Stephen & Laurie Erickson

Career Missionaries since 2007, serving the Gogodala people of Papua New Guinea. Also serving as Field Directors to other missionaries.

We are Stephen and Laurie Erickson with our two daughters, Karin and Johanna. In 2003, after working as an architect for 20 years, I received a pink slip and suddenly was unemployed. But God provided me with small jobs to pay the bills while, unknown to me, He was preparing us for cross-cultural mission work. An elderly saint in our church said to Laurie one day, “Maybe God wants you to be missionaries. Do you get the AFM magazine?” I attended a Christian men’s conference and heard a fiery young preacher talk about the need for missionaries in unreached areas of the world. But it was another eight months before I started thinking seriously about AFM. One night, I experienced some serious doubts and prayed for clarity and assurance that God was leading. Before dawn the next morning, I woke up realizing I had just seen myself in heaven surrounded by a dozen PNG men thanking me for coming to share the gospel with them.

Now we’ve been working with the Gogodala people since 2007. We’re building a training-center campus that will also serve as a camp meeting facility. Twelve young men from Kewa village are helping us. None of them were church members before, but now, nearly all of them are baptized. Our plan is to use the training center to equip local missionaries to take the everlasting gospel to other villages up and down the Aramia River.

Frontier Stories

Medical Missionary

The Gogodala have a few things to learn about hypertension, we discovered. Many think that high blood pressure is caused by having too much blood and can be treated by donating blood. As I taught them the importance of staying hydrated and eating healthfully, I was reminded of how important health education is.

By: Laurie Erickson
May 01 2012, 9:52 pm | Comments 0

Explaining Scripture

Right now, there is a spiritual hunger among the Gogodala like I have never seen before. They have churches, and many people have Bibles, but they don’t know God. Thank you for your prayers.

By: Stephen & Laurie Erickson
March 01 2012, 4:07 pm | Comments 0

Gogodala for a Day

Just spending a day participating in an event with the ladies, sharing physical and spiritual food with them and joining in their games, seems to have gone a long way.

By: Laurie Erickson
February 01 2012, 4:38 pm | Comments 0

Conviction

Most of our 60+ church attendees are not baptized members. This particular Sabbath, I presented the second part in a series on the Ten Commandments.

By: Stephen & Laurie Erickson
January 01 2012, 3:48 pm | Comments 0

Sabayato

Since moving into our new house in Kewa village last year, we have been blessed with a new group of 30 to 50 people, mostly women and children, meeting regularly under our house on Sabbath mornings.

By: Stephen Erickson
December 01 2011, 10:55 pm | Comments 0

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