For AFM missionaries and staff, the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 have never felt truer than they do right now. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die . . . a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance . . .” And we are learning that sometimes all that birthing and dying and weeping and laughing and mourning and dancing comes piling on us at the same time.

All our hearts are reverberating with shock and grief at the tragic November 26 death of missionary John Lello in a logging accident near his project site among the Ama people of Papua New Guinea’s Sepik River. In AFM’s 27-year history, John is our first missionary to die in the field. Pam, Abby and Alissa are now back in the States beginning the process of rebuilding their lives without their husband and father. O merciful, caring, grieving Father! Please be their all in all!

In the midst of our tears, we are also rejoicing with six (!) AFM families who have given birth in recent weeks—the Greenfields, Harrals, Dosses, Hentons, Williamses and Plohockys!

Adding to all this weeping and joy, we are saying goodbye to our Training Director, John Kent. He and his wife Belinda were AFM’s third missionary family, launching to Papua New Guinea in 1989. They have been pillars of our ministry for nearly 25 years. Now they are answering a new call to plant churches in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is heart-wrenching to say goodbye to you, John and Belinda, even as we share your joy in anticipating what God will do through you.

As we collectively grit our teeth and hang on to Christ our Rock, we remember Solomon’s words a little later in Ecclesiastes 3:11. “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

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