November 2021 Prayer Request from Luke Thek
I’m not sure if she coined it originally, but one of Jess’ best friends labeled our current phase of ministry the ‘hurry up and wait.’ We hurry on every piece of paperwork for getting to Papua New Guinea and then wait on the government. It’s kind of like being at Disneyland, but a lot less fun. We went to Disneyland recently. The tickets are expensive and we are the kind of people that want to get our money’s worth. We arrived before the park even opened and when it did open we saw people SPRINTING to their first ride. We weren’t that desperate, but we did share in the ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality with the sprinters. Once we arrived at the Guardians of the Galaxy ride, we became instantly jealous of the sprinters. There was already a long line! It’s 8AM, are you for real? I highly underestimated Disney super fans.
This ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality was never more fully lived out than on our trip moving to California. We had stopped to visit some friends in Arkansas that are also missionaries in PNG that are on home assignment right now. Many people may have expected us to wait until we arrived in California and got settled before we started the nitty gritty of paperwork for PNG, but that is not the ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality. We knew we needed to get Jess’ name changed and renew our passports. While we were in Arkansas, we did some googling and found out that name changes with social security were being taking mail in applications only due to covid and it would take 2-6 weeks. We didn’t have that kind of time. We also found out that for emergencies you could get an in person appointment at a government office and get your name changed the SAME DAY! We called, explained our situation, and they let us do it! Thank you God for being in the details! We wondered what other emergencies would require a same day name change.
We high fived and set about the next task: renewing our passports. We stopped at a library in Oklahoma (where we happened to be driving through at the time) and began printing our documents. We dropped them off at a Fedex with the added cost of overnight shipping because we knew government processing would be the slowest part of the process. Classic government work am I right? An hour down the road Jess said, “I forgot to sign it.” “Sign what?” “The passport document.” Oh no. We called the place we had just dropped them off at and asked them to open the item we just attempted to mail (which thankfully hadn’t gone out yet). Sure enough it wasn’t signed and we turned around to go sign it.
We have an amazing God. To enter PNG we need a work permit and an entry permit. Luke already has his work permit so Jessica’s process will presumably take a little longer. God knew this and Got Jess’ passport back to us in 6 weeks! Luke’s is due to arrive this week and we will be able to hurry up and wait yet again.
In the ‘wait’ portion we have managed to still do a lot. We got married, spent an amazing honeymoon in Belize, moved across the country and visited friends along the way, shared at churches and youth groups, traveled to Southern California twice, got involved in leading 9th graders at youth group, went to a wedding in Tennessee and saw other friends, taught Luke’s little brother 18 bible lessons, began reviewing linguistics, began learning guitar, started going to bible study at church, completed much of the paperwork for Papua New Guinea, received some immunizations for Papua New Guinea, combined our websites, filmed and edited videos for our website, shared with a church missions board in northern California, have been going through a marriage book, and we have even still had some time to surf. God has given us many opportunities not only to be involved in ministry, but also to rest and to fully enjoy it so we can be adequately fueled for the hurry after the wait.
We are stoked to have our websites combined so we can send out more updates to keep you guys informed as we come closer to heading to Papua New Guinea! Thanks for being a part of our tribe!
Prayer and praise
We would love prayer for Luke’s passport to arrive and for the remainder of the paperwork process to gain entry as fast as possible so we can buy plane tickets.
Praise God that married life is going well. We would still like prayer for our marriage to be strengthened even further as we look to put it to the test in PNG.
Praise the Lord that Luke got to teach his little brother through the bible over 18 lessons.
Praise the Lord for many safe travels.
Praise the Lord for Jess’ parents getting plugged in with a small group Bible study.
Please pray for more funding for our one time cost of building our our house in the tribe. We are 60% funded!