God is doing something new!
"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland."
-Isaiah 43:19
Dear Family, Friends, and Teammates,
It is hard to believe 2024 has finally ended and we are already leaping into a new year with many challenges but even more opportunities ripe for the picking. In this short note we would like to summarize some of the happenings of 2024 and then, as this verse promises that God is doing something NEW, share some of the exciting steps we hope to take early in the new year and the impact they will have. Thank you for taking valuable time to jump into the fox hole with us and experience on paper the battles fought this past year, while together scoping out what is on the horizon ahead.
Surviving Violence and Danger: A Testament of Faith and Resilience
The year 2024 will doubtless go down in the books as one of our most violent years with staggering losses for our churches and communities. There does seem to be a growing realization on the part of the greater population that the “freedom fighters” are more out-and-out thugs and robbers rather than people with a political agenda to fight for freedom. Their capturing of a New Zealand pilot and holding him hostage for most of 2024, while burning his plane also, in the hopes of gaining world attention has only made Mission Aviation Fellowship and other flying organizations much more selective of the areas they will serve, even further complicating the lives of our remote communities dependent on outside assistance. Just recently I had no option but to fly in with a non-mission group, and I did it knowing it was risky but no more so than facing the ruthless rebels! I wrote Luke 10:19 on my hand as an assurance from God: "I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; NOTHING WILL HARM YOU." I knew right away this verse was not by chance when I got into the very back seat with no seatbelt as the plane engine belched to life! Desperately looking for a way to stop my body from being flung forward on landing, I found a floor board sticking up slightly by my heel and was able to wedge a belt under it for my heel. After rehearsing how I would hold on to the metal door frame and brace my foot on the protruding board on landing, I tensed up as he missed his first approach into the steep ski slope strip! As he came around again, making a horrible second approach, I knew this verse was God’s answer to whatever was going to happen next! A violent bone crushing touchdown, led to the plane being catapulted back into the air only to come back down again as hard as before, and then it began careening off the runway to the left into the shrubs and trees. The pilot, copilot and I were thoroughly shaken but uninjured. Praise the Lord! Now to face the other dangers the rebels posed, but firmly believing this powerful verse that was indelibly etched on my brain.
People gather after John’s rough landing.
Rebel Violence Disrupts Communities but Sparks Unexpected Growth in Faith
Further rebel violence this past year resulted in the burning and total destruction of schools and teacher houses causing schools and medical work to cease to function, even to this present day. Direct threats to myself and other foreign missionaries has made all of us take precautions we never felt necessary in the past. Our house interior was broken into by the rebels and things stolen, but fortunately not burned down! Another result of this uptick in violence has been the fleeing of hundreds of our villagers to safer coastal towns. A totally unexpected result has been 11 thriving Moni churches in these two coastal towns and when we couldn’t protect the "FAITH COMES BY HEARING" team in our villages while they made an audible recording of the Moni New Testament, our Moni churches in Timika were able to accomplish this incredible feat! We will tell you more about this as we unfold 2025 and share with you what all is in the cross-hairs. Please pray with us that God would make 2025 the year peace returns to our area and our villages and churches can live in peace and thrive in their home areas.
A Long-Awaited Work Visa: Overcoming Years of Challenges and Uncertainty
On the 20th of March, 2024 I finally had a long- awaited one year work visa stamped into my passport! It had been over 3 years where I was not able to get a proper visa due to COVID and a host of other challenges, and I was forced to make visits using a tourist visa and knowing the many limitations I would face on this visa. Praise the Lord, I never had an encounter with government people questioning my presence and activity during these almost 4 years! Anyone living in Indonesia would agree this was a modern-day miracle! Being deported as a busy tourist would not have been a pretty sight!
A Close Call with a Flesh-Eating Infection: Gratitude for Preparedness and Recovery
I was thinking that with close calls with airplanes and death threats from rebels in 2024, there was maybe no room for any more emergencies this year, but I was wrong. After getting a very small nick in my shin playing soccer in the villages, I jumped on a USA bound flight with not a worry in the world. Shortly into the flight I became feverish, chills and a red line going up and down my leg! Having just been treating many patients each day, I had 2 strong antibiotics with me, which I began taking along with meds to bring my fever down. It was a miracle I had those meds, because when I got to the ER in the USA, they informed me I had a wicked flesh-eating infection that could be challenging to stop. . . .in some cases forcing amputations and sometimes causing death! Thank God I was already taking the correct two medications which they gave me another 10 days supply of and I am completely better now without the doctors carving on me!
Distributing the Moni New Testament to Remote Villages
With 2024 behind us, let’s aggressively marine-crawl into 2025 and begin doing some reconnaissance of what is ahead as we attempt to turn things around with God’s help. The Moni New Testament in audible form was recorded the end of 2024 and downloaded onto a solar powered PROCLAIMER. I will be meeting with many of our pastors to determine what villages to prioritize, due to high levels of illiteracy. Our goal would be to place an audible Moni New Testament Proclaimer in each village for the many people who can’t read, starting with some of the most remote places where schools have never existed. At some point in the next couple months, using information we have gathered from the villages, we will begin the task of praying and sourcing a unit for each village. In a few days I will be taking a sample PROCLAIMER to the villages and allowing them to see and hear firsthand how this unit will revolutionize non-reader's understanding of the Bible in Moni.
The team who helped record the Moni New Testament
Here I am with Mom, as she plays a record made by GOSPEL RECORDINGS in Moni of Bible passages long ago!
The sleek and efficient PROCLAIMER! What a difference many decades make!!
Creating a Moni Version of the Jesus Film
Another incredible opportunity we are chasing down in 2025 is making a Moni language version of the Jesus film. We have showed the Indonesian version in some of our villages but there is always the language barrier with many of our people not speaking Indonesian. I have just been in contact with the USA part of the team and their counterparts here in Indonesia and we are coming up with some possible dates when their recording team could come to Papua. We will again use Timika, the coastal town, as a base with 7 Moni churches to draw voice talent from for the many different people speaking in the movie. Once this is completed, we will have this wonderful and life-changing movie in Moni for the very first time! Thanks to a long time friend, Dr. Keith Crawford, God has already begun preparing the way for how this movie can be shown in remote villages with no electricity, using the two powerful solar powered projectors Keith just donated! Each projector can allow 1,000 people or more to watch on the big screen provided with the units!
In an area with huge mountains and no roads, God knew it needed to all be carried in a backpack!!
Preparing Students to Impact Their Tribes
A group of potential students are waiting to meet with me interior. They are believing that God would like for them to attend two years of very disciplined Bible training which would prepare them to return to their home villages and be spiritual leaders to their people. It will be a shorter commitment than our Bible school students doing four years, but it will allow them to use their skills to impact their tribe to follow God rather than being destroyed by so many trendy options being offered. Please pray that their lives will be transformed and they may find real purpose in life as they learn to be God’s bright light pushing back the darkness in their areas, symbolized by the logo of the training course they will be attending.
Praying for Leadership in Crisis: Elections, Tribal Conflict, and the Need for Servant Leaders
As I finish writing this epistle, we have some major government elections going on, and the final results are not in, but there is as much or more angst as we express in our own elections!! In our area where the previous leader didn’t want to accept his loss to a new candidate, he started a tribal war which has resulted in about 100 people getting shot with arrows! The wounded from one side have been flown to a hospital in one coastal town and the wounded from the other side to a different coastal town to avoid the war continuing in the hospitals! It is URGENT that the right person be picked for these next 4 years, a strong believer called to serve his tribe. For the most part in the past, government officials picked to govern our area have been AWOL most of the time, setting a precedent for government teachers and medical workers to also be AWOL!! Due to their absence, they have had little to do with addressing the urgent developmental needs of the many communities, and this is particularly true during the times of emergencies such as flooding, landslides, earthquakes, epidemics and tribal wars, which happen too regularly! Please pray for the choice of the right governor and also regent for our areas. We are hoping to offer and provide some very needed training on servant leadership and also management, should these top officials agree to allow their teams to attend these seminars.
Looking Ahead to 2025: New Opportunities and Hope for the Future
OK, after rambling too long on 2024 happenings and what is ahead in 2025, the Village Heartbeat team is signing off! God is doing something NEW!! We believe He is making a way forward in 2025!! Please hit the site to watch a very short video explaining just one aspect of the work in Papua emphasizing educational opportunities for the young people who have a desire to learn. We thank Randy and Andrea Olson who helped make this video and other videos like it in the past for us!
(Please note: some violence like we are regularly experiencing is seen in opening clip)
Click here to view John’s video update.
With much love and appreciation,
The Cutts Clan
