Clay Pots

Tingon, Jason, and Polas

We will be flying out of the tribe in a few days. Over the past couple weeks we have met with our close friends and told them one on one that we believe God is moving us on, and that we will be leaving them soon. We then told the rest of the church the other day. We shared with them that it was a struggle to come to this decision , but that we have peace that this is God’s own direction upon our lives… and we shared how very much we love them and care for them. Even though there were many, many tears in the initial telling, we have been tremendously encouraged with their responses. The Tobo people do not hold back in showing their emotions and for many long hours the people held us tight with weeping and wailing.

We wanted to share a couple of their responses with you because it is not about us, but it is about the exaltation of the power of God.

I went and visited a dear friend of mine, Polas a couple weeks ago. 2 years ago, shortly after Tingon and I shared with him the gospel of grace, he went to town to live and work there. I haven’t seen him for two years and was wondering how he was doing. As Tingon, Polas, and I spent three super encouraging days together in town talking of the goodness of God, the salvation we have in Jesus Christ, the grace of God which makes it all possible, and how each of us are living our lives because of the change the Spirit is doing in us, Polas spoke this to us,
“When I left our village and came to town, I had no intention of staying for longer than a month or so. But I saw the spiritual darkness in this gold mining town and so I put up a tarp and started teaching about the characteristics of our perfect God and how we humans are sinful and doomed to hell. I taught that following the law or living moral lives or following different denominations cannot save us, only belief in Jesus’ death for us can save us from our sin and the punishment of hell. Many people have challenged me on this point, but I take them to God’s Word and show them the only road of life… Jesus.”

When we told the church, one of the men who was a slow starter, but has really grown leaps and bounds in the past few months said this:
“We did not ask for you to come, but God saw our need for Jesus and brought you to us. Now we have not only believed in the one road, Jesus, and been given eternal life, but we also know how to read the Word of God in our own language. We have been blessed and since God brought you here, how can we disagree with him and say that you should not leave now? He is taking you somewhere else. Others need to hear this message and God will use you to tell them.”

Another friend spoke up and said,
“God’s Word says that some people plant and others water. You have planted the seed and it has grown. God will use others to water, and God will cause us to grow.”

On lady said,
“We can be sorry that you are leaving, but we now have Jesus Christ in our lives and so we can rejoice because we will shortly see each other in heaven where there will be no more goodbyes or tears.”

We praise God for the privilege it has been to live among these people and to become their friends and brothers. It has been an unspeakable blessing to watch God, through the simple gospel message, to bring salvation to these people and to watch him work in their lives and cause them to mature. All the praise goes to him! “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

Another praise of ours is that we have been able to sell almost everything of ours to other missionaries. Even though it has been hard for all of us to let go of these earthly possessions we are reminded that they are simply that, earthly possessions which will rot and rust, but our true treasure is being able to see these believers again in heaven someday.

His Clay Pots,
Jason, Kellie, Micah, Sophia, and Malachi Knapp