Celebrations!

God gives us many reasons to celebrate!

Especially at Easter time when we celebrate Jesus Christ! We contemplated His death on the cross and celebrated His victory (and ours, in Him!) when He rose again! Just as He said He would.

Some of you may also remember that our church started an outreach program at the beginning of February and this program was to culminate at Easter, where we were to invite the people who we've been praying for and reaching out to, to come to our service. And certainly we did see some new faces and some old ones come back! We pray that they will become familiar faces at our church every week! The official outreach program is done, but not the outreach, of course! The program was meant to remind and reinforce our calling to be lights in this world. A reminder we need daily, I think! Ian and I were both convicted about the times that we have not made the most of every opportunity to share the Lord with our friends and acquaintances and sometimes we have even been ashamed to do so. God reminded us of this text, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). A good one to put to memory!

Here are a few photos from our Good Friday celebration:

Look at that cute grin!

Baby Louisa--loved and held by everyone.
Several different groups performed songs. These are some young women from Biwat.
A man from our church made a couple hundred donuts to help us celebrate! And it's not like he has a stove--he cooked them over an open fire!

This little guy enjoyed them so much, he was speechless!

And on a much lighter note, we are also celebrating Celeste! Or rather, our friend Andrew (in the glasses) who continues to help us with her. He has taken it upon himself to get her in the water and he has the know-how and connections to do it!

This is Jerry, Andrew's co-worker, who's a welder as you can see. The trailer is almost all fixed. We cannot wait to thank these men for their help by taking them out on the water to catch some fish! If all goes as planned, that may be in just a couple weeks...
And another big celebration happened this week when Jonathan turned 6!! We praise God for him! He is growing up so fast...
THE best birthday present--his new scooter. He got the hang of it just like that.

School started again this week too--this is him on his first day back with his new uniform shirt.
And the last reason to celebrate is the fact that Hendrik and Kristen Alkema arrived in Papua New Guinea today! They are in Port Moresby as I write this, spending some time with our colleagues at the Bible College. Ian is there too as he had some meetings and they will fly back to Lae together late tomorrow afternoon. I feel as if tomorrow will be the longest day as I wait for them to arrive! I am praying that the flights will not be delayed...but all of that is in the Lord's perfect will too.