Prayer Letter Archive

06-January-2007

Dear Coworkers,

Greetings and Happy New Year! We trust that you had a great holiday season. We had a wonderful Christmas with the kids this year. Geoff and Tina had us all to their place for Christmas dinner. Tina's folks are home on furlough right now too so they along with her sister and boyfriend were also present. Along with Grandpa and Grandma Casteel we had 10 around the Christmas table! We enjoyed the big meal then reading the Christmas story and unwrapping our gifts to one another.

Yesterday morning we received a phone call from Indonesia. It was Esron Panius telling us they had all arrived safely back to town from the tribe. As you know both our Wana coworkers have been in the tribe for the past two months traveling to each of our 5 Wana churches. We have been praying for them and glad that they had a safe trip out. Another praise is that we had no violence this Christmas and New Year holiday in our province. You might remember last year our pork market in Palu was blown up and many killed.

We will appreciate your prayers for our Wana co-workers, the Panius and Kaku families, as they will be moving to our Provincial capital of Palu in just a couple of weeks. This will put them in much closer proximity to the tribe making trips back interior much easier for them. There they will also be able to help out with our national church which we are just getting started along with continued working together with us on the translation, and Bible curriculum development for the Wana churches. They will be needing to rent new housing so appreciate the Lord's direction in that and also prayer for the finances that will entail.

My trip to our NTM mission training center last month went well and we appreciated your prayers for us during that time. We had a class of 19 meeting 4 hours a day. Each day included two lecture periods along with two break away classes in which we took the students through each of the steps of the tribal church planting process. It was a special blessing for me to be able to have the Indonesian missionary candidates in my break away class and to share with them some of the challenges we face in Indonesia.

Both this month and next we have a lot of deputation meetings scheduled and will be visiting many of our ministry partners. This month we will be traveling to Arizona and then next month have plans to be in Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee. We will appreciate your prayers for safety in all this travel. We are also hoping to get all of the Gospel of John lessons finished before we start this travel so that our Wana Co-workers can make the final corrections on computer and begin getting these ready for our Wana churches.

We do want to thank you so much for your continued partnering with us in this exciting ministry, and thank you so much for your prayers this past month. This job definitely takes team work and we are so happy and thankful for the great team the Lord has given us.

Serving together,

Ed & Jeanne Casteel