What's new in our lives in 2022?Family time in Gilbert!Hope your new year is going well! It's so crazy how time flies - and it's so precious!! This year, we want to redeem the time for the sake of the Gospel, and we've had some encouraging times so far! If this is your first blog post you've read, my name is Sarah Bruce, my husband is Daniel, our daughter is Taliah, and we plan to be missionaries to Papua New Guinea! Currently, we live in Phoenix, AZ. My husband is going through seminary training in order to be ready for the mission field. These pictures above show us in a town close to downtown Phoenix, called Gilbert. What do we want to spend our time on?This is Taliah at the park! We have had many opportunities to share the Gospel at the park, which is such a blessing! It's so nice to live in a place where you can basically go outside all year round, and you can usually find someone to talk with about what really matters - that's what we want to get busy spending our time doing, because we are not promised tomorrow! Here's a highlight of a conversation I had: While at the park, I saw a lady sitting by herself. Out of respect for her I’d rather not share her name. She was crying through most of the conversation because she said she was convicted over her sin of drug use. She said she had been clean for five years until last Thanksgiving, then having a few drinks opened her up to other things. Because she had been heavily involved in her church, individuals from her church had been reaching out, but she had felt too ashamed to answer them. So, I encouraged her to get back into church, to get into the Bible, and to make sure she is right with God, pointing her to various resources. We also talked through parts of 1 John, and I encouraged her to read it. She seemed genuinely encouraged and challenged to have someone to talk to, and she thanked me for listening to her, asking me more questions about my church and what I do. Please keep her in prayer. If it helps to use a name to pray for her, you could call her by her first initial: P. Thanks for joining me in prayer!! What is our plan (Lord willing) in Papua New Guinea?Our goal is to share the Gospel with the unreached. 49 people groups in the Finisterre Mountains of Papua New Guinea have NO Scripture in their language, no church, no pastor, and no one to share the Gospel with them. All of those groups have different languages that aren't written down yet, so they have no access to understanding the Word of God. What we want to do is "finish the Great Commission" in at least one of those people groups, working with them so that they can have their own alphabet, written language, Bible, and self-sustaining church. People are dying - it's time to act! Starting the hard-core studies!Here is a picture of my husband, working hard on some studies for seminary. Daniel was studying for one of his classes in this picture. The Christmas break was nice, but now it's time to get back into the books! Last semester, Daniel had five classes, and one other class that was for half of the semester, and it wasn't for credit. Now, Daniel has six classes, and he's doing so well managing all of them so far! I'm so proud of him! But what about Taliah...? Taliah's adventures - notice her outfit!!Because the bottom part might be hard to read, Taliah's outfit says... "FullyFreeFilms.com FREE ONLINE MOVIES!! Ask my parents for a free movie gift card! (Living Waters logo)" So...I don't need to tell you about it...you can go check it out yourself! :) Living Waters Free Movies link: www.livingwaters.com/movies/? Some of the other pictures I included show some stops we took on our trip last month, along with some local places. So thankful for fun travel! JUST SO YOU KNOW - THIS IS WRONGOkay, it's time to rant. This is a pamphlet I received from a local missions conference. It looks nice, and I appreciate what this ministry (naming the ministry is not important) is trying to do, but it is not factually accurate when it comes to Papua New Guinea. If you're not sure what you're looking at, what I'm saying is inaccurate is what this map shows about Papua New Guinea, which is the country all the way to the right in pink. This map shows a cross, meaning that PNG is "Christian" already. No. Here's why some people think that: Specifically in the 1940's, Lutherans (and Catholics; the Lutherans were extremely similar to the Catholics) came to PNG to spread their catechisms and baptisms, but they did NOT share the true Gospel. If you were to ask a tribal person what the Gospel is, they might know about someone named Jesus, but they don't know that they need to put away their practices of worshipping other gods. The Lutherans didn't start by teaching them the foundation of Creation, understanding their own sin (lying, stealing, etc.) and their need for a Savior, they just taught them rituals, like they were already doing, when the tribal people probably still went away thinking that Jesus lives on a nearby mountain. The number of the unreached is far worse than this map explains. Someone may have told the people of PNG that God loves them, but they are still going to Hell without access to the true Gospel. Some final pictures of our travels!In our last blog, I explained some of our travels we went on for the month of December, but I never finished telling about our way back because our trips went almost into the new year! So - here's the rest of the pictures I have! Find the God Puzzles (little booklets that have the Gospel in them) in the bottom six pictures! In one of them you can only see the author's name (just barely). The top three pictures show a floor map of Route 66, and the images under those show a nice shop we stopped at on Route 66. But now we are back home (this "Bible wall" below is at our church)... Taliah!She has been growing so much! I know she'll be walking soon!! It's been such a joy to parent her - I can't believe how fast she's growing! She loved the travel, and did great in the car on the trip. We want her to be used to travel... ...because this is what's on our hearts!!Rom. 15:20 was a verse that helped me understand the need for going to the unreached. If you can see the information in the corner of this poster, you can see that out of 17,013 people groups in the world, 7,076 are still unreached. Roughly 7,000 people groups still have no Scripture in their distinct language, no church, and no way to hear the truth of the Gospel before they die and face a just God who must punish their sins in Hell because He is holy. Why aren't more people going to them? I'll let this passage speak for itself: Rom. 15:18-21: "For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and all around as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. And in this way I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already known by name, so that I would not build on another person’s foundation; but just as it is written: 'They who have not been told about Him will see, And they who have not heard will understand.' " Can you find the Gospel tract?Because we have a translation of the Bible given to us in America, Daniel and I want to share the truth of the Word of God as much as possible with the many resources He has given us. That's why we use Gospel tracts! This tracts are comics which share the Gospel from Living Waters. They're really cool, and you can actually read them on their website. Check them out! Living Waters Comic Tracts Link: store.livingwaters.com/gospel-tracts/comic.html Soon she will be able to read comics!Here's Taliah playing again! She loves being active! This is her playing on a friend's mini piano, and then some other pictures of her playing at the park. I can't wait until she's old enough to read! Maybe she can make pamphlets that are accurate about PNG - because I found another one that is wrong!! Another missions map...This one is a little bit better, but it's still not accurate. It might be hard to see, but Papua New Guinea on this map is listed as "0-9" least reached people groups, which makes it look like PNG is more reached than America, which has "50-99" unreached groups! I want to commend missions organizations for even attempting to make maps like this, and I really do appreciate what they're doing, as long as they're preaching the true Gospel, but I just want to point out that there's really more need than what people are saying out there. More people need to go to the least reached, and one of the least reached places is PNG. 49 groups in the Finisterre Mountain range alone (a range so small I couldn't show it to you well on this map) have no Gospel. Yet...what are Christians today focused on...? Art?Take a moment and try to figure out what this is. Did you guess? It's the Ten Commandments. On the one hand, I think this is kind of cool, on the other hand, I wonder why we spend our time doing fancy things like this when over 7,000 people groups don't have ANY access to truths like the Ten Commandments. Also, how many people walk by this every day without thinking about what it means? If you are willing, take the time to go through the commandments yourself! I'll provide them below in case you can't see them very well. " 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of [a]slavery.'You shall have no other gods before Me. 'You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them nor serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, inflicting the punishment of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing favor to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. 'You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain. 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male slave or your female slave, or your cattle, or your resident who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; for that reason the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 'Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be prolonged on the land which the Lord your God gives you. 'You shall not murder. 'You shall not commit adultery. 'You shall not steal. 'You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 'You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male slave, or his female slave, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.' " Just one more last memory of our trip...I mentioned in the last blog about visiting the MTC (the missionary training center for Ethnos360, where I went to college). These pictures look like they are from the MTC, but I took these photos at my friend's house. Please read the posters - they are really convicting and helpful! It was so great to see old friends, including my friend Renee on the way back, and my friend Emily, who I met through doing Living Waters evangelism in California. But we are glad to be back... ...until we end up at one of these places!Can you guess what these flags are? The one on the left is the Australian flag, and the one on the right is the flag of Papua New Guinea. If you don't know where these places are, check out one of the map pictures I included in this blog. Papua New Guinea is just above Australia! Daniel was born and raised so close to Papua New Guinea, that it's crazy to think he travelled across the world so he could share the Gospel to the unreached! So how is he doing that? Studies!I included these pictures to show how hard Daniel studies for seminary! He's doing so well!! The picture on the right shows an image Daniel showed me in one of his textbooks, and I thought it was pretty funny. I wish all his books had funny illustrations like this one does. But I think someone else is almost ready for picture books... The library!Taliah is almost ready for picture books! It's so fun to watch her grow. The library is such a great place to go, because Taliah can learn, Daniel can study, and we can try to share the Gospel through talking to other parents and putting tracts in books. So thankful for Phoenix library! I wonder if this place has libraries... ...guess where this is...This is Madang! Madang is the town in Papua New Guinea we plan to go to before we get into the tribe. I thought it would be helpful to put an image to the work we plan to do! Please pray for Madang, and pray for the unreached people groups of Papua New Guinea! The region we are planning to work with specifically is having serious problems with gang groups, so please keep that in prayer... ...as we prepare... Greek class!While Daniel is studying Hebrew, I've been studying along with him in Hebrew, but also taking this Greek class! It has been a great class to be part of. The class is specifically great because it's over Zoom, so I can participate with Taliah (and she loves it). Language training (Lord willing) will really help us in PNG. So would you consider helping us too? Any donations at this time go to help fund Daniel’s studies at seminary:
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AuthorsDaniel and Sarah Bruce desire to be missionaries to the unreached peoples of the world. Daniel is from Australia and Sarah is from Detroit, MI. They reside in Phoenix, AZ, where they are members at Shepherd's House Bible Church in Chandler, AZ. Archives
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