THE KIHLENG FAMILY: 2020

Kaselehlie from beautiful, rainy, and hot Pohnpei!

As I’m sure most of you know by now, furlough has had to be postponed for now. Having to cancel our meetings with so many of you was a difficult decision and a sad one to make. But as the Covid-19 situation around the world progressed, we know it was definitely the right decision. It was not long after our decision to cancel our flights that the Federated States of Micronesia closed it’s borders, which would have left us stranded in the U.S.

As we’ve watched the events of the past few months unfold in the United States, we have kept you all in our prayers constantly. It has been heartbreaking to see these events happening, but we are thankful that God is still in control. All we can do is trust in Him in this time of uncertainty. We are also thankful that the swift decisions of our government leaders here in Micronesia has prevented any cases of Covid-19 from arriving here in our country. How have things changed for us here since the borders closing?

All schools closed on the island. Since we homeschool, this didn’t really affect us; however, we did take an extended “spring break”. For about a month now though we have been back at it, working our way through this school year.
We were required to close our Bible Institute classes. We had just concluded exams for the current block of classes and just closed out the semester there. Lord willing, we will be able to have classes again in the fall, though at this point, we do not know for sure what the restrictions will be.
In person church services stopped. Because of our extremely slow internet out in the area we live, we are unable to do live videos of our services, but we have been recording each service and uploading on Facebook on our church page. After two months of the borders being closed here, there really is no way for the virus to have arrived here on island. So we began holding church services in person once again on June 7. We are meeting for services outside with chairs kept far apart in order to follow our state’s policies. We have decided to continue recording the services and sharing online as many Pohnpeians in the U.S. have let us know they are enjoying watching services in their own language. Last week I was even able to talk with a young lady on Guam who has been viewing our services, and lead her to Christ.
Our jail ministry has had to be put on hold for the time being as well. We are collecting items to deliver to the prisoners from time to time to let them know we haven’t forgotten them and are praying for them. We do not know when we will be allowed to resume services there again.
Our youth ministry was unable to meet in person for a time as well; however, we started meeting again this month.
All sports activities and gatherings on the island have stopped. Our kids have missed their sports practices and being with friends of course. We have had to get creative to do things on our own but one thing we’ve enjoyed as a family is going for walks and run in the evening together.
Our usual bigger summer ministries as of now are on hold. We are not allowed to hold our summer youth camp or VBS. This is extremely disappointing as these are two of our biggest highlights of the summer. We are looking at options for some sort of substitutions but we’re not really sure at this point what that will look like.

As you can imagine, a lot of people were left stranded outside of Micronesia when the borders closed. As the government works to prepare to bring them back, many are expressing fear that Covid-19 will arrive here in the islands. Please keep these islands and people in your prayers as it’s very likely we are only at the very beginning of the Covid-19 situation here in our part of the world.

Among those stranded in the U.S. of course, is our son Kaleo. He has been staying with Susan’s parents in NC since his college closed in early March and we are extremely grateful for them housing him during this time. He finished the semester out online and now that things have began to open up again in NC, he has been looking for a job there in order to save money for the fall semester. He was originally to come back to Pohnpei in May, but of course is unable to. He’s submitted quite a few job applications but so far hasn’t found anyone hiring. We ask that you please pray he finds a job soon. He’s looking at several options for the fall semester but of course, every one of them is dependent on his being able to work through the summer to save the money he needs.

With the extra “down time” because of the quarantine here, we’ve tried to tackle more of the projects on the house. We’d like to finish the retaining wall this summer. That project was at a halt due to the supplies we needed not being available on island at the time. But now it looks like supplies are becoming available again and we can continue with this project. We’ve also started work on laying the flooring and painting. We’re hoping to get what we need to complete the kitchen this summer as well.

Many of you have already discovered our ministry/family private Facebook page. If you would like to get more frequent, “informal” updates, prayer requests, and photos of our life and ministry here, please request to join the group “Friends of the Kihleng Pohnpei Ministry”.

We thank you all for your continued support and prayers through this time. This year has proven to be a time of uncertainty and quite a few surprises. I’m so thankful that in the midst of it all, we still know Who is in control!

Because of Calvary,

Rickson & Susan, Kaleo, Kestra, Kyler, Katrianne, & Kaylinn

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Kaselehlie oh Parakapw Mwauh! Greetings and Happy New Year!

We have much to be thankful for as we enter this new year. God has blessed in so many ways in the past months, we can’t help but feel more than a little overwhelmed.

House/Mudslide Recovery Update! God has worked many miracles in all of this and it would be difficult to put it all into words. In November we were honored to have 4 men from churches in the States come to work on building our retaining wall. We had given up on getting a local company to do it for a reasonable price and are so thankful that it worked out for David Smith from MI, Buddie Callahan and Jerry Lovegrove from TN, and Larry Pruit from NV to come and build the wall. It was amazing seeing these men work and what they were able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. It was also amazing seeing God work in many “impossible” situations during that time as we faced supply shortages, equipment malfunctions and often lack of, and so much more. It was also such a blessing to have these men stay in our home and be such an encouragement to our family and ministry. And we are praising God that the wall is up and we can once again feel safe living here during heavy rains. I can’t even begin to describe how good it is to finally be able to sleep comfortably at night knowing that the wall is there. We still have some more work to do on the wall before it is complete but as one of the men put it, "we are safer than we have been in a very long time”. We are so thankful for God's protection through all of this as well. October and into November we saw some extremely heavy rains and the week before the men arrived we had to evacuate the house a total of 4 times in just one week. We had a good bit of dirt come down the mountain but no damage was done to the house. Thankfully, God held back the rain the entire time the men were here working. They literally jumped into the project from the time they got off the plane and continued until the time they left. Mr. Buddie was scheduled to leave the day after the others; however, his flight was cancelled and there were limited seats on the remaining flights that week. We were thrilled to be able to have him stay longer and celebrate Thanksgiving with us. He also went ahead and installed our back door and window. No more plywood across the back of our house! The house itself has a ways to go before it’s back to “normal” but at least now we can safely begin work on it. We will still need to install the flooring, lights and ceiling fans, and put in a kitchen as well as a few other projects.

We were also blessed to have Mark and Crystal Javaux over Thanksgiving week and are thankful for the work they did at our church, bringing and installing projectors and painting. Since the Pohnpeian hymnbook is no longer in print, it is very difficult to get copies and we have very few remaining at our church. With the projectors we are able to project the Pohnpeian hymns onto the platform wall for everyone to see. It has made a huge difference in our congregational singing!

Pastor Jim Davidson of Maranatha Baptist Church in Shelby, NC, which is our commissioning church and the church we attended through college at Ambassador, was also able to come to Pohnpei for a couple of weeks. The Eiben family, also missionaries here on Pohnpei are sent out of Maranatha. We were very blessed to have Pastor Davidson speak in our church and also speak at our missions banquet. It was truly an honor to have him here. He also spent some time working with the men on the wall construction.

Of course because of the mudslide/house situation, we have had to postpone our furlough. Now that the house is stable and no longer in danger of further mudslides, I feel more comfortable with leaving the island for a time. Due to the tremendous cost of traveling with the entire family at such a short notice, we have decided I will come with just our son Kyler as well as our church youth/song leader, Kimo Aron in March. I will be there until early May and then we will plan a longer, full furlough the following year with our entire family. Our current plan is to fly to the east coast from Pohnpei in early March. We would like to visit as many of our supporting churches as possible during that time. If you would like us to personally bring an update to your church, please contact me at rkihleng@hotmail.com. Also, if you are interested in helping with the cost of these three plane tickets, please contact me concerning that as well.

The church is doing well. We have had to say many goodbyes to families that have moved to the States for work in the past year. Just our youth group alone has bid farewell to nearly 30 young people that have moved to the US or other places for their family’s work, school, or other reasons. But in spite of so many leaving, we have continued to see growth in the church. We’ve had several new families that have started attending, including a couple that had joined the Islam religion. After meeting with me several times, I was able to lead this man to the Lord and he began coming to our church. It took his wife a bit longer but she has also accepted Christ and is coming faithfully. This couple has been a blessing to see in their growth and their eagerness to bring others to church. We have also seen a huge growth in our children’s ministry in recent months. We have a large group of children that are now coming regularly from some of the jungle villages above where we live now that we are able to offer rides on our church truck. We are thrilled to have these children coming, but it has presented some new and interesting challenges for Susan and the other ladies that work with the children’s ministry. Many of these children have never been in church before and it is an entirely new experience for them. Please keep these children in your prayers and also Susan as she works with them. The children’s ministry was able to present Ron Hamilton’s “A Peanut Butter Christmas” for the church in December. They did a fantastic job and we pray that it was a blessing to the families of these children that came to see the performance.

The Bible Institute is also doing well. We have approximately 15 students this semester. We just began the new semester on January 20th. It is always a blessing to see these young people’s enthusiasm for serving the Lord and using what they learn in the ministries around Pohnpei. We were blessed to have our very first Bible Institute graduate back with us for a short time before returning to his island of Nukuuoro where he has a growing ministry. He was able to be with us for our missions banquet and also speak in one of our services.

Our family is also doing well. We had an exciting surprise for Christmas. Our son Kaleo came home from New Hampshire, a complete surprise to me and the kids. Kaleo had let Susan know and they had a good time thoroughly surprising us all. Kaleo was blessed with a plane ticket given as an anonymous gift and we are truly thankful for this gift. We had a great time with him home and said our goodbyes once again last week. Lord willing, I will be able to see him some while I am in the States in March. We are hoping to coordinate my return ticket to come back with him in May. He will be spending the summer giving guitar and ukulele lessons here on Pohnpei to help save for his next year of college. Our four children here on Pohnpei are also doing well, keeping busy with homeschool and their various activities. Kestra is in 10th grade and her current “hobby” is studying Korean. She seems to have a talent for picking up the Korean language and we hope she will be able to use this skill for the Lord someday. She also enjoys playing the guitar and ukulele. Kyler is in 9th grade and has an ever-growing love for the ocean and marine biology. He’s currently working on his open water diving certification and loves to spend as much time as possible out on the reef. Kyler also plays guitar and ukulele and we are enjoying watching his musical talents develop. Katrianne is now a teenager, in 7th grade, and loves spending time with her friends. She and three of her close friends in our church were a huge help with the children’s Christmas program in December. Katrianne has a natural gift for music and can play the piano and ukulele by ear. Her talents amaze us and we love seeing her be able to put these musical abilities to use for the Lord in the ministry. Kaylinn is nearly 10 (and reminds us of her upcoming birthday regularly). She is our social butterfly and thrives on playing with her cousins and friends from church. She has also been learning to play the ukulele and loves playing duets with Katrianne.

We do thank all of you for your continued support and prayers. We thank each of you as well that have given towards our home repair since the mudslide and we also want to mention what a blessing it is to receive birthday cards from so many of you. It is something our kids especially look forward to. So many of you may never fully know the blessing you have been in our lives, especially through some of the challenges we have faced these last two years. Your words of encouragement, gifts, and prayers are what have kept us going. Thank you!

Because of Calvary,

Rickson & Susan, Kaleo, Kestra, Kyler, Katrianne, & Kaylinn

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