Steve and Gerdine Stanley chose to have a long break after five months of working away at culture and language study, and this was extended again by another week! They had a health complication (all resolved now) and then their flight needed to be postponed for helicopter maintenance. The delay made them once again see how blessed they are to have NTM Aviation and their colleagues who fly and maintain the aircraft that enable their ministry in Papua New Guinea.
It is not like when an airline cancels a flight and you are on your own to figure things out. NTM Aviation really want missionaries to be in the bush and they work with skill and flexibility to get them there!
After close to a year in their home countries the Hansen family have re-joined the Kovol team. Steve, Gerdine and family were able to spend a week with them in Goroka before they all flew back into the village on the same day. They are excited to have all three families in the bush for the foreseeable future, and they are hoping that they can make a dent in the mountain of work yet to do before they can pass out of culture and language study and start a literacy programme.
Oscar has loved having his friends back, and while he enjoyed their break (and the trampoline especially) he is even happier to be part of his tribe of mission kids (MKs), in Kovol.
Extra time on break meant Steve had time to invest into a software project for NTM-UK. There will be little tweaks to make here and there, as things come up. Pray that Steve would be able to deal with those very quickly so that no language learning time is eaten up.
In July, they will be spending two weeks in Goroka attending an “Advanced Linguistics Workshop”. Steve and Gerdine will spend mornings reviewing ideas about how paragraphs of text relate to each other. Afternoons will then be spent identifying features of Kovol text and analysing them. To be ready they need thirteen two-minute long monologues in different genres that they have accurately transcribed. Pray that they elicit texts that will be helpful and will reveal some language secrets that will help them be better communicators.
The Kovol team is currently dissatisfied with how well they are working together but now they are all together in one place they are seeking resolution. They have been unable to come to a consensus particularly in the area of spelling Kovol words. They expect to be able to work it out. They would appreciate prayer for productive meetings and unity over the way forward.