Papua New Guinea Outreach Part 2

Week 1, Hisiu Village

Upon our late arrival into the village we were driven to our housing accommodation in the front yard of the United Church’s parsonage. Our host, Pastor Dough greeted us warmly and introduced us to his family and showed us around the property. It was a bit hard to see because of the darkness and due to our generally fuzzy and confused state of mind. Our accommodation was a large wooden hut suspended about five feet off the dirt. It had wood planking for a floor with various dangerous places where the planking ended abruptly or where the planking was so soft that it threatened to give way. We only had one accident as a result. I was not paying attention to where I was going and stepped right through a hole giving me a shock and a couple of bruises. The structure had no walls, only posts that held up the palm branch roof. Though it made for very little security for us it did enable the greatest amount of airflow which was a huge blessing in all the heat and humidity. The guys spread out on one side with Ryan and my beds next to each other and the girls on the other. We suspended our mozzy nets over the sleeping area with a spider web of string attached securely to the beams in the roof. This would serve as a very cozy and comfortable home for the entire week and though security was a concern, it was on the church’s property we had very little theft and instances of sketchy prowlers.

The second day turned out to be a day of recuperation, getting acquainted with Pastor Dough and introduced to many more people in the village including the pastor of the local Pentecostal church, the Christian Life Center (CLC). We discussed and settled on a general schedule of events for our team, I say general because PNG is known as the “Land of the Unexpected.” Sometimes it seems that time does not exist here and a well planned schedule is merely a flexible guideline of suggestions. The week we arrived turned out to be a week of celebration for this village, as it was the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The village churches had been staging events each evening which usually began around 8pm and lasted until around 10. A church band would play some music, a mix of contemporary Christian praise and worship and locally written songs in pigeon and in the local language. These events made for a perfect opportunity for our team to integrate into the program and share our music, testimonies, skits, and Bible teaching. Each night through until Friday, New Years’ Eve, we prayerfully chose members of our team to be involved in these events and the villagers received our efforts with great enthusiasm and appreciation.

Leading up to the outreach we’d been praying for God’s strategy in how to reach the people most effectively and came to the conclusion that we needed to form many of our skits and teaching around the fact that this is a widely Christianized nation and that though there are many churches already established in virtually every village, only some of the inhabitants were walking everyday in an active relationship with the Lord. In other words, there’s a lot of religion, but not a lot of relationship. Our strategy would be similar to if we were doing outreach in the U.S. or Australia except that people in PNG are more desperate and hungry to know God due to the poverty and physical suffering experienced by the majority of the citizens. Once we had our schedule and strategy, we were ready to plan our evening program and prayerfully insert our gifted team of 14 young men and women of various nationalities and ages (10-39) into the mix. We decided on a couple of testimonies, two skits, and a Bible teaching each night and though we had some skits already practiced and ready to go, we felt inspired to create a couple more keeping the spiritual condition of the village in mind. Thus was born a skit called “Sunday Christian.” It was a hilarious skit for sure, but it also powerfully communicated a serious message regarding the dangers of hypocrisy and pretension in Christianity. This skit proved to be incredibly effective not only in this village but in all the villages that we performed it. It set a tone of honesty with God, repentance, and recommitment for literally dozens of villagers who were invited at the end of each evening program to come to the front to make a decision to walk in a fresh relationship with Jesus, for some they received Him into their life for the first time while others recommitted their lives to Him in renewed faith.

A couple of highlights in these programs were the testimonies of a young Japanese woman named Yukari and my Son, Ryan. As most of us are aware, during World War II the Japanese sought to control the entire Pacific Ocean and nearly accomplished their goal. In PNG, the Japanese invaded from the north coast and then made their way across the mountains toward the south driving Australian and US defense forces back in their strong assault. As a result, the villagers of PNG came to the aid of the Allied men, helping them retreat and even carried their wounded over hundreds of steeply rugged slippery miles of mountain and jungle terrain to safety in what was known as the Kakoda Trail. We were slightly concerned that the people of PNG might be a little hostile to Yokari but what we found was just the opposite, they were incredibly blessed by her and loved to listen to how she came to faith in Jesus and of her heart to see many more Japanese enter into a relationship with Him. Ryan also had a large impact on the villagers. Being 12 years old, a white kid and firm Believer, he was a bit of a celebrity everywhere we went. He was able to share his testimony of how he longed to hear God’s voice and through prayer and obedience in the little things began to hear and enter into a real relationship with God. His faith was not his parents’ only, it became his own. Each village was packed with young kids and his message touched many of their hearts, also the parents and grandparents gained much admiration for him since it was their longing too, to see their kids come to know and walk with Jesus. He shared once in the evening program and once at a church service at the CLC and each time he stepped up to the microphone and went for it. As you can imagine I was bursting with pride and thanksgiving for Ryan and the on going work that God is doing in his life.

Village life in Hisiu is very mellow and island style. Most of the men are fishermen or divers, some are farmers or go into Port Moresby for employment and some are unemployed and scratch together a living doing anything they can. Drugs and alcohol are a universal problem in PNG and this village is no exception and along with that comes a higher instance of domestic violence. Many of the children attend school and have the opportunity to progress to grade 12 though the fees and other interests often discourage them from continuing much beyond grade 8 or 9. There are openings for the youth to attend university as the government provides scholarships but very few make it all the way to graduation.

As we toured the village, I was very impressed by the cleanliness of Hisiu compared to Port Moresby. The reality is every village is different and Hisiu happens to have a community and civil leadership who care about how clean their village is. It is picturesquely established on the beach just a few miles away from Australian waters. The fishermen gather prawns with nets while the divers head up the beach to a small reef and compete with the sharks for various kinds of tropical fish, most tasting delicious. The staple foods are rice, sweet potatoes, deep fried dough (fry-bread), scones, and breadfruit. Other veggies include, pumpkins, the leaves and stocks of the pumpkin plant (tastes like spinach), plantain and many kinds of locally grown fruit. Starfruit (locally called 5 corner fruit), papaya, coconut, mango, watermelon, and many more fruit were enjoyed daily. We drank mostly tea, cordial, and water and ate much in the way of seafood and meats. Prawns, various kinds of fish, chicken, canned meat (corned beef hash and spam), pork, and some kinds of beef are all readily available. The local hunters spoke about harvesting wallabies, wild pig, bandicoots, and even some heavy horned deer in specific areas of the bush but we didn’t have the privilege of sampling any of them.

During the week we were kept busy with house visits and with teaching the villagers in discipling workshops. The purpose of the house visits were to connect with ailing villagers to encourage them and pray for their healing. We split up into four groups and visited two to three families each. We all had multiple opportunities to minister to the broken, depressed, scared, and embittered villagers. Our team prayed for a man in his prime with a wife and four children who had had an accident with a truck months before which left his right leg weak and useless. Next, we prayed for a young boy, maybe 14 months old whose symptoms included general listlessness and some dark blotches on his back. His parents were very grateful for our concern and prayers and were encouraged as we headed back to home base. We didn’t see any obvious healings during this time but we did see many people encouraged to know that God had not forsaken them and that He’s still deeply interested in their lives and struggles. One team was very excited to report that an older mother who’d been prayed for regarding physical problems had actually experienced healing in her relationship with her daughters who’d been generally estranged previously. So, we saw some great miracles though not necessarily the kinds that get all the headlines (there were some of those in the next couple of weeks though!).

The workshops that we operated on Wednesday and Thursday mornings were a hoot and very successful. Once our schedule was set we decided to create and use these workshops as a way of equipping and reaching out to the whole Christian community in Hisiu. Though they were held at the local United Church, people from all over the village took part. We split the team into four workshops, Evangelism (how to share your faith), Prayer, Bible Study, Drama/Skits. Each were popular and the students either led or helped to lead the topics. Ryan and I were involved with the Evangelism group and really enjoyed watching the village students receive the teaching, grasp the concepts, and get excited to apply it into their daily lives. Interestingly, within our groups, I realized that some were not even Believers or, some confessed that they were in need of recommitting their lives to God because they were not living daily in a relationship with Jesus. In fact, at the end of the second day of workshops, we had a time of worship when all the groups had come back together and a brief message resulted in three young men and a male teen came forward in tears of repentance. It was a truly touching and powerful time where God’s presence was wonderfully apparent.

Friday, New Years Eve, came upon us quickly with all of the busy-ness of the ministry. Typically, as in the rest of the world, this would be a time of great celebration and unfortunately general drunkenness and potential danger but in our little village the unified churches had arranged with the authorities to hold a safe and joyfully festive time with bands, dignitary speeches, traditional songs and dances beginning at dusk Friday and continuing on until 11am Saturday. What a blast! We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and were recognized as VIPs. We sang the songs as best we could and danced together with the villagers, many of whom were in traditional costumes. As the evening wore on we began to wear different parts of the costumes as they were handed off to us from our elated friends. There were some in the crowd who were drunk, but most were not, which kept things under control and without incident. After the clock struck 12 am we decided to head back to our accommodations and slept soundly only waking from time to time to the beautiful sounds of the villagers continuing to sing their traditional “prophecy” songs until the next morning. Unbeknownst to me that night, we had a couple of local guys who volunteered to watch all night on our front steps to protect from prowling drunks who would have liked to cause trouble, praise the Lord!

Saturday was a day of rest and fun as most of the village took the day off to celebrate the New Year. We did as well and enjoyed volleyball, catching up on our journals, and doing some house revisits.

Sunday was church day, as you may expect, so we visited many of the churches in the area. First, we attended a small English speaking congregation which met at the United Church just before the main service. This was well attended with probably 70-80 individuals. I was privileged to have the opportunity to share the morning message in which I focused on some basic discipleship principles from the Epistle to the Philippians. It was well received and I was reminded once again of what a joy it is to teach God’s word in a small church setting. It’s been months since God has opened the door to teach and I realized clearly that this is what God has made me to do. I look forward to see how He’s going to lead our family into serving Him more in this capacity as time goes on here in Australia. After this service, our team was split into three groups in order to attend the three main church services in the area, the Catholic, the United, and the CLC. Our group attended the CLC, an semi-outdoor church about half a kilometer from our house. It had well over a hundred in attendance with many young children and a lively worship team. Worship is a wonderful experience in PNG as many know the local songs and sing with great gusto, joyfully dancing out the actions that match the songs. This is true regardless of the church denomination; these people are full of rhythm and music. I was prepared to share a second time that day but upon our arrival I was told that they already had a full program with a traveling preacher and a music group attending from Port Moresby. Nonetheless, they asked for a couple of testimonies and a short word from me. So, at the appropriate time, Yukari came forward to share and Ryan followed. I was really impressed by Ryan as he was pretty embarrassed and not feeling very confident but bucked up and shared anyway. At first his body language revealed his mindset but once he started to speak everything changed and God took over. The audience was truly blessed by both testimonies and a little later in the service I had about three minutes to share from Philippians 4: 6-7, one of my favorite passages in the Word. I was especially excited since these verses lined up perfectly with the preacher’s message just previously shared (that is, I think it did…I couldn’t understand everything he said but it seemed to be about prayer and its place in 2011). We completed Sunday with a wonderful meal and many tearful “goodbyes” as we were to be leaving Monday morning just after breakfast. Our friends were extremely generous throughout the week as daily people would drop by with fresh fruit, fish, and veggies to bless us and when our final few hours had come, they came with many gifts ranging from colorful bilums (decoratively knit handbags), bracelets and other homemade jewelry, flowery lais, and grass skirts.

We awoke early Monday to pack, clean, and get ready for our day of travel. We left a little later than I thought we would but it gave us more time to say our “goodbyes”. Once we piled into our previously arranged PMV ride (a local driver had agreed to cut us a great deal on our trip to the city and on down to Gaba Gaba, another great blessing!), we slowly made our way back down the dirt potholed village road to the highway. This time I was in the back of the truck with the rest of our team and a bunch of others (probably 30+ people again) as our host, pastor Dough was up front in the cab. This made for a much less interesting trip since the canvas coverings blocked the view outside and all I could look at was the other bored and uncomfortable faces of my teammates and friends. Due to the diesel fumes, bumpy windy roads, and the way in which I was situated in the back, I was struggling a bit with motion sickness. Thankfully, I didn’t hurl but Dramamine might have helped had I planned a little better. Ryan was a trooper through it all, whether it was on the trip up to the village through the rain and road washouts or on this trip back down to the next village, he endured without complaint and soldiered on, what a great kid.