This was written on Wednesday evening  1st February.

Gimi jobs finished.  Bill and Erwin ready to return

Thank you so much for praying!  Thank you to those who sent a note also in response to my bulletin last night.

By lunch sched today the jobs in Gimi were finished.  Bill had found some scraps of lighting wire around and had been able to piece them together to rewire the guest house.  Tomorrow morning I have to send in a shower bucket and 4 fluorescent tubes from Josh to fit.

Unfortunately Josh and Lynne haven't quite mastered how to send and receive email using the modem and the radio yet.  Tonight Josh was going to go a bit higher up the ridge to the site of Soma's old house where Soma manages to connect to the Digicel network so that he could ring Chris Walker and get some more help.  Please pray about this so that they can have contact with the outside world via email.

An exciting piece of news is that Siri'o and Gibsen feel ready to believe the Lord that He will enable them to translate the Melanesian Pidgin  lessons for 2 Corinthians into the East Gimi language.  I have just now printed out 2 copies of the set of lessons and those will be going in tomorrow also for them to start working.

This report was written on Tuesday 31st January, but I haven't been able to post it until now.

Excellent progress getting Lynne White resettled in the Gimi

Bill, Erwin, Josh and Lynne flew by helicopter this morning to the village where John and Lynne lived in the Gimi. Lynne has returned on her own following John’s death from cancer six months ago. The Lord gave good weather and so they were able to get there by about 10 a.m.

They got the radio antenna up during the morning and so I was able to talk to Bill on the 12:45p.m. radio sched. I have now talked with both Bill and Lynne on this evening’s sched and learned they have made tremendous progress.

The water tanks for both Lynne’s house and the little guest house where Josh and his family will be living for the next six weeks had been disconnected. In fact the pipe to the main house had been snapped off right at the tank. The guys have replaced the pipes and so Lord willing water will collect from rain tonight. Water is leaking from the bottom of the tank and so it appears a hole has developed. The men have put a mixture of cement and ash into the tank which hopefully will seal up the leak.

The kerosene fridge in the guest house and the 12volt fridge in the main house are up and running.

Sad to say someone has ripped out all the electrical wiring and lights in the guest house. Thus I have to get together wire and send it in on the helicopter when it goes on Thursday to take Josh’s little family in and bring Bill and Erwin out. The bucket shower has also been stolen from that house and so I have to get a spare one from our workshop and send it in also.

Please pray for safety as they work on four major jobs tomorrow including refitting the solar panels.

The believers in the village cooked a mumu meal and served it at about 2 p.m. They will be overjoyed that Lynne has returned. She will not live full-time in the tribe. She’ll come out again after the six weeks and be at Sobega where she has been for almost two months thus far. However, she hopes to make more trips into the tribe in the future.

Dear Prayer Team,

A number of you have written asking for an update on Bill's health.  Thank you so much for your prayerful concern.

He has had three chiropractic sessions now with Brent.  We thank the Lord for His provision through Brent.  Bill is feeling so much better now and is working normally.

On Tuesday, January 31st Bill will be flying to Negivi in the Gimi tribe by helicopter.  Lynne White whose husband John died of cancer in June 2011 returned to the field in December and she is going in to Negivi for 6 weeks together with a young family who are in the final stages of their orientation to missionary life in a cross-cultural situation.   Bill and Erwin, the young German who is working with HTS at present, together with Josh the orientating missionary will do repairs to the water supply and reinstall the solar panels and generator and whatever else needs to be done to get them all set up for their stay there.  Then they will fly back out on Thursday, February 2nd.

During this past week, two of the Gimi Bible teachers came out to work with Lynne on the lessons for 1 Corinthians.  One of them was Siri'o who worked with John on the preparation of the lessons.
He and Gibsen had gone through the working copies John had made and found all the errors which needed to be corrected.  Lynne worked with them on correcting the files of the lessons which John had stored on the computer.  Pray for Lynne as she helps the Gimi churches.  She is used to doing Bible teaching with the ladies, but working on the computer is something very new for her.  I have been able to help her with learning computer skills over the last few weeks.  I was thrilled to see how well she was doing working on putting the corrections into each lesson and then finding the next lesson stored in the computer when I went up to her house on Friday afternoon.  I wanted to take a photo of the three of them working together but it didn't happen.  What a pity.  These photos of Lynne and Siri'o I already have on file will have to do.

Your co-labourers,

Bill and Lynette Cottam

Bill & Lynette Cottam
NTM PNG
Highlands Tech Services
P.O.Box 1079
Goroka EHP 441
PNG
Phone: 675 532 1670
Mobile: 675 72767069 OR 71259593
www.mmol.org/cottam and http://billnalynette.blogspot.com

Our investment townhouse in Dubbo NSW

In the latter part of our stay in Sydney in October we made a trip out to Dubbo to visit our former elder from Warrimoo Baptist and his wife who have moved to a retirement community there.  We also spent time with one of their sons who is a real estate agent there weighing up the possibility of buying a house as an investment property because the money we had invested in a managed fund ready for our retirement had lost a lot in recent years.   We ended up purchasing a townhouse, the settlement of the sale taking place a month after our return to P.N.G.   The town house was rented out straight away and the son of our friends will be managing the rental for us.  We do not expect to actually live in the town house ourselves at any time but we trust that the value of the property will increase and so act as an investment for us.  We will also have the benefit of the rental income.

The purchase of our town house was finalised in early December.  Here are photos of it:

Happy New Year!

We wish you God's Richest Blessings for 2012

and trust you had a Blessed Christmas

We had a very quiet Christmas ourselves.   After experiencing dizziness for a week, on Monday morning 19th December Bill felt decidedly weird and so decided to go and see our mission doctor. After observing him for a couple of hours to rule out heart problems they took x-rays.  The doctor said that the C - 5 vertebra was 3.4mm out of alignment and this was making the hole where the nerves go through much smaller than normal.  He thinks the nerves may be compressed there.  He also thinks there may be problems up at the top of the spine in the skull but couldn't get a view of that.  The doctor put him on a week's bed rest with Ibuprofen 400mg 3 times a day. So Bill spent much of Christmas Day lying down.  Nevertheless it was a joyful day.  Bill had started to feel a little better on Saturday, Christmas Eve, and this continued into Christmas Day.  We spoke on the phone with David and then Philip rang us next morning on the afternoon of their Christmas Day in America.  Catching up on news from our sons and their families is always special.

Monday and Tuesday were public holidays here for Christmas and Boxing Day.  So Bill continued to rest.  I had a special day on Tuesday. I was given a birthday cake as a gift. I shared that by giving a morning tea for the folks on our end of the property. Then my friend Lynne gave me a birthday afternoon tea with another cake! To top off my day David rang in the evening and our three little grandsons Lucas, Will and Jayden wished me a happy birthday and we had a little chat.

On Wednesday Bill started back at work on light duties.  A young man has now joined us from Germany for three months.  After finishing his apprenticeship in a type of electrical work, he spent 10 weeks on the OM ship in Hong Kong and then came out to PNG on December 20th.  You'll hear Erwin's name in our updates over the next months.

The biggest upcoming task is the construction of a house for Gerolf and Mailis in the Dom.  For years we have asked you to pray for partners for Jim and Judy and those prayers have now been answered.  Praise the Lord.  Bill has been asked to head up the project.  Teams of men from here together with a couple of volunteers from ITF and Lapilo will go up just as they did to rebuild Jim and Judy's house in 2010.  The plan is to prefabricate as much of the house as possible at Sobega and then take the sections up and erect them.  Please support Bill in this.  He is finding the thought of it rather daunting.  Gerolf and Mailis thought that land had been given for their house but the go-ahead has not yet been given.  Please pray that this land or other of the Lord's choosing would be provided.

Praise the Lord – Bill just told me since I wrote this two days ago Tim who used to be our builder and now works in our Tribal Resource Centre printing lessons and literacy materials for the tribal church planters has drawn up the plans for the house and started compiling the materials list.  He will also help on the building to the extent he can without injuring his bad back.

God bless you all,

Lynette

The children in our community

Teachers Training Workshop May 2011--- speakers Chris Walker and Bill Cottam