Tíðindi frá Anniku & Simon Flanagan (enskt)
24. feb. 2021
| Hi team, We are thankful: It’s been a challenging season for us all, and more than ever we are thankful to God for you and your partnership in growing the church and gospel here amongst the Mengen people. It’s great to know you are with us, even though as a family we are on our own as a single unit with the Mengen church family – isolated. We get notes from many of you (especially through Facebook), many of you pray for us regularly, and some send us snail mail and packages. We value our churches and the individuals who work hard to support us financially and encourage us in these ways. THANK-YOU! A season to refocus: As we church plant amongst the Mengen people, we have, and are going through a tough season of dealing with sin and a lukewarm spirit that has crept into the church over a number of years. In summary, the past two years we have been focused on dealing with sin and seeking to see unity in the church and get them fired up about the purposes that God has for them as a body. This has been a tough time but we trust God and His purposes. Heb12:11-12 promises the ‘peaceful fruit of righteousness’ as God shapes and moulds us. And so we are trusting Him for that fruit in the days ahead. Pray for the church through this season that weak hands and lame knees with be strengthened, healing will be real and the straight paths of the Lord followed. There is so much potential for the Mengen church and much work for them to do amongst the many unreached Mengen people, some eight to ten thousand still waiting for the good news. |
| Mengen church news – Bible teacher and his family: We have some great news to share regarding one of our former bible teachers who fell into sin. As many of you know we had to discipline one of our bible teachers as he fell in sin and committed adultery. Our brother was outside of fellowship for over 1.5 years. We saw him very little over that time as did the rest of the church; it was a very painful time for all of us. However doing things Gods way, no matter no matter how tough is always the best way. We are so thankful to be able to share with you that our brother has admitted his wrong and is back in fellowship with the church. The road to make things right between those he wronged and sinned against was not an easy one; but he courageously walked that road and we as a church walked with him. He made a public apology to our church which he was representing as a bible teacher and evangelist.. Then as a church (40 of us) we hiked for 8hrs and then hitched a ride in the back of a dump truck for three hours to make support our brother in making things right between himself and the church he was teaching at when he fell in sin. The toughest part and the, ‘hold your breath moment’ came when he asked the family of the girl he committed adultery with for forgiveness. We spent four days in fellowship together as two churches and saw a wonderful picture of Gods grace come into full view. God is happy to help his broken children become whole! We are so thankful for the challenge that Gods grace in full view gave to all of the church but particularly our children and the young people of the church. Thanks to all of you who have prayed faithfully. |
| Family: its been a long time since we updated you all, which we apologize for. School is going well. Annika really enjoys teaching the kids but it of course does limit her time she has available for meeting with the ladies in the village. That being said, we are still looking for home-school helpers for next school year (Aug 2021-May 2022). We now have four kids in school so we are open to getting help, if you are interested at all, please do get in touch. We can fill you in on the details and pray with you as to whether or not it’s a fit for you. We now have 2x 6th graders, 1x 3rd grader and Judah has started Kindergarten. Ethan thinks he does school as well, which includes colouring, cutting and causing havoc. We’ve included a few pictures of our kids after seeing them you wont have any concerns about them enjoying life here. We recently learnt the word “inheritance” in school and the kids asked me if they would get an inheritance from Simon and I one day. I told them we don’t have a house or anything like that to give them and they looked at me in confusion and said, “yes you do, our house here in Lele.” I tried to explain to them we wouldn’t be here our whole lives and their response was that they would live here forever, in this house! I guess we have more teaching to do with them but it is encouraging to see that they love life here that much. Lastly, thank you to all of you that have been praying for us, specifically for Noah and all his sores and infections. Since coming back to Lele two months ago, we have had NO serious infections. I think that’s a record! Illness has been minimal as well so thank you all so much! Lockdown: We know you all are very familiar with ‘lockdowns’, but we however are not. In PNG lockdowns mean travel bans between provinces and not much more at present. However this does impact us and our ministry. For the past weeks we have not been able to travel back to the Mengen church as they are located in a different province than where we are right now at our support centre. |
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| Helping new missionary families: While on lockdown we were asked by leadership here to stay on and give them a hand with the new missionary families that were arriving. We spoke with our friends in the tribe and they were doing well and had lessons still available to them to cover this time we would be out so we prayed about that and were excited to help out in this way. It has been exciting for us to see the new excitement and enthusiasm these new families bring to the work here. We have been meeting up 3-4x a week then last week we were able to take a 3-day trip with them to a nearby mature national church. We went with the intention of encouraging and helping in whatever way we could, but we came away encouraged and blessed by the way these national brothers and sisters in Christ ministered to us, from serving us food, giving us advice and input from Gods word, etc. It’s an exciting thing to partner with the local church! |
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| Mengen Church: We are going back into our village amongst the Mengen people on the 23rd Feb. Because we have been out of the tribe for a little over 2 months now, we are not sure of the state of our airstrip. So, for that reason, we have been asked to take the helicopter in when we go on Feb 23rd. Of course, the kids are excited and its “fun” but it is also very expensive so please pray with us as we make decisions in the next few days on what to do. We are all excited to get back home again. We love our support centre and all our friends here but as the saying goes, “there is no place like home.” We miss our friends, and the kids miss their pets. Their pet goats have just given birth to a baby a few days ago which of course only adds to the excitement. Pray for us as we go back and get into discipleship, lesson writing for Sunday services, youth work and the weekly church training. There are a few problems that await us between some families; sin issues to address etc. Pray for wisdom and unity as we go back to help shepherd the church. We are working on developing and expanding our post literacy program. We have been getting some help from a friend a home and are putting together two courses to help develop reading comprehension. Pray for wisdom as we walk through this process and help our readers to work towards better comprehension, summarising, applying and eventually creating their own teaching from Gods precious word. Prayer and Praise: Pray for our Mengen friends, that the Lord would work in their hearts and bring about a deep desire to walk with Him and allow Him to change their lives. Pray for us as we continue home-schooling 4 kids (K-6th grade). It’s always a challenge to juggle schooling and ministry. Please continue to pray with us for a Homeschool helper / helpers (couple, single girls, etc.) Pray for wisdom as we seek to develop our post literacy program. Pray for us as we seek to equip every individual with the tools to study Gods word and enter into deep personal meaningful relationship with God. Pray for our youth group to to follow hard after God, and to see themselves as part of Gods plan. Pray for our team mates here on our support centre; pray for energy and faithfulness in the work. Pray for the new missionaries to our region as they form teams and decide where they will take the gospel. We have some costs coming up that are outside of the normal, please pray we could get those covered: Helicopter flights / Kids school curriculum for next year / We need to take a trip to get Karis heart check-up, possibly needing to go to Australia if restrictions lift. Pray for our regular monthly support to increase to meet our ministry needs. If you would like more information or want to support us regularly please get in touch. Grace to run well, Simon, Annika and the five sprogs. |
