A young girl’s simple prayer request led to thousands of students hearing the gospel in Papua New Guinea. Tim and Leandra Hawes have worked as missionaries in PNG since 2015. They are involved in church planting and Tim serves as the Academic Vice President of Goroka Bible College. Shortly after arriving, they began to teach through The Story of Hope in the village of Sagifa. The people listened intently to the chronological story of redemption, and Solo, the village leader’s wife, was one of the first to make a faith response to the gospel. Despite much opposition and many difficulties, she has remained faithful. Through her testimony, her adopted daughter, Jira, also was saved.

One Wednesday night during prayer meeting, Jira asked that the group pray for a Bible club teacher for her public school, so that she might learn more and so that her friends might hear the truth of the gospel. This really got Tim thinking. Goroka Bible College seeks to not only train students academically and theologically, but to provide them with practical experience in ministry. This seemed like a great opportunity with which the students could get involved. Tim had been seeing a real passion for evangelism growing in several of them, and this would give them the opportunity to engage dozens of public-school students. Working with Jira, a Bible study club was started at Safa primary school for the first semester of 2019. This quickly became two studies, one with 50 kids and the other with 100!

Those from Goroka Bible College who were teaching were electrified and began to recruit more of their peers to help them. The next semester they began Bible Study clubs in two more area schools. God has blessed their efforts greatly and the clubs have received such a great response from students and school officials that, under Tim and Leandra’s supervision, they are now leading Bible clubs in five different schools, including one high school. These clubs are being used to share the gospel with thousands of students. In one school alone, they are running eight Bible clubs with over 800 students attending! Jira’s simple, faith-based, prayer request has been used by God in mighty ways.

Tim shares that when a new club begins, they start with The Story of Hope to give the students a clear understanding of the Bible’s big story and a solid foundation for their future teaching. They are in the process of developing, in coordination with Bible Visuals, a five-year curriculum plan for those students in 4^th-8^th grades. He is currently looking at The Roots of Faith as a possibility to provide some significant theological depth for those in the High School clubs.

Please pray that these clubs would have a profound impact on the youth involved and that many would make sincere faith responses to the gospel. Tim also shares that there is a weekly cost to make these clubs possible. If you would like to consider partnering with this ministry you can check it out at: https://www.abwe.org/work/projects/timothy-and-leandra-hawes-gbbc-and-ministry