right, so obviously it's fun seeing all the pictures of the geography and what Papua New Guinea looks like, but the people are really the reason for why we're going there. So I wanted to share with you a little bit about the people of Papua New Guinea. The country of Papua New Guinea is roughly the size of the state of California, and there are approximately 11 million people who live in Papua New Guinea. Now, the vast majority of those people live in extremely remote areas. And I realize, you use a word like remote, that can mean a wide range of things to people. So we're talking, for the most part, it's areas where there's no roads. So we can access them either by helicopter, or for the nationals who live there, it's a matter of hiking in and out. and if there's rivers, days of taking a boat or canoe ride. So extremely remote, there's really no infrastructure, no formalized education that's available, medical care, any of those things. Most of these people live day-to-day by just farming and gardening, so they're subsistence farmers. And one of the really unique things specifically about Papua New Guinea that relates to the mission work that we go to do is that it is the most linguistically diverse country in the entire world. So there are over 830 distinct languages just in the one country, and then a number of dialects inside of those languages. So you've probably heard of other missionaries. A lot of times we'll tell people we're going to Papua New Guinea, oh, I know missionaries who went there. Well, there's a huge need because there's so many different languages. And most missionaries only manage to work in, learn one of those languages, maybe two if they're super gifted, and work in one of those during their lifetime. So when we talk about all of those people groups, there's a couple of terms that we'll use pretty frequently. One of them is talking about an unreached people group. And so we like to define these terms. So an unreached people group is a people group who currently have no access to the gospel in their heart language. That means there are no missionaries who have ever gone to this people group and shared the gospel. There's no Bible teaching churches. They don't have a Bible translation in their language. So they literally have no access to the truth in their language. And there are still over 1,500 people groups around the world who would fall into that category of being an unreached people group. But there's another term, and this one's probably less familiar, some of you may have heard it, but it's super applicable specifically to Papua New Guinea and the work that we're going to be doing in DOE, and that is a misreached people group. So a misreached people group is a people group, again, with their own distinct language and culture, but there has been some attempt at evangelism. And typically what this has looked like, especially in Papua New Guinea, is short-term evangelistic efforts, often by individuals with very well-meaning intentions, but often a fairly different theological mindset or background than what we all would have, but who have gone in and have wanted to say, hey, let's, We want to go in and share truth and we want to do it as quickly as possible. And so often what they've done is they haven't taken the time to learn the heart language of the people, and so they'll do short-term evangelism in people's second or third language. And what has happened a lot in Papua New Guinea is we see syncretism, which is Basically a word, it means mixing. So it's a mixing of the beliefs that the people already have, which is animism. It's a mindset where they believe in their worldview that there are spirits behind basically everything in their world. Every animate object, so animals and things that move, and also inanimate, so there can be spirits, trees and water and all these things that they have to find ways to please. And they mix that belief with certain parts or words of Christianity that they may have heard through these short term evangelism efforts. And it has created a lot of confusion because you'll have people who've heard the name of Jesus and who know a few symbols of Christianity, but really don't have any understanding of the gospel or understand what truth is. and in Papua New Guinea there are still dozens and probably hundreds, it's always interesting when you're trying to exactly qualify, but dozens if not hundreds of unreached people groups and there are many many more who would fall into this category of misreached people groups. So we're going to show you guys a short video now, and it addresses one of the questions that we hear pretty frequently when we tell unbelievers about the work that we're going to do. But it's been interesting. We started showing this in a couple different churches, and we've heard a lot of feedback, even from believers who have said, you know, I told someone, our church is supporting missionaries who do this. I didn't quite know how to respond to somebody's questions. And so this video specifically addresses the question of, what do you do when somebody says, well, aren't those people living in this jungle paradise and they're happy the way they are? Somebody who comes to us and says, leave them alone. They're better off the way they are. They're living, you know, they're in the jungle, this euphoria of some sort, you know, what they imagine. Anybody who says that has never ever stepped foot in this type of a situation, in this type of a setting here. You certainly can't base it on national geographic pictures and where people are laughing and because you don't really know what they're thinking or what their lifestyle is really like until you're actually living among them. If it was just a matter of health alone. it would have been worth it. But you start putting in the factor of their spiritual destiny and their worldview and the fear that they lived in, and you start adding all that factor into it, there's just no comparison. I'm a white person, wouldn't even be able to probably even imagine somebody saying that to them. It would just blow their minds, I'm sure. I would say, what? Who told you that talk? We should have compassion on them. They live in the darkness. Let them have the opportunity to live in the light. There's no one here in the Moi that wishes that they would have been left alone. They are so thankful to be brought out of that darkness that they were living in and to know God. Even our most immature believer at this point in the game lives without that fear of evil spirits. And it's just totally changed the way they look at the world around them. Let me tell you about how we used to live, what it was like before the missionaries came. We used to be incredibly afraid of the evil spirits. We learned to be afraid of them, from our fathers and mothers, as it was passed down from their mothers and fathers. You may say, what's so scary about the spirits? Let me tell you, we were told they can kill you. They could kill us and eat us. That's why we were afraid. That's the way it was. We were constantly in fear, because at that time, we were under the authority of Satan. So when we were afraid, we'd often cut ourselves. Whenever a centipede would bite us, we'd cut ourselves. I used to do the same exact thing. We wouldn't just be cutting ourselves, we would also be worshipping the spirits. Why would you do that?" he'd ask. It was because we were incredibly afraid. Fear absolutely reigned over us, and Satan also ruled over us. Like this here, and like this here and here. See, that's where I had cut myself. That's all because of fear. I would cut myself because I was afraid. You can't fathom how bad it was. We were God's enemies and at war with Him. We were in complete darkness. Now in contrast to that, after we've believed we are no longer under the bondage, that came with the many taboos we held to, and the many do's and don'ts we held to. Now after, believe in Jesus for set free. The way we lived before is entirely different than the way we live now. Now I understand that here on this earth, God gives us both joy and suffering. One day, when Jesus leads us to heaven, we will be in a place of perfect peace and rest. I will live like that in the future. That is what I hold to. So that's the way I used to live, but now I am no longer afraid. Jesus has taken away the overwhelming fear I used to have. Now, my life is different compared to what it used to be like. The death he died for me, and his burial also. It was because my sins were placed on Jesus. The day I put my trust in Jesus, all those things, my overwhelming fear and Satan's rule over me were defeated. God had pardoned me. I was no longer separated from the Creator. I could now communicate with Him and be His friend. Well, I hope that was a blessing to all of you. I know I enjoy just listening to the testimonies of those people who have been set free from the penalty of sin, first of all, because they put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ alone, and having freedom from that level of fear that they lived in from day to day. Ultimately, it's worth it, if nothing else, just to see individuals saved from turning apart from God. But beyond that, just the freedom from fear that they live with is incredible. I've talked with some of the individuals in the Finisterra Mountains and hearing them speak about how they used to live and the freedom that came through Christ. And these individuals, This particular video is a little more special to us because some of our teachers in missionary training schools served in the Moy tribe. And so we heard a lot of first-hand accounts from missionaries about these individuals and the kind of level of fear they lived in. And the closest thing that I can describe it to for us is imagining, like, take your biggest fear, whether it's public speaking or of heights or, I don't know, maybe sharks or something like that. horrifically afraid of sharks any time you're in the water, in the ocean. Take that and then think about dealing with that level of fear throughout every day of your life. That's the closest example I can get to from what I've heard from individuals of the level of fear they dealt with on a regular basis. And then beyond that, there's even just the blessing like Steve mentioned in the video. Even if it was just the health benefits alone, it would have been worth it. Because they're not happy the way they are. The health benefits, we're not even talking about just what medical stuff the missionaries bring. The health benefits just from believing in a standard of truth, such as the word of God and how that can actually bleed over into areas of just their physical health as well, which maybe we can get into a little bit later in some time of Q&A. But it's amazing how much freedom can come through the gospel on so many different levels. So I hope that was a blessing to all of you. Now in terms of the goal, what we're hoping to do in terms of reaching an unreached people group, the goal would be to bring the gospel and the word of God to a people group who have not had access to it before in their heart language to see souls won, believers discipled, and a mature church planted. Now that sounds great, but there's a lot of different steps in the process. This is our first time, by the way, to do this presentation with our son also. So this is a learning experience for us. All right. So first step would be language and culture learning. It's a needed part of the process. As Auden was explaining earlier with the misreached element, a lot of times these things haven't been properly addressed. in reaching people, you know, desiring to do it quickly, rapidly, but stepping over these parts a little too quickly, and then people being misreached, not truly understanding, because they weren't hearing it in the language that they really think in, they can really process, really comprehend in, and then not understanding the cultural elements and what they believe in the background that will inform how they interpret what you're saying to them. One quick example of that is a time I was teaching in, close to a town, in Papua New Guinea, and as I'm asking questions, understanding what their belief structure was before, and with some help of another missionary, identifying the fact that any time I said the term faith, or belief, it's by faith alone that person is saved, what they heard was, they understood faith to mean the totality of Christianity. So, anything that would be Christian in their minds. So it's going to church, being baptized, doing communion, being a good person, those kind of things. That's what Christianity was in their minds. So when they heard you say it's by faith alone, they basically meant, in their minds, by good works alone. The very opposite thing that I always wanted to communicate. And you need to understand those things, how they think, what they believe a different word means, even, before you can really communicate. Otherwise, you can do the exact opposite thing of what you're wanting to do. And that's often what's happened with these misreach categories. So this part's an important step to take time for. Secondly, there's creating a written language, which really is just laying the foundation for these next ones of creating a written language to be able then to teach them to read and to write in their language for the purpose of getting to the next, which is translating the Bible into their language. You want them to be able to not only have the word of God, but then be able to function with it, to be able to read it, to be able to understand it, to be able to study it, to meditate on those things so they can have that transformative effect on their lives. And they're not just taking the missionary's word for it. These cultures have been cultures of oral tradition, just passing on these ideas, these traditions for so long. It could be easy to do that, but then what happens When time goes on, that starts getting distorted. The message gets changed. They twist it up with other beliefs and whatnot. But when you have a standard of truth, the Word of God that they're holding in their hands, and they can go back and check it and say, no, this is what it says. And it's not giving the missionary the authority, but it's giving God the authority. And it means something, because it's not just the authority of, oh, these spirits in this particular region of there. No, this was the person who had this word of God passed on to us is God himself, the creator of the universe. And he has authority over those in America, and those in South America, and those in Papua New Guinea, and every area, and over the spiritual realm. And that means something to them. So you definitely want to take the time to lay those other foundations to be able to get to the translation part so they can have that tool in their hands. What comes after that though is teaching chronologically through the Bible. Now when I say these in a particular order, most of the time there's different elements that are corresponding with each other, but we're just... You can't cover them all at once. So oftentimes, translation has started, and this step of teaching chronologically through the Bible is going on, too. But it takes a long time to finish the translation process, for sure. But teaching chronologically through the Bible, in my opinion, is essential in this kind of setting when people don't have any biblical framework. And why that's important is when you get to the gospel message, if you just jump there, it's like, well, what sin? And do I have that? And who's Jesus? And why is he important? And why does that matter for me? And what on earth is a substitutionary death? And on it goes. But if you started in Genesis and you teach through the Bible, not necessarily covering every last portion, but knowing the culture, knowing their belief system and addressing that systematically as you go through the Word of God to the point you get to the cross, all of a sudden, they're not only understanding those things, but they're going, yeah, I'm a sinner. I have that in my life. I have no hope. And I need a substitute. Otherwise, I'm condemned. And then when they hear about Christ and what he did on the cross, it's like, that's my hope right there. And it can click. But apart from that, it's a jumble of what is going on and who is this and why does it matter? But teaching through the Bible is a very helpful part for those who have no framework, for sure. After that, there is disciple and training of pastors, church leaders, and literacy teachers. You really want to take the work and pass it on to them whenever possible so they can continue on the work for themselves. And that's really pushing on to the next one, which is to see them prepare to repeat the process. To see them then within to see them within their culture, take the gospel from their village and go to other villages within their people group. So right now, yes, our teammates are in Maui, one particular village within the DOE people group. But that doesn't mean that all the other villages are being reached right now. The hope, though, is to see a mature church planted there and then have people from there going out within their people group and seeing churches planted throughout the entirety of the Doha language. But that takes some time, and it's a bit of a process, but it's a needed one to do. Now this was the goal that we had of going through this process with an unreached people group back in 2020 when we arrived in Papua New Guinea for the first time. We're hoping to get there and select a people group, learn the language, the culture on the national level before we ever moved in to learn the tribal language. But the Lord had other plans. After doing the language learning, and the culture learning, and picking a tribe to move into called the Pano people, and starting house building, doing all those things, the Lord ordained that we lost our teammates, and we were told by leadership we need other teammates to be able to continue on. And so at that time we ended up having to wrap up our ministry at the time in Papua New Guinea, but the Lord provided a new opportunity for us through the Doe People Group, and specifically continuing on the work that the cans are there doing right now, and teaming up with them to, I'm going to say, fill the space that the Mitchells left open. And we're excited to be able to do that. Zach and Cass have been serving in Papua New Guinea, I think, on and off with furloughs included, somewhere probably around 10 years, give or take. And it's been a long, long process, as Gary outlined, just the different struggles, loss of teammates, and the journey that has been very laborious and challenging. But the work continues on. And they're saying they needed help. They're asking for assistance to continue on in that work. We're willing and we're able. They do have young believers there, to the best of their knowledge. They had gotten through the chronological teaching before the houses collapsed, if you remember hearing about that. Their house, the Mitchell's house, collapsed in an earthquake. But they had young believers, and then there was a time where they were gone, and there was these young, immature believers just, they're on their own. But now the Cairns have rebuilt their house, they're back in the tribe, serving there faithfully, teaching regularly, helping see those individuals grow and mature. And the Bible is being translated, and there is progress on so many fronts in that regard, but there's still a lot of work ahead of them. And we're uniquely equipped to step in and help them on a quicker timetable than average, because we had already gone through theological training. We had gone through missionary training already. We had moved over there already before and learned the culture, learned the language. And an answer to prayer is this, that after we lost our former teammates, my wife and I had been praying, like, Lord, you know, it'd be nice if we team up with people in the future, if we got a chance to live in close proximity together before ever teaming up together. That would be a huge blessing. We'd really like to do that. Well, during that time of right after the earthquake, the Kans and the Mitchell family were out on the mission base in town. And that's where we were at, wrapping up our ministry over there. And so we got to live in close proximity with adjoined apartments with the Kans family, and the Mitchells close by right there for about five, six months. And so several months later, after we got back to the States, got resettled, and we got contacted asking about teaming up with the Kans family, We're like, well, God answered that prayer before we ever even knew it was gonna be a prayer to ask. Because we'd already gotten the opportunity to be there with them in close proximity. And when we reflect on that time with the Cairns and the Mitchells, we really reflect on it. It was such a sweet time to have that fellowship amongst believers on that mission base. We were all going through difficult things, collapsing houses in a couple, in both their cases and for us. what we believed to be the closing down of ministry in Papua New Guinea for us, and didn't know if it was gonna reopen or not. It was just this big, life-altering stage, difficult stage, and yet there was still the sweetness and the common bond we have in Christ amongst those three families, and got to really know all of them well, and we really appreciate what the Mitchells had done over there, and working in the DOE people group. And we understand how it's come about that they believe the best thing was to move on to a different ministry now. And we're also grateful how the Lord ordained it to allow us to be in a position to be able to step into that role and continue on the work also. And actually, I think I was talking with one of the pastors here recently about the fact that it's really obvious that through us all that God is the only one that's getting the credit. And that's really what our focus should be. As Romans 11, 36 talks about, to him be the glory forever. Amen. When you look at the timeline of reaching the Doe People group, the person who started Finisterre is Joey Tartaglia, and he's no longer with Finisterre, but he started the ministry. Then you see those families originally go over into Papua New Guinea to reach the Doe People, and Matt Dodd, I believe, was one of the ones that was more spearheading that team, and the Lord then took him off the scene. But then the Cairns kept going, and then God provided the Mitchells, And then through the Mitchells, Amelia Brink came along too, who is still from South Africa, helping with translation work, because she does very well with languages, and is continuing that on. But now the Mitchells aren't able to be there, but then the Lord's pulling us in the process. And it's so obvious that no one person can get the credit for this ministry. It goes to God and God alone for how he continues to provide an avenue to see those who are his in that tribe reached with the gospel. And we know that it's God's heart to have people from every tribe, tongue, and nation called by His name. When we look in Revelation chapter 7 verse 9 where it says there will be people from every tribe, tongue, and nation around the throne. glorifying him. That's God's plan, is to do that. And he's going to accomplish it. I shouldn't be surprised by seeing how all these different moving parts have been coming together despite the odds, despite the complications, despite the hurdles such as houses collapsing and teammates passing away and others not able to continue on and so on, because Matthew 16, 18 says that Jesus, God will build his church. He's the one that's doing it. He's the one that's gonna get the credit. not us, our job is to be faithful, to serve him wherever he has us, to continue on glorifying his name since that's what we exist for. Now for us, what is it gonna look like when we get there? It's gonna be unique. The process that we just walked through a minute ago was one that, and here I'm just realizing I'm a little behind on my slides, my apologies. My wife is normally the one that does it. And I fell behind. I'm gonna take a step back moment. This is our first time popping and getting, learning culture and language, taking time to do it by working with people, doing things with them, building houses, like in the case I was doing there, learning the different terms, learning the national language of Turkmenistan hands on. After they pass you something for the 20th time as you're working on it, and they refer to it by name, it starts sticking, you know, and you're using that object, and it just really helps you learn as you're doing. And we'll be doing the same thing in the DOE people group as well, just spending time with them. Autumn was sitting down with these ladies here as they were doing cooking and just learning what they refer to different things. And it's a good way to build relationship and to learn the culture and to learn language simultaneously. And so we'll be doing this in the DOE people as well. This was the surveys we were doing in the Pano people. which the Lord closed that ministry down for the time being, but we're praying that the Lord will see them reached with the gospel as well. They said we ended up having to wrap that up, but then through that, the Lord has provided for the Kahn family, right here, Zach and Cass. And this is Mayorero, the Doe people. It is a helicopter-only location. Everything's in by helicopter or by hiking up from the coast. And just a short video, see if it comes up here, of a helicopter flying in. It's the last part of the trip through the mountains. And you will see the village just about in the middle screen right now on that little ridge. Right there. That's sped up, yeah. Yep, otherwise you'd be here a while. Helicopters are fast, but not that fast. Yeah, and there's the little ridge line. There's more village up the mountain that you can't see, and then some down the slope as well. So, getting back to the uniqueness, again, of us stepping into the ministry at this time. The process that we just walked through, those different stages, we're gonna be dropping in the middle of. Because the ministry has been going on for an extended period of time already, So many of those different steps have been either accomplished or in process. And the canned family, they're already fluent in the language, and we are not in the dough language, and so we're going to be stepping into that and kind of lagging behind, but the uniqueness of the situation is we're not going to be held back by that very much. Typically it would be years before we learn the language, before we can really get to ministry. But because of the fact that Zach is already fluent, is already preaching regularly in the Doe language, you already have believers, it's going to enable us to, I'm going to say, come alongside quickly as we work to learn language and culture. in more of a supportive role, because Zach can preach the word of God in the Doe language. They will be able to get it, understand it on a deeper level, because it's their heart language, and then I'll be able to have the English version that Zach had already put together, see what he taught on, turn around using Tok Pisin, that I'm already fluent in, and then come alongside and do more discipleship and support work on the side. Because they've already heard it and digested it in their heart language so that they're getting it. Being able to start in doing discipleship stuff on the side as I'm learning their language as well. To be, Lord willing, able to do greater depth of ministry down the road. But instead of waiting years to get to that point, we believe that we'll be able to do more of a support role even early on in that ministry. Also planning to take over as many things as we can for the Cans to free Zach up for being the primary preacher and also the person who's the primary translator because he's already fluent in the language. So anything else we can take off their plates, we're gonna do if at all possible, such as the literacy program. Teaching people how to read and write, but also equipping and training people to become teachers, to teach others how to read and write in their heart language. Because we don't wanna just hand them God's word and they treat it like it's some kind of amulet or good luck charm. We want them to study and be able to digest it and learn from it and to have the transformative effect on their lives. That's what we want to see happen. And not for just to sit on a shelf because they can't read it. That won't do them any good. But for them to be able to understand, comprehend, and have that literacy spread into other areas as well so that others too in other villages could be able to get a hold of God's word as Zach does translation work and be able to have that effect on their lives. There'll be other areas such as just maintenance type things, doing it for Zach if at all possible. There'll be other, I'm going to say, communal events and things that we end up dealing with on a regular basis that we can take off of their plates again so you can focus in on that. Different office type work, just the nuts and the bolts of what you have to deal with. We often talk, just as an example, about what you and I take for granted, the simplicity of cooking a meal. We have to make a meal plan for months to get all our food flown in by helicopter because it'll be months before we get that again. So we have to make the meal plan, figure out how much flour, how much sugar, how much everything we need for those months. Then we have to have it listed, sent off to a supply buyer who will buy it for us in town. We have to have the weights listed because we have to have a limited amount of space and weight that a chopper can handle. And all of a sudden, your life just around cooking meals is more complicated and takes more effort. And that's crossed the board then in each area there. It's just a lot more complicated and difficult and slows things down. So as much as stuff we can do to free them up because they're already fluent, that's gonna be our initial goal. And then as we can, stepping more and more into ministry roles, teaching roles, discipleship roles, as time goes on, as we become more fluent in the language, and understanding the culture and building those relationships and getting settled. So that's some of the uniqueness that we're gonna be stepping into, but really hoping to see the church get on a good footing in the next five, six years or so. Just keeping in mind the Cannes families, oldest two children, they have four children, their oldest two boys, are gonna be getting to a point where they have to transition back to the States. And because they're close enough in age, if the Cannes come back and are back here for a year or so helping the first one get adjusted, then it's also gonna be time for the second one, too. And so they're probably gonna be out of the village there for an extended period of time, and they're hoping to see the church be as established as possible before that season comes up. Now, they still wanna return after that to continue on with the translation work, because it's a long process, but that's part of what's in the back of all of our minds, is seeing the church established as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and matured as much as they can be in that period of time before there's a phase where they're stepping out. So that's a little bit of what this next period of time could look like for us. And we really appreciate your prayers as we're right now on our way to Papua New Guinea. We came from Orlando, Florida, flew from there directly here the other night. And then when we leave here, we'll be hopping our way on over to Papua New Guinea. So it'll be a flight leaving from here to Hawaii, to Sydney, Australia, over to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, and then into Medang. We'll be there for several weeks. And then I'll be moving into house building, working on the structure we'll have up in the village, which that's everything in and out by helicopter. And I'll be gone from my wife and son for periods of time on and off as we do the house building so that way I can move them both in with us. We appreciate your prayers for our travel, that our son Rowan does well in traveling. Appreciate the prayers of safety, that we get settled quickly in Medang. Praying that the house building process goes smoothly, that everyone is safe. There isn't injuries that we're able to balance the pressures of wanting to move as fast as possible for the sake of ministry and being able to be reunited in the village, but also not wanting to do it so fast that I'm just gone for, let's say, months on end away from my wife and son either. So just trying to walk that tension and appreciate your prayers as we try to walk that balance and have wisdom from the Lord and what's the best way to go about that. That brings what I had for all of you to a close right now, but I would love to open things up for a little bit of Q&A time to just answer anyone's questions they might have. My wife's going to be joining us again, so hopefully she can assist in that process. I had a question back there. Yeah, how do you do real-time communication? Real-time communication, there is satellite internet up in the village already. with the cans so they have a way to communicate with us and us with them. And if they have any emergencies or supplies that need to be ordered. And so that's the means that we'll be using up there to communicate back to people here, updating our blogs and so on. And we generally have a backup inReach GPS in case the satellite would go down where we can text via satellite for emergencies to call in a chopper or something if we needed a medical evacuation. Does that answer the question? Yeah? OK. The language you are fluent in, is it a secondary language, tertiary language for the community of people? Yeah, go ahead. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. So, Turkfusin is the national language. So, most of the people groups, there are some people who know it. It doesn't mean that everybody does. A lot of times there'll be people in the older generation who may not be as familiar, but just as globalization happens, it affects even really remote places like Doh. So, there will be a number of people in Doh who speak Turkfusin. It's not the language they use to speak to each other. So they don't typically use it necessarily in everyday life, but they know it. I noticed when we were going through the pictures that they had a Bible that it looked like it was just the Psalms. Where are they in as far as translation work? with the rest of the Bible. So that picture specifically wasn't from the Doe people. So some of those pictures, they're from different people groups, different mission work in Papua New Guinea. But my question is, how far along in the entire translation process are they? It's pretty early on, there's several books they have completed. Ephesians is completed, Mark is well on his way, and some others. But it's still early enough on. Do you work with any other organizations in that translation work, like Wycliffe or anything like that? So in terms of assistance, there are different people that have provided, I'm going to say, different training courses and such. Both the Cans and us have gone through training already, but there's oftentimes, like on the mission field of Papua New Guinea, different organizations, whether it be Wycliffe, ASILE, they work together, or New Tribes, they'll do different courses where there'll be professionals that'll come in and do different... It's like consultant checks. Consultant training and different things as well with the missionaries or come in and assisting you double-checking the translations that they're working on just to have people that are professionals in different spheres speaking into the process. So yeah, they do cooperate together. Yeah? How many of the 800-plus people groups in Papua New Guinea are still unreached or misreached? What's the moment in time when the Doe people will be considered to be reached instead of unreached or misreached? Good question. The second part, I mean, technically, so we would consider them reached in the sense of they have heard the gospel now in their language, and there are some believers there. There's obviously the end goal of this is to see a church planted, and that has not happened. There's not maturity. There's a lot more disableship and everything. But yeah, from the definition that we give of, like, this is what an unreached people group is, the dough people have currently heard. So now it's hoping to put everything in place for that to continue, that it's not two generations from now, there's no one who knows this or it hasn't been passed on, there's no scripture and all of that. In terms of the exact numbers, You can Google and you can get answers from a bunch of different organizations, and they all have slightly different ways of classifying. So that's why when I said, I'm like, there's anywhere from still dozens to hundreds, depending on exactly how you're looking at it. Because some people would count if someone went in and did a short-term mission effort, and they have been technically from the gospel as that people group reached. So to get numbers, To get numbers on it, it's pretty hard to get accurate ones. I can speak to when we were doing surveys in the Pano people, some would classify them as reached, similarly to the Do people, but you get there and you start asking questions, and it was obvious. They were not believers, they did not understand it, they were still extremely lost in their paganism and their fear and their belief in the spirit realm. It was just overwhelmingly obvious. But yet there would be some that would classify them that way. So apart from, If I was going to give a solid answer, apart from me doing a visit to each one of those people groups, it'd be a hard one to actually give a number. But it's a good question. I just don't know that I'm equipped to answer it. Yeah. I know the degree is very different, almost analogous to trying to pin down how many good churches are in Sacramento, where it's like, there's degrees, right? But recognizing that there's places with nothing, and there's places where there's some semblance of something Christian, but it's not a place where someone can be healthy. But it's really hard to quantify, because there's degrees. For us, our desire would be for the Doe people to see them functioning with mature enough believers that have risen to the point of being pastors and elders. You have deacons, they're regularly assembling together for worship, they're equipping others, they have the word of God in their language, and they're then carrying out that process of passing it on to other villages within their people group. At whatever point that's happening, it's more of a, all right. They're a reach. They're functioning. They're doing what they need to do. They're taking part in their role of the Great Commission. And then I'd be like, all right, it's complete. Right now, it's in progress. But technically, there are believers there to the best of our knowledge now. Yes? I have a few parts of my question. First of all, how many people are in your village here? How many of them are believers? And is there a tendency for it to kind of catch on in a whole family group? Yeah, so they are very communal that is a thing in terms of The families, I'm going to say they're catching on. I'm not aware of that being an obvious reality yet. Talking with the cans, I have not been serving there yet. We're in a process of getting there to be able to answer those in an authoritative sense. But my impression from conversation has been it's not gotten to that extent yet in terms of like a most catching kind of a thing. In terms of the numbers of the population, My understanding is somewhere around 500. It's always in that particular village area It's always a little bit interesting again where you draw lines because there'll be hamlets and little segments of this pocket of houses over here in this pocket in that pocket and Are we including them? Are we not including them, you know in terms of trying to get good numbers, but somewhere in that ballpark for that particular village Are there ever conflicts or tensions with other missionary groups that are trying to reach the same ethnic or linguistic group? I'm thinking specifically, if you have two people in the same language group and then there are two different translations that are coming out, are there going to be problems with that? In terms of that kind of situation, when possible, different mission organizations try to be I'm going to say initially, there's some politics involved, initially respectful of others. And if you're having to pick between going to this group here that has nothing and this one over here that at least has something kind of going on, even though it may not be as good, generally speaking, the different mission organizations will angle towards the one that has nothing at all going on. and then transition to others. But there is some overlap at times. There is, again, going back to the whole misreached category. That is a thing that does happen at times. Yes? On that note, can you remind us, I think I remember this from the Mitchells, but there was a Lutheran kind of layer of influence in Marrero, but there's not still a guy there, is there, or is there? There is. There is, I'm going to say, a Lutheran veneer, a presence there. The people I was speaking of that I've had the opportunity of teaching in a village close to town, Medang, they also had a veneer of, I'm going to say, Lutheranism. But when I say veneer, I mean it literally, just that surface layer appearance. They'll come together, they'll be observing different things, but you start digging down and they really don't understand the gospel. It's very work-focused, it's still very animistic, very spirit-focused, very pleasing the spirit realm to be happy, healthy, wealthy, all that kind of thing. And it's not the real gospel. And that's definitely an element there as well going on. So it's a layer of complication that you have to navigate. I can speak to the Ma tribe, we've spent some time in that tribe as well, and they're a tribe that has been reached for the gospel, they do have a mature church, functioning elders, and some of those elders went on survey trips with us into the Pano people, which was a real blessing to have local pastors from Papua New Guinea who were from a tribe that had been unreached and went with us into the Pano people, And they were with us, and they were seeing the veneer of Lutheranism there as well, in this misreached tribe of the Pono people, and they're going, this was us. This was us. They need the gospel. And for them, they, they're, trying to think how I should put this. They just, they kept following the word of God, and eventually they're just like, well, Lutheran or no Lutheran, this is what I believe. You know, they're just like, I'm a Christian, and the word of God is my standard of truth. And now there's this very mature church established there. And I wanna be clear, when I throw the term Lutheranism on there, I'm not downing Luther in particular, even if you go back all the way there. If they were, There are groups over there that they say Lutheran, but they don't even believe the things that Luther believed. You start talking about Luther and what he believed, and it's like, oh, they're surprised. Because again, it's just taking little bits and pieces and just attaching it with what they believed before. So that's definitely a unique element, for sure. Yes? I mean, I'm just curious of the process. Like, do you guys use, like, English letters? Say, okay, let's just sound this out. Like, you know, how do they even go about that process? Yeah, so it's very interesting. In our training, we went through phonetics, phonemics, more of an investigative type of grammar training. So instead of just prescriptive, like our classes, you go to English class in high school or something, where it's more like, this is the way it is. It's more of like, this is how you figure out the way it is. And so with those different training courses and different translation courses we've gone through, just kind of giving a brief idea of what this looks like. When you have a tribe that doesn't have a written language, initially you have to learn the language, so you move in, you figure out the language. Once you've learned it, generally speaking, you take the alphabet of the host country they're in. So in case of Papua New Guinea, they use English characters for the language of Tok Pisin. And so we're not having to use unique characters or anything like that. We're using English letters for that. Because then if they move out of their tribe, if they go somewhere else, it's already familiar to them. It's not some weird, wacky, new thing. It's already semi-normal to them. So you generally do that. But then you also have to go through the process of picking what letters go with what sounds. So identifying which ones would be the closest representations of those, but then stepping beyond that and identifying what sounds are phonemic or not. So when I say phonemic, I'm meaning what sounds carry meaning. You and I put in all kinds of letters just in English, or sounds that don't carry meaning, that might in a different language. So there's this whole thing called a glottal stop, for example, the uh. When you and I say apple, pretty much any word we have a vowel on the front end, we put a glottal stop on the front of it, uh, apple. Some languages, the uh, if you put the uh on the front of it, it would mean one thing. If you took the uh off the front of it, it would mean another thing. If you and I put another extra letter in front of apple, we'd all be like, what on earth? This doesn't make sense. It would feel weird to us. Why is it there? It feels confusing. And it would be the same for them if we started adding in characters for different sounds that don't actually change the meaning. It'll be harder for them to learn the language in terms of reading it. But if we identify, first off, what sounds carry meaning or don't, then we remove all the extra letters that are unnecessary. And so then they just have the pure, all right, this sound has meaning, this one doesn't, and then teach them those, what sounds go with what characters, and then move on to the next phase of helping them sound things out and read. So that's kind of the quick process, but there's a lot more in-depth ways going, a lot of charts you end up doing and figuring out those different stages. I think I, Gary did you have a question? Yeah, so that village is about 500 throughout the remote areas. Is that a typical size village or they range 1500 to 50 or? Yeah, I don't have a great idea for that particular area. Again, haven't moved there yet. I would say across the board, unless you're close to towns, I would say that's probably on the larger end from my experience. When you're looking at the elements of having regions that can sustain them, gardens around a particular area for them because they're just subsistence farmers, water sources, enough bamboo to build structures and such, you get to a certain size and it's harder to sustain that with the natural resources around them. So again, that's just from my exposure going to different tribes of what I've observed, that would be my guess. But closer you get to towns, the more that's a non-issue. And so then there you have different groups that are a lot larger. But when we're talking remoter areas, I would say it's probably on the smaller end for the regions I've been to. We feel like we're always given a little bit of a disclaimer when you have 830 different tribes with different belief structures and different languages, different cultural things, different circumstances. Maybe there's a large river with a lot of fish in it. That's a resource that can sustain a larger population. So every time I'm expressing something, it's like, based on the places I've been, this is what I've seen. But there could be other areas where it'd be different because there's such diversity, for sure. Zach, I think you had a question. Yeah, yeah, I'm just curious. I know you guys are on your way there right now. Are you packing, like, just for a long vacation, and then when the house is built, more comes? Or is it everything goes with you now, you leave stuff behind? It's a combination. There's a lot of things that are just stored here. We've chosen to store some stuff just because any time you come back for a visit, you never know what your circumstances are going to be, and you don't want to sell everything and repurchase everything every time. It just gets very cumbersome. So if you store some stuff that is useful that you'd have to have anyways, you can grab that stuff. We have six large suitcases, two carry-ons, and personal items right now, and a stroller and a car seat. And Gary's car was very full. Packed that. So it was very full. We have shipped stuff over in advance via a shipping container. It was a little bit more trimmed back this time. Before, when we went, we did a lot more. But this time, we were having to, in faith, send stuff on a shipping container this last summer before we had ever finished support raising. So when you're dropping $10,000, $15,000, going like, Lord, I think you're opening this door, just because you have to get it on, get it in the order to have a spot on the container for them to be on the ocean for months, to get to the port, to go through customs, to get shipped to the location we're going, it took that long. having to work ahead. So there was some stuff, but it was, at that time, it was a little more trimmed back, just the essential stuff, solar equipment and some of the plumbing things we would need over there to build the house. So it's a little bit more making do right now, but as needed in the future, we'll be able to get more stuff sent over if necessary. Having lived over there already, it put us in a better position, though, to know what we can get and what we can do without. versus our first time over there having not been there before. We were just going off of what we'd heard other people talk about, like, yeah, we can't get this, we can get that. And we're like, all right, we're going to do our best at making a good guess. But that's a whole realm of complication, is shipping and getting the things you need, for sure. Yeah? What would your house be like that you build, and what do the people live in? They live in huts, a lot of times thatched-roofed huts. Depending on the area, bamboo is used a lot of times. If they don't have enough of that, there'll be other things they'll use. They don't live in their homes though, so that's a unique difference. When I say live in their homes, I mean they'll often cook outside their homes, or they'll have a separate structure, at least the areas I've been in again, where they'll cook in. Versus the place that they just sleep in but a lot of time. They're just they live their life outside the house versus for us It's a you it's a difference of much the time we live inside a house. So our home will be It'll be just plywood walls plywood floors Just metal roof get very loud when it rains that kind of thing keeping it trying to keep it simple There will be one part that's hard to floor. It's a structure. It's already there and There was an office space that we're just going to be adding on to when we get there. And so that is a bit of a combination. They deconstructed the two homes that were there before, and there were hardwood floors before there, and so they just reused some of that material then for what's there. But it'll just be a blend of... of that type of thing, solar panels on top to run computers, lights, that type of thing. And we collect rainwater off the roof, collect it in a tank to be able to have the water we need in there. So that's a quick description of what we'll be kind of looking like, yeah. I'd be curious to hear you comment on the experience of witnessing the gospel through two It is a unique thing, ultimately it comes down to them believing over and over again, believing this is what's true. I can speak from the time when I was laying a foundation to going through the chronological teaching with people I've taught, I referenced before, of walking through the different categories of what is truth, what can we depend on, and so on. One of the, speaking of that specifically, one of the things I spent some time on was going to 2 Corinthians 4, verse four, and it says, in whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. and pointing out the fact, hey, I'm not trying to be cruel to your ancestors, but did they believe this? No. Okay, the God of this world is speaking of Satan. He blinded them. That's what it says, they're blinded. Would you ask a blind person to lead you to town? No. Would you trust them to walk you through a garden without crunching? No. And just walking through that is one particular point of showing them, okay, that's what they believe because they're blinded, and they were trying their best to communicate something, but it was wrong. But now we have clarity from the word of God. This is what this is. So it comes back to belief, them choosing this is what's true, and holding to that, and how that will affect them. That's just one area. But then walking them through such as that, such as, where scripture talks about not believing another gospel, even if Paul himself pointed out, even if an angel would speak something contrary. So even if you have dreams, what's the authority? Is it the dream or is it the word of God? Well, if we can't even believe, an angel if they would bring something else, well, definitely not to dream. And you're just walking through some of those logical things from the word of God to help them understand that that's not what the authority is, first of all. And then as you're teaching through, it's giving the opportunity for them to be like, no, that's what I believe. Yeah, we'll close off the questions at this point. We're running out of time. But after the morning service, we are going to have a sack lunch in the fellowship hall next door. If you'd like to stick around and you didn't bring a lunch, run out and grab something real quick and come back. Josh and Autumn will be in a central location. seated at the table there. And so you'll have opportunity to talk with them. I encourage during that time, don't dominate their time. Let's do a little moving around so that different people can ask questions and get to know these folks a little bit. But we look forward to that time. We're excited, again, to have them here. the days that they have ahead of them. I just want to remind you of a few things that came up prayer-wise that you want to take note of. Just learning the heart language there would be a big one. and and then also just the logistics of the building as And as they travel that's most immediate their travel time, especially the traveling with the little one just safety and and and smooth travels and then just the the just transition to working with the cans and just praise God they've had some of that opportunity already to really get to know the can family. So those are a few that I picked up to highlight first to pray for. Also, if you're interested more in the ministry, the broader ministry in the Finisterre Mountains, and you're interested more in broader in missions work, Finisterremission.org, the website there has a lot of information about the work that's going on in Papua New Guinea. I encourage you to take a look at that. And then also, one more thing. Those that were around here back when we started supporting the Dodd family know that the Dodd family went through some real dramatic transition that took them out of this work. And there's a book in the Library of Light the third Sunday here next door. We have a library of missions-oriented books. Unspeakable Joy is a biographical book. Unshakable joy, yeah, not unspeakable, unshakable joy written by Cameron Dodd, a biographical book, and really would commend that to you if you want to learn more about that. And so we just are grateful again for this time and the work that God is doing in Papua New Guinea. Let me pray as we There are prayer cards in the lobby there just as you go out the door on the right hand side are all our missionary prayer cards. So I'd encourage you to grab one of those and be praying for these guys as they head out. So let's pray right now. Father in heaven, we thank you for, again, for your gracious love. Thank you for your love for the Doe people and for those who have come to Christ thus far. And Lord, we ask God that you would continue to work among those people by your spirit that many would come to faith. And as the work of the Kans and the Millers just progresses that the work of discipleship and building leaders over the coming years would take place that you would establish a church that's that's able to reproduce and to reach out to villages in their area. Lord, even as we look in Acts how the church spread just out from Jerusalem and is continuing to spread to the ends of the earth. Thank you again for this time that we've had with the Millers for Josh and Autumn, just this presentation and just ask God that however you would want to use these things that we've heard, that you'd resonate in our hearts for whatever movement you would want in each of our hearts, that we would, how we would be involved in the work of mission, whether it's praying, giving, or going, Lord, We ask that you would work according to your perfect will in each life. We thank you again for this time and ask your blessing on our time to come during the worship hour and bless our brief time of fellowship now as we have this time between services. We thank you in Jesus' name, amen.