Teaching on Baptism

Cassidy • January 20, 2025

The established church here in our village is Lutheran. Or, at least, it’s called Lutheran. In reality, it is a mix of Lutheran religious practices, animistic beliefs, and a false gospel of being good enough to be accepted by God. One of the practices here is that they baptize their babies and believe that this baptism saves the baby. After being baptized as a baby, the child should grow up and do good things and will go to heaven. 

After Zach’s original teaching through the Bible (2020-2021), he did not draw a line in the sand, telling people to leave their previous “Lutheran” identity and join a new church. He has been very slow and patient with them. He preaches the gospel each week and calls people to repent and believe, but he has not quickly jumped to teaching on obedience to commands like "be baptised" until they understand the foundation of Christ's work on the cross.

He teaches on Sunday evenings in the main public area. He has preached verse by verse through the first 3 chapters in Ephesians and comes back each week to: “How can we be forgiven of our sins and be a part of God’s family? By trusting in Jesus for salvation.” Again and again he shows them from the Bible that their good works cannot forgive their sins.

However, a watershed moment is coming. Ephesians 4 says that there is “one baptism” and now Zach is ready to teach on this. To start, he did a small Bible study with the leaders. He met with them for two Saturdays to lay out various Scriptures regarding baptism.  He gave them time during the week to study it, and then they came back the next Saturday to read through the passages together. The Bible is clear that baptism is not what saves a person, but is an opportunity for someone to testify to God’s saving work in their lives and to identify themselves with Him. 

Last Sunday evening, Zach began teaching on baptism in his main teaching time and will teach more in-depth this upcoming Sunday. If there are some who desire to be baptized, it will be a clear rejection of what they were taught in their Lutheran church and will be the beginning of a new church - a new group of believers who have publicly testified to God’s saving work in their lives and have been baptized.

Hopefully this post helps you know where we are at in ministry right now! If you pray for us, please continue. Pray for the believers and pray for those who may oppose God’s Word. Also, please pray for Zach. He carries a lot of this on his own, though he LOVES teaching and especially loves interacting with the leaders on things like this. You can pray for wisdom and encouragement for him. 

Annie is Four

By Cassidy • November 25, 2025
Our Annie Rose turned four today. We are thankful for her! She is our little go-getter. She likes being a part of all the action and is tough enough to handle it. Going to someone's garden, playing games outside, going on a hike, helping out when we are working on a project together... Annie wants to be involved. She also really loves helping. She begs to help me cook and has become actually quite helpful! Shredding cheese, sifting bugs out of flour, cracking eggs... she is a hard worker. Because her birthday fell during a break to town, she got to have two celebrations. The first was in the village with us, our new teammate, Josh, and his house building buddy, Johnathan. The second was today and included all five families that are in Madang right now! Here are some pics and her birthday interview:

Juli's Funeral

By Cassidy • October 31, 2025
Juli died yesterday. The news came to us through Bangena and her young daughter on our steps. “Juli died and her brothers are trying to hurt her husband. They are hiding him there in the Counsel’s house," they said, pointing to our next-door neighbor’s hut. So many people were shocked. “How could she be dead? She wasn’t sick. I saw her just a couple days ago…!” Eventually we learned that Juli had hemorrhaged all night and had died in the morning. A brand new baby, miscarried, and they could not stop the bleeding. Juli has seven children close in age (the youngest was still nursing). Her parents knew that children so close together can cause complications, so a while back they told Samuel to stop getting his wife pregnant. Samuel agreed and promised his wife she wouldn't have any more kids, but it was a promise he couldn't keep.

Millers' House Build

By Cassidy • October 30, 2025
As you may have read in email updates and other posts, we have new teammates - Josh and Autumn Miller! We are so thankful to the Lord for giving this sweet couple a desire to serve the Lord here among the Do people. They have been working since July to turn our previous office into their new home! Josh and Kombuk (our Madang carpenter friend) have flown in every couple weeks to work. A close family friend Johnathan is also here helping with the build. He flew out from the states in August and is staying here in PNG until the house is done! Johnathan has stayed in the village even between trips to keep working, which has been sweet for our family as we have been able to get to know him.

50th Independence Day

By Cassidy • September 28, 2025
On the 16th, PNG celebrated 50 years of independence! There were big celebrations all over the country. In our village, they had a flag raising ceremony at the school to start off the week. Then there were basketball and soccer tournaments, dart games and lots of food. Hiking down to the school:

Literacy Class 5

By Cassidy • September 3, 2025
On Monday, a new literacy class began! Our literacy teachers, Maikepe and Namura, have been gathering names and school fees for a year, but interest here was low. Once some men from a nearby village decided to join, interest (there and here!) spiked and we have an overflowing classroom. Sewing to bind four more literacy books to account for the extra students:

JAARS Video

By Cassidy • August 6, 2025
JAARS trains and sends pilots over here - we are thankful for them!

Highlands Break

By Cassidy • August 1, 2025
We were able to fly up to the highlands to take a break at SIL's mission base (called Ukarumpa). We wanted to rest, see doctors, connect with coworkers, and give the boys time with friends.

Teaching Video

By Cassidy • July 7, 2025
Zach and I put together a video for our church's Sunday school hour. The first small part explains how we keep ourselves supplied and the rest of it is how Zach handles foreign concepts in translation. If you have an hour and want to know more about the work here, see the video below:

Ellie Turns Two

By Cassidy • June 28, 2025
Our littlest Ellie turned two! We love this little girl and thank God for completing our family with her. We can see her beginning to grow A BIT in independence and contentment as she matures and is able to communicate. She has lots of words, giggles often at Annie's silliness, loves rice, and (as a last born) is usually just along for the ride. She is happy to write in the dirt or play on the rope swing, look at books on the couch or look out the window in a hut, but if anything goes wrong, she just wants her mama. It is sweet to see how good the boys are with her, and Annie is a good big sister, too! (Though Annie DID have a good cry a few days ago when she realized she wasn't going to get any presents on Ellie's birthday 😉)

April and Easter

By Cassidy • May 4, 2025
After celebrating Jude's birthday, we had a pretty low-key April and Easter. Zach has been faithfully preaching through Ephesians, and there have been good opportunities to follow up with people afterward.