André and Aurélie Tousch and family are back in the village after spending three weeks in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea. They needed to renew André’s passport as well as attend follow-up appointments for the children’s teeth and eyes. The French Embassy sets an annual date for the renewal of passports of French expatriates residing in Papua New Guinea. This year it was in April, so they took their holidays around this date too. They thank God that all the details were well combined and they were able to receive the necessary care and the new passport.
The following two weeks in Goroka proved to be very busy. André worked on the proofreading and layout of two language books. The first book includes Bible lessons for evangelism; it chronologically explains the story of salvation from creation to the return of the Lord. The second is for Christians. It explains how Old Testament stories announce the coming of Christ.
Now that they are back in the village, the next two months are also going to be very busy. They are getting ready to have the translation of four Bible books checked by translation consultants: Jonah, Mark, Romans and Ephesians. This will be done in two stages: Andrew (their co-worker in the village) will first go to town next month with a group of believers from the village for Romans and Ephesians, and then a consultant will come to the village in July to check Jonah and Mark .
Until now, the team had not translated whole books of the Bible. The book that was checked with consultants and printed in 2017, contained about two thousand verses of the Old and the New Testaments, but there was no complete books. At the end of these consultant visits, they should get the green light from the mission to print and distribute these first four Bible books in the people’s language.
Sadly, their village friend Jennifer suddenly went to be with the Lord. Jennifer was a young woman of about 25 years of age. Her husband left her with their son who has a paralysed leg. Jennifer trusted the Lord in 2017. She was always among the firsts arriving at the meetings with her little boy on her shoulders. Sadly, when one of the mission doctors visited a few months ago, he diagnosed that the child will never be able to walk.
Jennifer was epileptic, but had not had a seizure for two years. However, the river overflowed; her village was under two feet of water. She had a seizure, fell unconscious in the water and drowned. Her little boy managed to hang on to a branch and keep his head out of the water until someone heard him crying and found him.
They had to go up the river for twenty kilometres/twelve miles to find a dry place to bury Jennifer. Her prayers have not been answered during her lifetime. She prayed that her husband would believe in Jesus and that he would come back to her and that her child would heal and walk again. She is now with the Lord away from the pains of this world.