Thank you for your prayers. We returned from Fiji and had a good meeting with our SPNTC, Board of Trustees. It was great meeting with the Principals and Board of Trustee members from our other 4 satellite Campuses. We have campuses in Western Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, Micronesia, as well as the Solomon Islands. Micronesia recently joined making the fifth island nation with a satellite campus (actually Micronesia is one field but contains more than one island nation). I use the word campus a little loosely here because only Western Samoa has a developed campus. The rest of us teach classes in churches, rented space, first floor of the house, available room, or wherever. Praise the Lord for modern technology, making it possible for us to have access to books with a virtual library so we no longer need large facilities to effectively teach students. It was good to have Perlita dela Peret from Guam, representing the Micronesia campus. Continue to pray for our SPNTC and the President (Peni Fakaua) and the principals of our five campuses Tevita Taumoae from Samoa, Rebecca Inia from Fiji, David Potter from Vanuatu, Perlita from Guam, and George from Solomon Islands. Pray for the students that will be educated through our various programs.
Nancy presented a plan for a 1-year certificate program in Christian Education. This was received by our SPNTC team with an overwhelming positive response. We will be adding this to our Bible College this year. Pray for Nancy as she develops syllabi for the added subjects.
Our 3-week block course will begin on February 20. Nancy will be teaching her first course , "Intro to Christian Education," and I will teach, "Survey of the Old Testament." Remember us in prayer as we prepare our lessons and teach these subjects.
WEB SITE COMING SOON:
Danielle Schmelzenbach, daughter of Harmon and Cindy Schmelzenbach, missionaries serving in Fiji, is working hard getting a web site for the South Pacific field. [Praise the Lord for teen-agers who have computer skills.] As soon as I have information about that I'll let you know and then churches or individuals can go on-line and find out the latest info about the needs of the field. We've invited Danielle to come and visit her Aunt Nancy and Uncle George to help these computer challenged people with this web site. This will be neat and will help you at home. I will still send the email but much more info will be accessible 24/7.
Note: Clarification:
I need to clarify something I mentioned in previous prayer letters. I mentioned the "Heathen" people that we are reaching. I have received feedback that I may not have been sensitive to people from a different culture referring to people as "heathens." That would not be politically correct in the Western world culture. Our pijin language does not have a lot of "politically correct" words. The people from this area refer to themselves as "heathen", therefore we use the term without offense. I guess if you wanted to use politically correct words to describe who the heathen are it would be something like they are "unreached, pre-Christian people, who are culturally deprived and are socially, economically, and politically challenged."
These people have a very primitive civilization. People from the West visiting would think they run around naked. [However you can probably find less area of the body covered on many visitors to any western beach]. Yet these same beach goers would call these people naked. GO FIGURE! Anyway in the heathen area there are no schools, no modern clinics [they do have traditional remedies and medicine men], virtually everyone is illiterate, they sacrifice pigs to the devil, they trade with shell money as there are no trade stores or places to spend western currency, and there are no churches in the area. They are very spiritual and have a spiritual leader called the Fata'abu, which would be most literally translated "High Priest." They call themselves heathen and are referred to as heathen primarily because they worship the spirits, their religion is Animism, and they have rejected all other religions, including Christianity from coming into their area.
Now due largely to your prayers we have work within six heathen settlements on the island of Malaita. Pray for Barnabas and his wife Rachel, who are the main ones leading the work among these people in the West Kwaio area, and Benjamin and Jeremy, two brothers who are working with the heathen in East Kwaio. We trust that within a few years these two will plant churches in all this area as Barnabas and his group move in from the West and Benjamin and Jeremy move in from the East and hopefully they will meet in the middle.
Pray for the host of pastors and leaders that God will call, who will be trained to lead this work. I mentioned they are illiterate, which is a challenge in training a pastors for sure. Also the primitive civilization makes it tough on someone from the outside permanently residing there. It is definitely an interesting challenge that needs to be bathed in prayer.
Your Partner in His Ministry,
George Miller
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