Think many of you know that Alice was with with us and 2 plus years ago when she was And at, 360 and she was in fellowship here.
For 3 years or 2 3 And, we're really glad to see her back and see that she's completed the next step in our missionary training with Pesthnos.
Or month ago, she spoke to the, to the ladies group here on a Tuesday night and this will be the similar presentation, maybe the same one.
We thought we'd like to have the whole assembly. I know more about what her and desires and plans are and how the Lord is leading her.
And so thank you for coming, Alice, for. For this Wednesday night meeting. We'd like to visit with Alice the Elderswood before the evening is over.
So we probably won't pray as long tonight. And we thank you once again, Ellis, for telling us about.
Popa New Guinea.
Is it enough?
Okay, thanks so much for inviting me to share tonight.
I'm just gonna start with a brief testimony. I know shared it with the ladies more than once, but.
And it always comes out a little bit different. So. I was born and raised here in Wisconsin. Little further north.
My father passed away when I was 4 years old.
And, my mother remarried soon after that. And. This was a very difficult time in my life as a young girl.
Our fathers, I think, teach us a little bit about who God is. And, my first step father did a very poor job with that.
And.
Hi, I carried a lot of false assumptions about God's character because of this. And, I think it poisons me against really understanding and accepting God's truth.
Until later in life. I knew all the right answers as a little girl. I've been told ask Jesus into your heart so that you won't go to hell and of course that was a scary thing so.
I did what I was told. And I knew all the right answers. So people believed that I understood that I believed.
But looking back. There was no change in my heart. I was only concerned about avoiding punishment.
And, after. Some very difficult. Situations that came up with my first stepfather. My mother divorced him.
And.
Hi.
I, I hid the scars for a long time. People didn't know that I was not okay.
So you can see I served in the military for a while and. Hi, I was.
Wandering off in my own ways. I went to college and I had no basis in scripture.
And.
Yeah, I made a mess with my life. For some years. But that brought me right where I needed to be.
The Holy Spirit convicted me through. God's word while reading. John chapter 4, the woman at the well.
And that was when it really. Became clear to me. That the reason why Jesus had to die.
Because somebody had to pay for my sin
And it finally became personal.
And when I recognized that I was ready. To admit that I was wrong. And the suffering a lot of the consequences.
I was suffering from were results of my own sin and it wasn't God punishing me. It was me.
And he had to save me from myself. And that was when. I'm made that decision. Made it real.
Jesus saved me that night.
And walked away from those bad decisions that I had. Gotten myself in. And he met me where I was at.
And you brought people alongside. Who showed me God's love and practical ways. He got me connected with the church that I was.
Going to for many years. Many of you know our VCF and triple falls. I started going to church there and I I learned what discipleship was, one of the ladies.
Met with me regularly and studied the Word of God with me and. It changed everything. I started to learn who God really is.
And his character. And then I had been shown some pretty bad examples when I was growing up. God was not anything like my earthly father's.
Also during that time. I had some pretty wrong ideas about what a missionary was. I picture it as a teenager.
A man in a suit standing out on a street corner preaching at people as they walk by. I thought, well, that will clearly never be me.
I'm never gonna happen. But while I was being decided in the word, I came to understand, just God's heart for all people.
To be saved. And Also broadened my understanding of what a missionary is. We had speakers from teamworkers abroad came to our church.
And they shared about. Work teams that go and do professional. Building projects and they would do for a couple of weeks at a time.
And that was when I realized that missionaries can do support roles. They're not just preachers.
I thought, oh, okay, maybe that is a possibility. Maybe I could do that.
And then it was really the Word of God, again, that changed my perspective. And truly made it personal again.
While reading Isaiah. And it said, shall I send in who will go for us? And Isaiah said, here I am, send me.
Not realizing how. How big a deal it is to tell the Lord that you're willing to do something.
I said those words. Almost as kind of a challenge, you know, see if he would do it.
And then clearly he did. I went.
I think it was about a year later. So. Probably this scripture reading part was in 2,014 and then 2,015 I went to a one week orientation program that CMML holds every year in June.
. And during that one week was. Totally overwhelmed. Came away thinking, I know nothing about how to become a missionary.
And I feel completely. Unqualified. There's no way I can do it. I went home discouraged thinking maybe I.
Wasn't being called to be missionary. And it was a couple of years later before.
I took a trip to Japan. And this was. Mostly a vacation trip, something I'd always wanted to do is go to Japan.
My great-grandparents were missionaries. They are back after World War 2. And my grandfather told me stories about it all the time I was growing up.
It's in 2,017. We decided to go just to see. And Again, I kind of ask the Lord.
Maybe you could use this trip. Speak to me. If in fact you are calling me to be a missionary.
And he confirmed it during this trip. We came back on fire. I was so excited. Although I still didn't know how to do it.
I didn't know what I needed to do next. When I came back, then I talked with my mentor.
And she said, well, if you want to preach or you want to teach the Bible to others, you should probably know it really well yourself.
I thought that's very practical advice. So I looked at a Bible school. And as you guys all know, I was here going to the ethnos 360 Bible institute.
And that was. That was the next step in the process. So. Why the missionary?
I kind of mentioned it before, before this. Scripture has so many places where God reveals to us his heart to save all people.
And this is just one of the most famous ones. There are so many others. I just think back.
Abraham right at the beginning. God said, I'm gonna bless you so that you can bless all the nations.
Like he was thinking about. Everyone. And my favorite, I think, line. In here is to make make disciples.
I'm gonna keep bringing that out as I go because discipleship. Is kind of a passion of mine.
So this was the organization that I chose and I'm going to talk just a little bit about why I chose them.
So it starts out with the local church. Every missionary must be sent by a church. We are an extension.
Of our local church. The organization is into church. They just help to equip and organize and get people there.
We are a part. Of our church. We're sent out by the church, then we go and we do training.
After the training, prepare for prepare for the field. Once we get to the field, we have to learn the language and culture there so we can interact with the national people.
And for support workers like me, allocation means that I stay in the national culture. And work on the mission base, which I'm going to talk about more and a little bit later.
But one thing that I'm really I'm really passionate about. This organization. Takes the time.
To go all the way. To a mature church before they leave. Their goal. Is to get in to a tribe.
Learn the language in the culture so that they can. Right their language down. Teach the people to read and write their own language.
Translate the Bible into their language. Give them a Bible and then Bible lessons teach it from beginning to end.
See a church planted? And then watch that church mature. Until they have their own elders.
That can function without the missionaries so the missionaries can leave. Their goal is to work themselves out of the job.
And I love that. Like. Finish, finish the job. Okay.
So you all. That meanwhile I was here for the Bible Institute and this started in January of 2,018.
I did the 2 year Bible program and then it did a one year internship in childcare. Oh, it was.
So good. I highly recommend. Spending the time just studying the word. All of the other classes are great, but.
Studying the Bible. Was amazing. You can't study it and not be changed.
And again, discipleship. This theme just kept coming back. Inside and outside of the classroom. Discipleship with instructors.
Discipleship here at church. Discipleship. With my classmates. There were a handful of young students that started calling me mom.
And then after the 2 years in the Bible school went down to Roach, Missouri for an additional 2 years of training and this was very focused on preparing people for living in a third world or in a in a foreign culture from their own.
And these were the 4 major threads of classes.
Relationships. Again, it's all about relationships. Primarily your relationship to God. That falls apart, your missionary, your, your mission, your ministry falls apart too.
Your relationship with your family that falls apart, your ministry falls apart too.
And the number one reason why missionaries leave the field still? Is because coworkers can't get along.
We even as believers. We have a hard time getting along with each other. So we had classes specific.
To building teamwork. Learning how to deal with conflict.
And constantly constantly looking at our attitude. If we are not humble and teachable. We're in trouble.
Learning a culture and language. There were a lot of classes on that. I could get into it at another time.
But we we learned all the sounds that the human mouth can make and
Some of those were very interesting. And then of course, Church planting is the main goal for the church planters and so We studied what does a mature church look like.
What does it? What does it take to have a church grow to maturity? And then what does it look like?
And then practical skills. That's me with a chainsaw. And this was an electrical system I put together with LED lights.
So we lived for 2 weeks out in the woods and we built tarp houses and we worked together as a team.
And a lot of those classes we did out there were about team building. And conflict resolution. We have a full week of scratch cooking where we were not allowed to use any pre prepared.
Food products. Not even sliced cheese. And that was interesting. Missionary technology.
We learned how to wire. Solar panels and a lot of that was, that was so much fun.
And again, relationships, mentorship, discipleship. Our training teams became like family. The family down in the bottom here.
They're headed for PNG. And we're like family. It's. After living in the woods for 2 weeks together you get really close.
Okay. And then after the training. I had to decide where what I was gonna do. This actually.
Took place most of the last year that I was in the training. I wanted to figure it out as soon as possible, but you can't rush the Lord when he's working you through some of the classes that I really struggled with.
So I was already a nurse before I started this program. But I was. Interested willing to go and be a church planter?
But Knowing my personality and my skills, I am better suited to a support role.
And I think I already knew that, but I can be stubborn.
So all of these factors went into decision making.
And here's a little visual.
For where I decided to go and I talked to a lot of different people. Who served in this country?
And. They gave me a lot of very practical advice and overwhelmingly. People said you're going to love it there and you're going to be a blessing there.
So I just feel like it was such a confirmation. Okay, I have a little 5 min video.
Okay. As New Transmission Papua New Guinea, we have missionaries from all over the world that are sent by our partner organizations.
And those include New Transmission UK, Ethnos 360 in the U.S.A, as well as ethnos Canada, New Zealand, Germany, a sending organization in Mexico.
We're part of what's called global partners here in Papua New Guinea we currently have 365 adult members that sounds like a lot I realize but we have over 800 different language groups we're trying to reach in obedience to the command of Christ and motivated by His love we desire to establish New Testament churches in the least reach people groups of popping in king.
So of those 365, 48%. Do support ministries and 52% do tribal ministries.
One of the reasons that we need that many missionaries, especially the support workers, is because the infrastructure in Papua New Guinea hasn't quite developed so most everything is only accessible through airplanes or helicopters.
The support structure that's here within the country is still developing. So we have to provide that for all those missionaries that are out in tribes in order to function effectively here with a country that size of California.
We've got a lot of ground to cover. So in NGM, PNG, we divide ourselves up into 3 different areas.
The Western area covers a lot of the sepic swamps and the mountains that surround them and the eastern area we're talking about the islands of New Britain and New Ireland and a lot of smaller islands off the coasts of the main island and then the central area covers the Ramo Valley up into the mountains of the Central Highlands.
And so each of those areas has a local scene that looks after our missionaries in those places. For us, again, with so many different people groups, very remote locations and a lack of transportation.
We've really lean on our local support centers to provide logistics for our teams finding supplies and getting them ready for transport to provide access.
For national churches and believers to connect with the resources that they may need. Then we also rely on those centers to provide the member care and consultant help for our bush teams.
Like our Laplace Center is our field headquarters from here we base our aviation program. We've got a Numerian Christian Academy where the children of many of our support workers here in the some boarding students 10 from our church plants around the country.
So we have to have our own school here so that missionary kids can fit back into their home countries. We also have a medical clinic.
Dental clinic, our finance and business personnel as well as computer technologies folks. So there's a lot that happens from here to support our mission across this country.
Now on the church development side right now our field has 7 locations that are ready to be moved into. And then we have about 10 other locations that are somewhere on that survey pipeline.
So there's a number of areas that we're ready to go into. We just need the people.
We also have a support center in Midang where we do orientation for church planners. It's dedicated to clipping our new missionaries that are arriving.
Our vision of what we'd like to do is to continue to equip and train our church planning teams so that they can do the work that we've traditionally done, literacy and developing Bible lessons and teaching and translation and discipleship and turning that work over right now we have about 40 active missionary teams working with different tribal groups from teams that are just moving in.
Working on their houses. Our teams in early and middle stages of learning the language and culture of the people they're working among.
And we have 2 teams who are just now presenting the gospel for the very first time. We also have 8 teams that have a young and maturing church, a church that's less than 2 years old, uniting a body of new believers and teaching them through the basics of.
And then we also have another 29 disciples, they're maturing believers toward eldership and teaching and taking that scripture and teaching it to others.
Our translation teams have actually completed 33 New Testaments and 34 and active development. Not only do we want to continue to work with our church planning teams, we need to do it in partnership with the national citizens here at Popular.
We have another 36 different churches that we would consider mature churches where the missionary team is itinerant or not, actually, living, full, time, onsite, but, they as neutral.
Alright, just a quick look at this. So they zoomed in on when they showed Lapalo Center and they said that that was the headquarters.
Mission base and that is actually where I'm hoping to go. Near Groka in the middle of that main island there, if hopefully people can see it.
So they mentioned in the video the. The vision statement. And the number of active works. That there are currently tribes who have been asking for missionaries for 5 plus years, they send letters to the leadership and leadership says, You need people.
We would love to send people to you.
And in most fields, your ratio of support workers to church planters is closer to 10 to one. So PNG being a pretty well established.
Field right now. They've got it almost 50 50. Which is pretty great.
These are many of the different support positions. Like they said in the video, there's there's schools and homes for the pilots.
There's a A clinic and a dentist's office. And all of these and the supply buyers they all stay on the mission base so that the they can purchase the supplies and send them by helicopter out to the church to the church planters so that they don't have to come back to town.
Every time they need to buy supplies.
And then here's the little piece about me. As a nurse planning to work in the clinic on the mission base at La Pillow.
It's a family practice clinic and I get to do a little bit of everything.
But even more than that, I would get to disciple. Get to work with the women and children on the base.
There's schools there and there's families, the pilots families, their wives and children live on the base.
So. Countless opportunities for discipleship.
And that's it.
Did anyone have questions?
Okay, Is there or?
Okay. Yes, so.
And there were 2 doctors. One of them had to retire and the other one is very close to retiring and the other one is very close to retiring.
So this is a major prayer request that they have is that we would get another doctor soon. Because the one that's left is part time.
I hear he's there for 6 months at a time and then he's away and when he's away the nurses have to Contact a doctor from a different mission and a nearby country.
But a lot of these nurses who are. There have many years of experience and the doctor has, the doctor loves to teach.
And we're allowed to do a lot more there than we would be allowed to do here. The doctor does a minor surgery and we assist.
We can do a lot more there. The rules are different.
There a vacancy for a nurse there now? And there's some notion that
They have. 2 full-time nursing positions and when I expressed interest they said, oh yeah, come on over.
We want you. That the interview was just a formality.
The mission. In PNG, they accept new people in January and in August. To start their culture and language classes.
And so. I currently am I have so much paperwork still. There's Hey, it would take multiple miracles for me to get there in January.
So it's far more likely that I can be shooting for August of next year. But we'll have to see.
I, I would love to be ready to go and honest.
Okay. I have not. That's why I had conversations with pretty much anyone I could find who has been there.
To ask what they have to say about it was I talked with. So when they have a field fair at the Bible, at the training center.
They have representatives come from each field. And last fall in October or September. I went and talked to the representatives because at that time I actually wasn't interested in PNG.
I had some ideas in my head about it being. Too dangerous or that it was you It was too hostile for a single female to go there.
And I actually. Head conversations with a single woman who's been working there for over 20 years.
So she corrected a lot of my misconceptions. About working there. It's I guess just like any other third world country where there are certain rules in place to keep women safe.
You just. Always travel in groups and
Yeah.
Your church. Yes, they they do hold a service. On the base. But I know some of the missionaries who feel comfortable going into local communities.
Will go to the local churches. Once we speak the national language, we We can do that. Build relationships with national churches.
Does, F-nots provide their own pilots or? Okay, Ethnos, 3 60 aviation.
I actually one of my best friends is a helicopter pilot.
They live on the base. There's a couple of families that I'm close to as well who The one family is from Germany.
The husband is a mechanic. And the other family. Husband is a straight wing pilot. So.
How long is it? And all of these, Okay. I think it's possible that they would.
Take somebody if they needed an evaluation done in the village.
So getting there would require multiple flights. Connecting flights. I've heard stories of it sometimes taking 24 to 36 h with 4 or 5 connecting flights to get over there.
I believe all All travel there has to go through Australia before it gets to PNG. And then the most expensive ticket inside the country is the one inside the country from the capital city to .
And, another small airport.
So the travel is interesting.
The medical people are the most Yeah, Yeah. So their primary purpose is to serve the other missionaries.
But the locals do come to the clinic and the clinic has a very good reputation with the locals.
As time and supplies allow.
I know that they they do some teaching as well. I remember watching the video. There's a national lady.
Being taught how to do basic. Nursing care. She could take that back to her village.
Are you already learning the line? I'm not. It's I'm not even sure if I would have materials for it.
It's a form of pigeon. So, taking like Australian English and a tribal language and kind of molding them together.
You get, I think it's pronounced talk pigeon.
I do have friends who speak it, but I'm not sure if I would be able to find materials to do that.
They say the best way to learn language is from the nationals though. Or you might develop a an accent that's very difficult to correct.
So when you get there, you think you can just start. Nursing care. Okay. So they have a normal sequence for how they orient us to the field.
When we first get there, our primary full-time job is going to be learning culture and language. And depending on each missionary's job.
Determines how fluent they need to be in the language before they let you move on to the next thing.
There I think they're only gonna require me to do 3 months. Dedicated culture and language study and then I would go into orientation with the clinic for at least one month.
And then it would be a full time job. I would have a schedule just like I would hear, you know, certain days of the week for so many hours while the clinic is open and then being on call every other every third week or something like that.
So.
Thank you very much, Alex.
Thank you, Alice, for telling us about your plans and how the Lord has led you to this. Point in your life and may he continue to lead you all the way to And I've never seen video on that country like I have tonight.
And so. Better perspective of it and I'm You don't wanna go into that. Into that landing field right in the cliff there.
Jen, you would. Yeah, you'd have to be pally, John, if I went.
Alright