“I was raised in a church that was started by missionaries. They actually came from America — Minnesota and New Jersey — and they came to the island and planted this church with my grandfather,” Noby shared recently with a Small Group from Hope Community Church Loyalsock, where two of their daughters attend.

“So as a young child growing up, I always knew about missionaries and the kind of work that they did, which I’m really thankful for, because I think sometimes kids just don’t know that there’s people outside of, let alone outside of the islands, that don’t know Jesus,” she said.

“So I think at a very young age, I’ve always had that desire to be a missionary,” she added.

She wasn’t quite sure what that would look like but she knew that she also wanted to teach children.

When she went to Biola University in California, she remembers feeling that the Lord was “speaking to my heart to be willing to do whatever He called me to do.”

“I think it was at that point because it was a Christian college, and of course, they had the emphasis, you know, they had missionary ministries and things, so there was always that need there, and there was always an option,” she said.

“I remember, at the time, saying to the Lord, okay, whatever you want me to do. And so I said, OK, if God, if you want me to go into missions to pursue this, then I’m willing. I still didn’t know what that looked like. I didn’t have any idea about mission organizations or anything but put this in my heart, just being willing to do that and just be very clear. Then two weeks later, I met Bob,” she said.

She admitted that she was thankful that God had settled that desire to be a missionary in her heart before she met the man who would eventually become her husband.

“Another thing that helped was when he went and asked my parents if he could marry me. He told them, ‘I’m going to be a missionary, and this is what I want to do. Obviously, I love you, but I love God more, and this is what I want to do. And so if she’s not willing to do this, then it’s over,'” Noby shared.

Noby and her husband Bob are now two of those missionaries that travel around the world sharing the word of God with people in other countries. Their journey as missionaries has been convoluted at times,but throughout it all God has made straight their path and now the Kennells travel to Papua New Guinea to work with a tribe there.

Bob, too, knew that he wanted to be a missionary at a young age, but he admitted that he really didn’t know what that meant.

“My brother was a missionary. My parents were going to be missionaries, and my mother developed a heart problem, so they couldn’t. But from the time I was little, I said, I’m going to be a missionary, Bob said.

“When I was in college, I realized I’m no more concerned about the lost than the man in the moon. That’s when Vietnam was going on. I thought maybe I can be drafted and get an honorable discharge out of being a missionary. But then my dad wanted me to go to a missions conference my junior year of college, and I went to that conference — I fought it, I tried to not go — but I went to that conference, and I saw some runny-nosed kids on the side of the hill, and that group of people had no gospel witness whatsoever, no way for them to hear of Jesus dying on the cross for their sins. It was like the Spirit of God said, Bob, what if that were you? Wouldn’t you at least want the chance to accept or reject God’s plan for your life,” he said.

“That was it. I said, Lord, I will go. And that was when my life turned around. I was going to Biola, taking mission courses, but then, with six weeks of school left, I met her,” Bob said.

A year later, Bob and Noby were married.

In preparation for entering the missions field, the Kennells trained with New Tribes Missions.

“They want to see your walk with God. They teach you church planting principles. They teach you how to learn any language on the face of the earth. You’ve got courses on translating the word of God — it’s very comprehensive, very good training,” Bob said.

In 1977 they set out for missions, leaving the United States for Papua New Guinea. They went into the Bisorio tribe there in 1978 in order to plant a church.

After the church there was established the couple was asked to join New Tribes’ executive committee. For ten years in that capacity, once or twice a year they would travel throughout Asia, Russia, Mongolia, China, India, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Philippines-a bunch of different countries. After four years in 2004 they moved to Thailand, so they would be in Asia, and could travel around more easily.

For 10 years they stayed in Thailand, traveling. And then Bob was diagnosed with cancer. In 2006, Bob underwent surgery and then radiation. At the time, he had been warned not to expect a good outcome because he had the cancer for too long before being diagnosed, but he’s been fine ever since.

“We started saying, man, this is a miracle of the Lord. Surely He’s got something else for us. We want to finish strong,” Bob said.

“That’s when we started to pray, Lord, make your voice loud in our hearts. So whatever it is that you want for us to do, make it so clear that we get it, like we hear. And we specifically prayed that just so we would know,” Noby said, adding that they prayed that for two years.

They were making one of their yearly trips to Papua New Guinea when Bob turned to Noby and asked if she wanted to go to another tribe and help them.

“I’m 60 years old at this point,” Bob interjected.

“How would you like to go to another tribe and see if we can help them finish their translation,” Noby continued.

“That’s a big thing at this point in our lives, you know, moving all this, the dynamics of our ministry and stuff, just to switch at our age at that point. But there is just such a peace in my heart when I heard that, I literally looked at him, and I’m like, OK. Later I think about that. Oh, my goodness, that was just like, such an important decision. You know, we should have been writing to our parents, our kids get some advice from our pastors or whatever, but it was such a peace that we just knew it,” she said.

To prepare for their ministry to the Bisorio tribe, they visited missionaries that worked in a tribe called the Malamanda, which had a similar language.

“He knew that if he did the translation, he would have to learn it like a new language, so he’d have to go into language study. So that’s why we chose that tribe,” Noby said.

They set up a meeting with the missionaries for that tribe.

Noby shared that, before they went, they agreed if there was any hesitation from the other missionaries, even if they asked to pray about it, then they would take that as an answer from the Lord this wasn’t what they were to be doing.

“We said OK we’ll take that from the Lord. That will be our answer. So we went into the meeting, and I said, hey you guys, we’re not the youngest chickens on the block, but we have a proposition to make to you. If you would allow us to, we would love to come and join your team and become a part of the Malamanda team and help in church planting, help finish off the translation, whatever. And we said, we’ll just leave it up to you. Again we know we’re old people asking to join your team. If you would rather not, that’s fine,” Bob said.

“So we’re sitting there and we’re holding hands, and look over and just stone face, no smile, no shaking head, no nothing. And so I squeezed Noby’s hand and basically looked at her like, okay, we’ve got our answer. Then I looked back over, there’s a tear coming down his cheek, and he said, ‘You guys, I just want you to know. Two years ago, we wrote your names in our strategy statement to help us come up and finish off the work.’ So we said, OK, count us in. We’re coming,” Bob said.

“I think that God was so specific in leading us there that He actually, when we went there, Bob learned the language in an amazing time. Like, I think it was like four months he was able to learn that language, and they had 60% of it left, and so four years he was able to finish that. And that’s just God. People can’t do that. But that was just God,” Noby said.

At that point Noby’s health started to fall apart and she was diagnosed with allergies to the jungle, a condition she still has, so after two years, Bob said, “The Lord made it evident our time in New Guinea was done.”

“There’s no place you can live in the jungle without things that she would be allergic to and she was just getting worse and worse. So we said OK, our time in Papua New Guinea is done. We went home to our language school,” Bob said.

While they were there they were asked if they would like to work with the churches in Thailand. At that point they had notified their daughters of the plan, but their response was calling a family meeting to discuss their parents’ next step.

“They said, Dad, you’re 65 years old. Mom is 62. We were thinking that you would probably come home. We would love your grandkids to get to know you and be able to spend time with you. So we said, OK, give us five years, and then we will shift to the United States and we’ll live in Pennsylvania. So they said, OK, and so at the end of five years, at 70, we came back in 2019,” he said.

Then COVD hit. They went to the New Tribes’ language school in Missouri to teach. Bob was approached with a proposition when he was asked if he would translate the Old Testament into the Bisorio language.

“I got very excited about that…went home, bought a new computer and we started doing the translation,” he said.

Bob has finished translating the Old Testament and is in the process of checking them. He is estimating that in two years, they’ll be able to give the tribe the translation of the entire Bible.

They also returned to Papua New Guinea, but initially they needed a better place to stay. They were staying in what was just a shell of a structure with no windows, hot and with no indoor plumbing.

“Well, Bob says, Well, if we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna need a house so that we can actually be in the tribe. And I’m like, ‘Honey, you’re right,’ I said, and I don’t need anything big, just, you know, 16 by 16, if I can have some running water, a toilet and shower, I’m good. And so we said, OK, that’s good. We write to the field, and we tell them that this is what we want to do. And they say, OK, you just want it 16 by 16, right,” Noby said.

“Our main supporting church is out in Seattle, Washington, so we just wrote them a letter and said we would like to trust the Lord, to build a house, get a boat to where we can go back and forth, and we would like to spend twice a year, spend like six weeks there, but we’re gonna need to build a house. That was all we said. This is what we’re gonna do,” she added.

When they visited the Seattle church, they had raised $35,000 for a house and $7,000 for a boat. Bob’s plan was to spend time building the house when they arrived, even though he had no experience with construction. When they arrived at Papua New Guinea, they found that everything had already been taken care of. They lived in the house until they left and then the next people who went there put in electricity and a water system.

“So that’s the little house. It’s so beautiful but it’s all a miracle and it’s all God because we took the steps of faith and trusted Him,” Noby said.

Now they spend six weeks, twice a year in that little house. They travel by plane and then boat until they reach their destination. They shared how they were welcomed during their last trip.

“… flowers wrapped all the way up the railings, and as we went through that little portico, there, they had this verse. ‘So my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable, always work enthusiastically for the Lord. For you know that nothing you do for the Lord is Ever useless,’ I Corinthians, 15:58. So that was very encouraging to see essentially what they’re saying about our coming in there: hey, hang in there. Don’t give up. But it was just a neat, very neat verse, and a very neat time going up, shaking everybody’s hands and hugging them, and just a very, very positive time,” Bob said.

“For us, that really means a lot, just to know that in the Lord, they’re very thankful that we’ve come all this way,” Noby said.

Not only do they spend time translating the Bible into the Bisorio language, but Noby is involved with teaching members of the tribe to read.

“They want to learn how to read so that they could read the Bible. That was their whole incentive,” she said.

To help with this, she has been working on a new literacy program because she said, the kids really want to lear to read.

“There’s a lot of new kids that need school and that whole education system is really bad because we’re way out in the middle of nowhere and so the government is not willing to keep teachers out there because we’re isolated,” she said.

In fact, there hasn’t been a school there for probably 20 years, she said. So, when they return next month, that will be her project to train teachers and then also to teach.

Their ministry has grown since they first traveled to Papua New Guinea. So much so that the church no longer can contain the number of people attending, putting some worshippers outside in a sort of overflow area.

“There’s people outside looking in the windows, because there’s not enough seating inside,” Bob said.

“It’s sad, because even what we have, it’s not adequate. And so the people have decided that before the Bible dedication, and we’re thinking in a couple years, we definitely need a new church. So that’s just a matter of prayer,” he added.