A Hunger for God

For many years Lourens and Marie Laureti, missionaries among the Mengen people of Papua New Guinea, have been praying for a neighbouring Mengen village. And now, they are seeing God stir up a hunger in that village. The people are asking to be taught.

“They have been traveling down to our village regularly with requests for teachers to come and teach them,” wrote the Lauretis. “I hear weekly from them, requesting a date for teaching to start. They even started to build a teaching house and houses for potential teachers as well as making gardens.”

But it’s not all good news. Even now, just for asking to be taught, they are facing persecution. People have been cut with knives and their houses broken into.

Despite the persecution, they’re still asking to be taught — but there’s another problem.

Lourens and Marie share a sad truth: “We are not sure how and when we will be able to teach them, as we do not have enough labourers. … The only thing I continually tell them is, ‘Let’s wait and see.’”

And that’s hard. Lourens admits that “this has been draining for me and is heartbreaking!”

Pray for more labourers. Pray for hearts challenged to the work of missions. And pray for those currently being trained at Ethnos360 Bible Institutes and Emanate, that they would stay the course.