Last month Robert and Nicole Westerveld got a message that one of the flights they had booked to go to Papua New Guinea had been cancelled. At that time they were in the middle of the visa application process. Their passports were in Brussels, at the PNG embassy. They had to re-book going via another route. However, a mistake had been made and their arrival date was set as the date for leaving on their visa. Because of that they had to move their planned trip to PNG at least a month forward. Thankfully they were able to book everything with another airline.
After Robert and Nicole got their passports with visa back from Brussels, the whole process of getting all the approvals for entering PNG with the Covid-19 regulations went well. They were kept busy with all the applications and tests until the last day before departure.
Sadly Jorim who would have gone with them had to stay in the Netherlands because of the possibility of needing to re-do exams. The good news is Jorim passed his exams well and will start further education in September.
Everything went really well with their flights and they are now in quarantine at the mission centre before they can fly into the Yagwoia tribe. During this time they will prepare for the work that they are planning to do in the tribe. They were able to contact believers to tell them that they will arrive earlier than planned and hope to fly at the beginning of July.
It is approximately two years since they were last in the tribe and they looking forward to seeing the believers on both sides of the tribe. Once in the tribe Robert will check the last seven chapters of Exodus with the Iwalaqamalje believers. On the other side of the tribe he will check the beginning of the NT (Matthew) with the Iqwaye believers and with the Gwase believers he plans to finish ‘Part 2’ of their Bible lesson books. They have a good number of ‘Audio Bibles’ with them for the different locations in the tribe. And they will also take more Bible lesson booklets ‘Part 1’ with them for the Iqwaye and Gwase people of which they did not have enough two years ago.