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

No Turning Back

Andrew, one of our most devoted students, told me more than once, “I have made up my mind. I will never go back to my old ways.”

By: Stephen Erickson
November 01 2012, 10:37 pm | Comments 0

Ruth’s Prayer

Ruth’s husband has been away in Port Moresby for two and a half years. She has been praying earnestly for him to return, but at times it seems to her that her prayers don’t get beyond her thatched roof. This was one of those times. Does God really hear my prayers? she wondered to herself.

By: Johanna Erickson
September 01 2012, 10:31 pm | Comments 0

House Dedication

Sometimes I wonder about the incredible stories Gogodala people tell me. Are they making them up? Are they so superstitious that they attribute supernatural significance to every twig snap? We recently invited villagers to gather around our new house for a simple prayer of dedication. But the comments I heard afterwards convinced me that this was no ordinary event.

By: Stephen & Laurie Erickson
August 01 2012, 10:14 pm | Comments 0

Shelter from the Storm

Drip, drip. I glanced at a small hole in the tarp over my head. The rain poured as people crowded beneath the temporary structure where we were having church.

By: Karin Erickson
July 01 2012, 10:11 pm | Comments 0

Reconciliation Day

The day of the meeting came, and I arrived at the meeting house at the appointed time, but I found only a handful of men milling about, cooking their breakfast in the open, thatched-roof pavilion. I could hear the distant exclamations of the town crier as he made his way through the village calling the men to the meeting. “White man is here! You come quickly to the meeting house!”

By: Stephen & Laurie Erickson
June 01 2012, 10:01 pm | Comments 0

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