First we want to wish you all in the United States of America- a Happy Independence Day celebration! What a blessing to have the freedoms we do! May it be a continual challenge to those of us that are both citizens of a free nation and citizens of Heaven to make our lives count for eternity! Seeing His kingdom come on earth the same as it is in heaven!
Ruth and I just wanted to write a quick update to fill you in on our latest happenings. It seems we’ve been SO busy lately! We have been ‘playing catch up’ after at least one member of our family being sick for a period of 2 1/2 weeks. And now, as if that weren't enough, Addie started CRAWLING this week. That girl sure has been keeping us on our toes! We even went around the house and taped over all the 220volt plug-ins because we ‘just’ wanted to be safe!!! :)
So I’m sure your all wondering about the picture above, right?! Well, There has been a younger Indonesian guy named Yohanes that has become one of our really good friends here but sadly he is moving today. It is very cultural here to have parties here (an excuse to get together and eat!) and so we decided to have a going away BBQ for Yohanes on Saturday this week. We had so much fun Barbecuing 3 chickens that we bought at the meat market, made potato salad, and provided the soda. We had the best time building relationships with the ‘excuse’ of a party with our Indonesia friends who have become so dear to us.
As for us thanks for all of you who were praying for our health and for us to get better. Those prayers have been answered! We ask that you would please be praying for our future here in country. As we wrote in a previous update we as a family are looking to move to the region that we’ll be ministering in sooner rather then later because of Ruth being pregnant. How things work here for missionaries is first everyone moves to central java to learn/study the language of bahasa Indonesia. After our fluency is pretty high we then move to the region that we feel God would have us work in. After we move to that region we then ‘finish’ our bahasa Indonesia language study and either work as a ‘support roll’ missionary to the local church and to the missionaries in the remote tribal locations or“Be” one of the remote tribal missionaries (which is what we want). As of right now NTM leadership has excepted our request to move to the island of Sulawesi (our region of ministry) but we are having some ‘visa’ issues with our move. This is going to sound complicated (and it is...) but I Ben have a visa that is under a ‘sponsorship board’ that allows me to be in country. Ruth and the girls though however are here under a ‘student visa’ which allows Ruth to be a ‘full’ time student with the government. So in order for Ruth and the girls to leave central Java they need special permission or a change of visa which could get expensive. Please pray with us as we discuss our options with leadership here in trying to find the best salutation for ministry and our family.
**We do have a NEW ‘Project of the Month’ below for those of you who are interested. Thank you!
Because of the cross,
~Ben & Ruth
Because of the cross,
~Ben & Ruth
Project of the Month!
This last week we got the bill for Ruth and the girls student visa’s that allow them to be in country. The total was about $2,600 dollars. This is a lot of money and we really weren't expecting the bill to be this high. This bill is totally our bill and our organization doesn't help in these expenses.
**If you would like more information on how to 'help' with this Project of the Month click on this link to our Project of the Month page on our website ->-> Link
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