By Jacque Harper

Praise be to God for all the faithful men and women who have supported us and the many others involved in the translation work here in PNG!  Today, April 10, 2012 the first of our national coworkers arrived for a consultant and revision checking session and are eating and visiting and sleeping in their new housing!!!! The place will be full with 24 men from several language groups. We have never had the room before to have more then 8 at one time so this is very exciting. This group will be here 2-3 weeks. Following that the building will be in use most every week. Currently Bob and I are the “on sight” managers and it will be interesting to see how many things we still need to arrange for or change from the previous standards at the old housing. The previously used building was not ours but we cooperated with 2 other organizations in caring for it. Now this one is totally ours and we want to see the workers enjoy it and that it is well maintained for many years of use. Please pray that we will be able to find and hire a PNG man who would be able to oversee the use of the building for us and be capable of seeing that the rules are kept. Here’s a photo of all the mattresses that arrived this morning. Daniele  is small enough that Bob could put her on top without the mattresses falling over. Her mother, Augusta, is one of our regular cleaning staff and a good friend to all of us.

The lower flat remodeling is going well. Licensed electricians and plumbers are currently finishing up this week so that means Bob will be able to start closing up the walls and doing other interior work.  Our new employee, carpenter helper Ishmael, is working out great. He is a good help to Bob. February 20 to March 14 we were blessed to have a friend from Grand Junction be with us to help Bob. They were able to accomplish a lot during his stay.  We wanted to delay his departure but felt guilty so decided to let him return on his own at a later time. We’re making two 1 bedroom flats out of a three bedroom residence below us. Pray that we will be able to complete these in time for our new fall arrivals. There are always so many urgencies that take Bob away to other places it’s hard to stay on one task. Pray for God’s provision of another teammate to help in our Technical Services Department.

Bob and Jacque minister through technical services.