Mark: I’m Mark Gilmore, and with me here today are two special guests. Let me have them introduce themselves.

Jonathan: I’m Jonathan. 

Stephen: I’m Stephen. 

Mark: And these are my second and third sons. God has blessed my wife and me with nine children. On December 24th, we are off to a very special mission. What are we doing? 

Jonathan: We’re gonna go for six months. We’re gonna be together as a family. We’re gonna be looking for gospel advance into the country of Papua New Guinea.

Mark: Yes, Papua New Guinea, or PNG for short. Where in the world is PNG? 

Jonathan: I like to think of it in relation to Australia, to its south, and then Indonesia to its west. So if you picture a little triangle, that kind of helps me. It’s the right tip of the triangle. 

Stephen: Basically, you could say it’s the nation just over the nation down-under.

Jonathan: That’s a good way of putting it.

Mark: That’s unforgettable. It’s actually the second-largest island in the world behind Greenland, not Australia. Just a check on your geography, Australia is actually not considered an island; it’s a continent.

So, PNG, how many people live in Papua New Guinea? It’s about 8 million. This is an amazing and unique country. It has the most diverse people groups per capita regionally, with about 885 different languages spoken in this relatively small space.

Why are we going to PNG? 

Stephen: Well, the nation is incredibly open, possibly more open to the gospel than any other nation in the world. That’s for a few different reasons. One of them is Bible distribution. 

Mark: Over the last five to six years, the government asked for a free Bible to be given to every student in the entire nation. To this day, over one million free Bibles have been distributed in primary and secondary schools. The government put out an official document stating that the Bible is the only nation, and they know they need change.

Do you have a little insight into what’s the status of the young people in that country? What’s the spiritual need? 

Jonathan: It seems that there’s a group called the rascals that would go around and vandalize and be a part of a lot of crime, different criminal acts. So the spiritual need of the youth is prevalent. 

Stephen: They’re basically land pirates. It is really unique that the government itself is producing this openness in Papua New Guinea. 

But another factor is just the fruit of missionary work going from past century and maybe just a little bit before that. Missionaries like Darlene Deibler-Rose, Margaret Stringer, Stanley Albert Dale, who’s a martyr, and Marilyn Laszlo is another name. There are names, name after name we could mention of missionaries who have basically laid the groundwork for an incredible breakthrough that we’d like to step into.

Mark: And there’s many, there’s a number of missionaries even now that are in different corners of Papua New Guinea. And one interesting thing is that these different people groups often are very isolated so that one missionary could give a lifetime to one particular mountain or valley in that language and the next valley over the mountain may not actually be getting clear gospel teaching, clear gospel light, their language may not even have the Bible. 

Jonathan: And that’s a geographical issue, right? 

Mark: Yeah, it’s created by the geography of the land and so while God has… we can trace some amazing spiritual breakthroughs in the preceding century, and yet there are still unreached areas. There are still people who are waiting for the gospel to arrive in their valley, to their people. That’s kind of what’s bringing us into this land now when we talk about what’s happened before like when we go who are we gonna be with? What’s our plan?

Jonathan: Yeah, we’re going to be partnering with some local pastors, even connections that you’ve previously made on past trips. We’re going there to equip those leaders to reach into nearby, unreached regions. That would be the ultimate goal. So that all of Papua New Guinea would be reached with the gospel. There wouldn’t be one village left without hearing of Christ. 

Mark: So the greatest potential for gospel advance in that land is not tied to our going or our arrival. It’s tied to the believers that are already there.

Our first, really our primary goal is to encourage those believers with the vision of the Great Commission. We call it GoMission. When you all think of GoMission, what do you think of? 

Jonathan: The first thing that comes to mind is Christ’s command, the Great Commission. It’s not a commission that centers around bringing people to a central location. Rather, it’s one of sending, of going. As that gospel goes, it moves from the reached regions to the unreached regions. As that happens, the Great Commission is fulfilled, bringing the gospel to every place, training current believers to bring that gospel to every place, and partnering with those nearby believers to reach into those regions. 

Mark: Steven, anything to add to that? 

Stephen: Basically, what he said can be summarized into the Great Commission is a goal mission.”

Mark: I was really encouraged to hear about a recent conference in one of the cities where multiple fundamental believers came together, and the theme of the conference was, “Evangelize all of PNG.” One of the key leaders told me personally that there’s a lot of good churches that have lost the vision and are not on mission. There’s a passivity among some of our churches. We aren’t on mission. And he says, “God’s lighting a fire,” and that’s what we want to go contribute to. We want to encourage these churches, you can finish the Great Commission. That mountain over there, that village over there, we’ve got to get to every one of these.

How are we going to do this? How are we going to train believers to do this? And that is our vision. 

Jonathan: And I think to add to that, it’s possible. It’s a mission that’s possible in this generation. It’s also happening right now, and we get to be a part of it because it’s an open door. We need to be running into those open doors. We need to be looking around and saying, where is God working? Because it’s possible since He promised His power to see it completed and because He expected it to happen today. There’s places where we can step into that right now. Yes, we’re burdened for the restricted areas too. But as we go into those open doors, likely that will generate spiritual energy. You even think of Papua New Guinea and what happened there with those missionaries that went there 50, 60, 70 years ago. The government wasn’t going to distribute Bibles at that time to all the students, but because of their efforts into that land, it’s now a wide-open door.

Mark: Yeah, it’s great. It’s as wide open as it’s been, and the glory days of gospel advance are not in the past. They’re right in our hand. Think of one million Bibles going out. I know some stories others could tell them better than me of a school and a school leader and a local village leader. The Bibles arrive, and they say we don’t have a church here. Who’s going to stay and plant the church? Three villages saying we all we need a church here now that you brought the Bibles. You can’t just stop.

That’s exactly why we want to step into this. The Bible’s being distributed shows us the open door, but that is far from the end of Great Commission responsibility. And so if we can encourage, build up, and set on mission these local churches and these pastors, and it’s just a privilege to be an instrument, it’s humbling. And when I was there about a half year ago, I’m bringing my whole family this time, but on that trip I was just alone. 

I was with national preachers, I arrived in one, and they put together this Mumu celebration. They killed two pigs, they killed a goat, they brought in all of this harvest, these fresh foods and just had a massive feast. They basically dig a hole in the ground and with fire and rocks, they create a ground oven and they cook all of that and it just is moist and delicious. And it’s an incredible celebration, and they did it for my arrival, and I feel so humbled. I’m so nothing, and yet they honored our arrival because we came to be that kind of an encouragement, that kind of a challenge, and that kind of a blessing.

So describe our trip a little bit. We’ve kind of, go ahead, Stephen, and describe that. So it’s got six months, right? 

Stephen: Six months, we can basically break the trip down into two parts. We’ll be in two main regions from January to March. We’ll be in the Highlands, which is the central mountain area of Papua New Guinea, partnering with leaders in their home region and then preaching in new villages. And then the second part will be from April to June, taking a gospel survey up the Sepik River, which is gonna be an incredible pioneer missions expedition.

And I’ve heard some of you have asked me, where’s your family gonna sleep? What’s the housing situation? Well, we’re certainly gonna be connecting with some pastors, but basically whatever we can find. It’s not actually much of a consideration for our family. For those of you who have gone on Cameroon trips in the past, you might have remembered some of those mountain hikes, and we just walk into a village. We will have some hammocks or whatever they have and just sleep. It’s not a big deal. We’re not worried about it. We’ll just kind of take care of it as it comes.

Mark: Really we’re asking the Lord to show us the open villages, the ones that are welcome. You know if we come to a village that doesn’t want us, we’ll just keep going. I was there as I said a half year ago when I talked to a young man, and I gave him the gospel and he made a profession of faith, and then he said, “Will you come over the mountain to my village, there it is,” and he just pointed up over the mountain, would you come? And I had to leave the next day, I couldn’t go. But that was the kind of invitation, the kind of welcome. 

And I read years ago a particular missions group, just a small two or three missionaries, a couple ladies doing Bible translation. God used them to plant and establish a church. And then at one point, some people came in from some distant place and said, “Are you coming to our village? When are you coming?” 

And she said, “I don’t think we have that opportunity. We don’t have the personnel.” 

And they said, “Won’t you please? We are waiting.” And they left. 

And it was some days or weeks later that God put it on her heart. I think we should just go and look at that village, and God wants us to. And so they just trekked or took the canoe, and when they got to the village, they arrived, and there was this church building built in the middle of that village, and the missionary says, “Wow. You’ve got a church here. How did that happen?” 

And they said, “No, we don’t have a church. No one’s come to preach the Bible. We want one, so we built the church, and it’s waiting for someone to come and teach us about God.”

What an amazing, and she left, and she just, it was almost in tears. She says, “I don’t know when I can come back. I don’t know how this need is going to be met,” and she just begged, “Won’t you come? People are literally waiting. They’ve built a church building, and it’s empty, and there’s no one there to teach them and train them in the word of God.” 

So there are still villages that are waiting. And that leads us here as we conclude here, how about, how can people pray for us as we go? 

Jonathan: Definitely, there are several things we have in mind here going forward into it.

First of all, please pray for Gospel advance. If you pray for anything, pray that the gospel would go forward with power, like we read in the accounts in Acts, how the gospel would enter a village and it would divide the believers from the unbelievers very quickly and show who was open, who was not. And by God’s grace, we want to see that happen in villages. 

Also, pray for our health and our safety. We already mentioned the safety risks earlier on in the podcast, but definitely there are diseases over there. as well. And, you know, we’ve talked about that as a family going, if God would have us have one of us or multiple of us get sick or even die, if that would be part of his plan for advancing the gospel more powerfully, we’re ready for that. And we’re just asking for His grace in that. But please pray for those things. 

And then also cultural adjustment will be a thing for sure. And learning the language. They speak Pigeon talk in the region we’re going. There is some English, but just pray that we’d have efficiency in learning the language, that of that talk it’s like a mix of English, French, some blended words from Australian is you know Australian English is in there too.”

And then also pray for us personally, each one of us, our spiritual walk with God is going to be of the utmost importance and then team unity, relationships with each other. There’s no way we’ll be establishing quality spiritual relationships with the people around us if we’re not having that among ourselves. And we’re just thankful for God equipping us as a missions team. Yes, we’re a family, but God’s given us a number of abilities there, but we need that unity around the Holy Spirit.

And then pray for satanic strongholds to be torn down in the villages that we’ll be going to. 

And then future direction, you know, it’s a six-month trip. It’s a bit of time, but it’s a short amount of time. We’re wanting to believe God for big things, for international things, and we want to see His leading in each one of our lives to see that accomplished, to see the GoMission spread all over the world, and also in the region there in Papua New Guinea. So you can pray specifically for those requests.

Stephen, do you have anything to add to that? 

Stephen: Just on the note of future direction, that could mean multiple things. One is, what would that mean more for us, you know, in Papua New Guinea? Do we need to advance the cause more there? All of us as siblings are a lot of us, I should say, are adults. Only one isn’t actually on the team. Is this a place where one of us needs to go as a missionary? Right. And so we’re seeing this trip as a survey trip. It’s basically a beginning, not just to gain some experience, but more to scout out the land, to see what does the future look like for us? So we need prayer for clarified callings. 

Jonathan: And if you’re looking to pray more specifically with us throughout the trip and are looking for email updates, linked below in the show notes, you can find a specific email. You can espond and ask to be placed on the prayer update email list, and we can get that for you. 

Stephen: Also, we’ll have a short mission summary video coming out that you can look for on our GoMission website, gomission.org and also on the WhatsApp Prayer Stream. 

Mark: As we finish here, I just want to highlight that we’re stepping into a spiritual battle. Again, we covet your prayers intensely. We’re going on territory that’s belonged to Satan, and he’s not going to give it up without a fight. In fact, God calls us to a fight, and that glorifies Him. So, we’re going to encounter opposition. We’re going to encounter strongholds. It’s not if or whether something difficult happens or is encountered; it’s going to be there. It’s part of gospel advance. We covet your prayers. Pray that strongholds that Satan has held from Spiritism, animism, to false Christian teaching, Catholicism, Lutheranism, Seventh-day Adventism have a great hold over the peoples there. We need to see God’s power open blind eyes.

We so much appreciate your standing behind us, catching the vision. Sign up for that email update; we’ll be sending those out quite regularly that’ll really equip you for prayer, keep you in touch with our team. 

Also, these kinds of trips carry the burden of GoMission. There may be other opportunities we have in the future for folks to join us. We may have a couple join us on this trip; there have been unknowns that have kept us from getting too many people involved. But in the future, you could be on a trip to PNG, going to unreached villages, being trained for going to wherever God wants you to go in the world. So it’s a privilege, and we thank you for standing behind us. 

So remember that in a world of uncertainty and turmoil, the only way to be at peace is to stay on mission with Jesus in His GoMission.