Making a List and Checking It Twice...

Sunrise over Efate

No, we're not thinking of celebrating Christmas in July! 😁But, we are making a list. With only 3 1/2 months till we bid farewell to our home of 18 years, our minds have been full of many things needing to be done before we leave. Some of the items on our list are training meetings where we spend time helping others be ready to take on our responsibilities. We're so thankful for the people who have committed to taking on those roles! Though they have much to learn, they come with skills and knowledge that makes the learning easier. They also have an eagerness to learn and willingness to give their time. We're praising God for our SPNTC administrative team!

Some of the items on our list are things we're really glad to be checking off the list! Things like registering our Toyota RAV4 for the last time and the last time to face the process of renewing our residency visa. The process to accomplish these tasks seems to change every year and involves many attempts to finally get them checked off. 

Our list includes some "lasts" that are difficult because they mean letting go of something that we've really enjoyed and found very fulfilling. David is nearing the end of his last SPNTC class, and Sylvia finished teaching her class last month. As difficult as it has been to be prepared and ready to teach each class, the opportunity to be connected with our pastors, church leaders, and faculty as their teachers has brought so much joy across the years. It has been exciting to see several of our graduates move on to become teachers who are eager to make a difference in the lives of their students. 

In the midst of checking off things from our list, things that are fairly familiar, we are having to learn some brand new things which then get added to our list to pass along to others. We appreciate your prayers as we get familiar with GNECsis - the Global Nazarene Education Consortium system of recording students, classes, and grades for SPNTC. This system has been under development by people in the Nazarene Church to help small schools like SPNTC with record keeping without the cost of expensive software. We have been joining other SPNTC principals and registrars from Samoa and Fiji and another Bible college representative from Portugal via Zoom to be trained by Kindra Bible from her office in the USA. It's a huge jump from the Microsoft Word and Excel documents that have kept our records for the last 15 years here in Vanuatu. Please pray for us as we figure out the tasks and procedures for entering our information and train our SPNTC registrar and new principal, Rev. Jenny Isaac.

Our GNECsis training takes place on Zoom across many time zones.

Meriam joined students from Samoa via Zoom.

In our last newsletter we mentioned that the CALD program from Nazarene Theological College in Brisbane, Australia, was set to begin for Nazarenes in Vanuatu. Rev. Meriam Naunga has completed her first 25 hour intensive and is now working to complete her assignments in the first CALD class, Introduction to Pastoral Theology. She is finding it to be very challenging with all the lectures and discussions in English, as well as the reading assignments. She is learning to submit assignments online that she first writes in Bislama and then translates to English. Thank you for your prayers for Rev. Meriam as she pursues this training, and pray that other Nazarene graduates will join her.

Pastor David and Rev. Meriam Naunga

"See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" 

Isaiah 43:19

A Few Highlights from Home Assignment 2013

After ten long months, we are finally breaking the silence with a new post to our blog!  

We praise God for his strength and protection during our home assignment in the USA from April through June.  We traveled to 7 different states and spoke in over 40 churches during those 3 months.  We are thankful for the genuine interest and loving, supportive folks we met in all those churches. 

At the end of June, we were so glad for the privilege of attending the quadrennial assembly of the Church of the Nazarene in Indianapolis, Indiana, where we joined in worship with thousands of Nazarenes from around the world.  It was a special privilege to join in fellowship one afternoon with many of the Papua New Guinea friends who had made the long trip to attend the General Assembly. 

Along with the many other friends that we had the joy of sharing a meal with or meeting in the AP exhibit, it was a special delight to re-connect with several of the teachers who had spent a year or two in PNG serving in the MK school and helping to shape our three sons. 

First MK School teachers -
Bill and Connie Patrick

MK School teachers -
Ruth Kinnersley and Tami Hardesty-Jaynes

After the assembly, we took two of the PNG delegates with us to Sylvia’s parents’ farm in Michigan.  Mr. Wallace White Kintak is our dear friend from the College of Nursing.  White has been faithfully and wisely leading the college for over ten years now.  Rev. Peter Kui has been serving as the Officer in Charge at Melanesia Nazarene Bible College, and this was his first trip to the USA. Both White and Peter have experienced God’s protection through some difficult periods of persecution as they have served the Lord in PNG.  They re-told their stories for Sylvia’s family and some friends who had gathered at the farm one day. What an honor to know these godly men of faith and to know them as our brothers! 

David, Peter and White picking cherries

Peter and White "story-ing" with Sylvia's father and David

Life and Times of the Potter's

On June 7th, we celebrated 32 years of marriage and friendship! 

Tamanu on the Beach Resort - Hibiscus Bungalow

 A few days later we got away to our favorite beach resort bungalow 

and enjoyed watching the waves and listening to them crash against the reef.  

We took an early morning walk and watched the sunrise.  

In the evening, the full moon was reflected on the ocean and we made moon shadows on the sand.  

Full moon over the Pacific

We are so thankful for the privilege of living and serving in this beautiful place!  God has been so good to us!

Tomorrow afternoon (July 31), we will be taking a much anticpated vacation!  We are flying back to the States for lots of fun with friends and family.  We will start off in Kansas City, then head to Truman Lake in Missouri for a Potter family reunion.  Then, it is on to Ohio to celebrate Tim Radcliffe's marriage to Bethany and to spend some time with Dora and Sylvia's other grandparents, Jim and Kathy Radcliffe.  We will drive up to Michigan and visit Sylvia's parents and Wesley for a few days before driving over to New York where Sylvia will get a medical check up, and hopefully David too!  We'll spend our last days of vacation going to the zoo and the park with our two favorite little girls!

...Not a Creature Was Stirring

Tannenbaum bread baked in the big W&W pot on top of the stove!

By December 26th we were pretty tuckered out.  We planned for it to be a quiet day at home.  We each opened our one Christmas gift from each other and set to work at making the traditional Christmas Tannenbaum bread. Sylvia has been having trouble with the stove since we got back from the States, and she could not get it to light for anything!!  So, we set up the big Work and Witness pot on top of the stove and baked the Tannenbaum bread inside.  We think it was the best one we've ever had! 





This year all our kids were in different places - Joel and Bekah and the twins are in Papua New Guinea, Jeffrey spent a few days with his girl friend's family near Detroit, and Wesley was with Sylvia's parents and her little brother Phillip and family in Kalamazoo.  We are thankful for things like Skype and Facebook that make it possible for us to be connected with the ones we love even though we are all over the world.  

"...and they will call him Immanuel - God with us."

~ Matthew 1:23

Twas the Week Before Christmas...

Christmas week was very busy for us, as it probably was for everyone!  

We had a Christmas party with Peter and Jenny Isaac and their boys on Tuesday. 

We started with decorating Christmas cookies. ALL of them got eaten after dinner.

Jenny helped Sylvia get the meal on the table.  Even though we live in the same town, we don't always get much time to talk together.  It was nice to have a few minutes to catch up on what has been happening in our lives.

Peter played his guitar...

and Sylvia dusted off her violin and we all sang our favorite Christmas songs together.

 David helped the boys tell the story of Christmas just before we opened presents!

We love our missionary family and are so thankful for them!

Heart Issues in Vanuatu

In mid-November, David began to have mild, left-sided, chest pain, his heart beat was quite irregular, and his blood pressure dropped.  Being nurses, we were familiar with the signs of a heart attack and we knew that Vanuatu was NOT the place to have one.  We checked in with the doctor who did an EKG and recommended that David drop one of his blood pressure medicines that has been known to cause heart irregularities.  Even after a week, nothing seemed to change, so we were advised to get to a medical facility that could do a more thorough examination of his heart.  We had to decide which country would be the best place to go - Australia, New Zealand, or the USA.  Getting into Australia was a bit tricky and cumbersome, but it was the cheapest place to fly to.  

So, we began to jump through the hoops of securing a medical visa to Australia.  We had to get a chest x-ray and see a different doctor in Port Vila to fill out a paper saying we did not have tuberculosis.  That doctor would forward the x-rays and paperwork to the Australian High Commission who would in turn send it on to Australia.  Our doctor had told us that it usually takes 3 weeks to get a medical visa, but we didn't want to wait that long.  The folks at the Australian Hi Com said that they would expedite the papers and we could be assured of having the visa within a few days.  That sounded great!  

Downtown Brisbane, Australia

Next step, we made an appointment for the following week with a cardiologist that was recommended to us by one of our Aussie friends.  We were to fly out on November 28th with appointments scheduled for November 30th and December 1.  We heard nothing from the Australian Hi Com by the 25th which made us get nervous.  Early on the 28th we were in touch with someone who told us the paperwork was misplaced and would not be back in Vanuatu until the 29th.  But there were no flights out on the 29th, so our friend at the Hi Com kept trying different ways to get our visa secured.  She was finally successful just 1 1/2 hours before our plane departed from Vanuatu!

Gracious friends, Don and Ruth

Don and Ruth Howie, Nazarene friends who live in Brisbane, had graciously agreed to let us stay at their house during the week of David's appointments.  They had come to Vanuatu in 2007 and stayed in our apartment while we were away for a conference.  While they were in Vanuatu they installed the wiring in our house, but we never met each other face to face until General Assembly 2009!  We actually met up again at the beginning of November as we traveled through Brisbane on our way back from the regional conference.  It was such a delight to actually have time to get acquainted with each other.  They took us to David's appointments and then took us to see the places where they were raised as kids and where the first Nazarene Churches were located.  We even had a chance to drive to Tamborine to have a lovely visit with John and Vicki Moore, Field Strategy Coordinators for Australia and New Zealand.  

David had several tests done by the cardiologist - Holter monitor, stress test, and stress echocardiogram - which revealed the irregular heart beat, but also showed that his heart is strong and showed no signs of blocked arteries.  We were very thankful for that news, even though there are still no answers for the irregularity, low blood pressure, and chest pain.  So, we praise the Lord for health and strength!  We are doing what we can to live healthy lives by eating healthy food and getting exercise.  We would appreciate your prayers that God will continue to keep his hand of protection on our physical bodies so that we can serve Him as long as possible!