In the last months Brandon Buser and family have been to Biem, Australia, and back to Wewak. In June, Rachel and the kids headed down to Australia for several dental and medical appointments. The kids, and especially Rachel, were able to get a lot of work done, for which they are thankful. Pray that Rachel’s health continues to hold.
While they were in Australia, Brandon, and co-worker Wayne, were able to make a trip back to Biem in Papua New Guinea. The aim of the trip was to ‘pour’ into the church and work heavily on the New Testament translation. God was gracious and enabled them to accomplish both.
One of the issues of late in the Biem church has been the diversity of the elders…all three of these men are gifted but very very different. One brother even articulated that this team will never work because they are so different…Brandon waited a composed half-second before explaining that this was the story of the twelve disciples, the body of Christ, and every healthy leadership team. No person is the complete package, but God uses all in the body to do His work effectively as a whole.
Over several days God gave them many long hours with the three elders. The dialogue was honest and direct, all talked about things done poorly and sins committed. There was repentance and a clear understanding that their decisions had shackled them from faithfully shepherding the body. They were encouraged to hear, “Brandon and Wayne, we three need to sit down and talk about this. We know we need to apologise to our brothers and sisters, but there are ‘high apologies’ (general/ambiguous apologies) that do not dig down to the heart of things…that kind will not help the body. We must not do that. We need God to help us three talk and dig up the very heart of these things. That is the kind of repentance we need to have so we can communicate well to the church.” Amen to that.
Sunday came and yielded the most comprehensive and robust example of apologising and repentance that has possibly ever been done among this language group. Wayne and Brandon sat marvelling at God’s continued grace to these men, the church, and the Biem. What a privilege to see Him continue to grow His church through difficult and hard things like discord, repentance, and confession. Pray that God would guide, protect, sustain, and use these men for His purposes.
They spent many hours reading through book after book of the New Testament but seeing the brothers and sisters reactions to hearing the Word in their mother tongue never got old. On leaving the island they were encouraged with the progress and are now scheduled to do the final translation check of the New Testament (1 & 2 Corinthians) next month! This will be a big undertaking. Pray for the translation check and for the work that comes afterwards. The process of typesetting, formatting, proofing, etc. is supposed to be quite daunting.
This summer they celebrated their son’s graduation from high school. Right now he’s doing a gap year in PNG trying to gain all the experience he can in anticipation of pursuing trade school back in the USA next year. He works daily with a crew of PNG citizens (his fluency in the trade language makes this possible) and gets to make trips interior to help missionary church planting teams.
This summer marks their 18th year in PNG. Prayers and support have enabled them to stay focused on Biem and the many other things He’s set before them.