On March 14, Will Blanchard, Kent Doughty, Dave Pinti, and I left Northwest Arkansas and headed to Papua New Guinea for 13 days to finish building a missionary house in the mountains in a tribe called Wantakia. It took 30 hours of travel, including 5 airplanes and 1 helicopter, but we final made it to the ends of the earth! It’s crazy to think that this tribe has such little access to the outside world that they’ve never even heard the name “Jesus” before. Well, our plan is to change that. We are partnering with BJ and Jill Sanders and their team to make the name of Jesus famous not only in Wantakia, but all over the mountains of PNG.
When we arrived, BJ and Jill's house still had a long way to go. Our hope was to finish the house by the time we left, but that task seemed impossible. We decided on 3 very important rules that would guide us each day. 1) Quantity, get as much done as fast as we can. 2) Quality, we used tape measures most of the time and sometimes we even used a square. 3) Safty, "safety third" was repeated frequently during our days of work - especially when a ladder was balanced on the side of a hill using a large stone.
Each day we worked as hard as we could, from sun-up to sun-down, barely even breaking for meals. We even worked most nights with head lamps and flashlights. As we were building the house, the local people watched our every move and followed us around everywhere. They are so excited, and they don't even realize what Good News they are about to hear! So, after putting in about six 14 hour days, we were able to see the house finished! We were even able to do work on the other 2 houses. So, all three families moved into their tribal homes this weekend!
The trip was a huge success, so I want to thank you on behalf of Northwest for all for your prayers and support.
Scott Sanders
Student and Missions Pastor @ Northwest
If you’d like to stay updated on ways you can pray for this team, check out www.reachwantakia.com.
Also be sure to check out a recent video the team posted the day before they left.
