SOVEREIGN GRACE BAPTIST MISSION
International – Papua New Guinea / Malawi Africa
P.O. Box 60150 Ndirande Bt. 6 Blantyre Malawi /
P.O. Box 233 – Mt Hagen (WHP) Papua New Guinea
Tanggi Mission Station – North Koroba, Hela Province, PNG
Missionary / Evangelist: Peter A. Halliman
Email: panagioite04@gmail.com  /  Website: sgbm-malawi-africa.com

Date: 29th April 2023

Dear Pastor, Church, and All Supporters:

2 Timothy 2:15 — Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Ecclesiastes 12:12 — And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

This report will centre around two main events: the Bible Academy and the Bible Conference.

I started teaching the Bible Academy back in July 2022. I set the timetable for five days a week, Monday through Friday, with class starting at 07:30, going to 12:00 for lunch, one hour break, and continuing until 16:30. I maintained this eight-hour day, five days a week for weeks on end. We are nine months into this journey. A few dropped out, but most have stayed the distance. They had three months total off school, broken up in different timelines.

This month (April) I continued teaching on the same schedule. Besides the teaching I still had my own work to do: shopping for groceries for my house and for the pastors.

There is no library of Bible material prepared for me — I don’t just download material someone else has worked out. The translation, typing, proof-reading, and correction all take time — lots of time. Driving to town to make copies and returning to teach takes time. Coming home to study and prepare for the next day takes time. Standing for eight or nine hours a day teaching is taxing on the body.

Coming down to the end of the month, I will have invested one thousand hours of class time in a six-month course. The number of hours completed would be equivalent to 2.7 years of standard study, keeping in mind there are no other instructors to rotate.

The workload has been almost more than I can bear; however, the LORD has given me the strength and sustained me through these past months. The first quarterly Bible Conference was to be held at the Kim Bap church here in Mt. Hagen, which has been in existence since 2020.

The conference was scheduled to start on Friday the 28th and run through Sunday the 30th. I also had final examinations to give out to the students for this term. All examination questions I write out myself in order to grade — it is not a simple yes/no or multiple-choice format.

There were preparations on my part for the conference: assigning subjects, grading examination papers, and so on. The conference opening mumu was on Thursday. The preaching started on Friday morning.

As I have informed the pastors and people here, a three-day Bible conference does not replace the priority of the Bible Academy. In this generation, people have become so spiritually weak that any serious attempt to cultivate and nurture firm Christians often produces either waves of belly-aching or complete rebellion — which is, as the Scripture says, as the sin of witchcraft.

Matthew 24:37 — But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

In His Name,

Missionary Peter Halliman