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“....A tall figure of commanding appearance dressed in radiant white stood before me. He said ….”
This story was written in 1998 and is reproduced in the tense it was originally written to preserve the atmosphere of the events.
This time of year is the wet season in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. That means that in order for a mission pilot to get a reasonable days work in, he needs to be in the air with the birds, early in the morning before the heat of the sun pumps the water in the moisture laden atmosphere back into the massive clouds that can rise more quickly than the mission plane can out climb them. It was on such a day last week that I found myself at Yenkis, a remote strip in Enga province up in the mountains north of Sopas Adventist Hospital. I had already been out to Kopiago that day to take Pr. Isaac Lowai the district director and some supplies in there. The next stop had been Oksapmen. Oksapmen is a village in a small basin high up in the mountains near the confluence of the three deep mountain valleys. The walls of the basin rise ominously and almost vertically towards the sky. At this time of the year, they can get violent winds in the Oksapmen basin which are a hazard to small planes. The winds circulate round and round in the basin accelerating as they go. At times trees are blown down and houses unroofed.
The wind was already blowing when I arrived. There is a mountain slope at the end of the strip and consequently a take off can only be carried out towards the East. The wind sock was mockingly bobbing up and down indicating a gusting 8 knot tail wind for the take off. I looked down the climb out path at the rising ground on one side and the sheer rock wall of the basin on the other. Being jammed in that confined space trying to climb out with a gusting tailwind and a heavy load was out of the question. It was not safe to take off with the Bisapen family, who were traveling to our Omaura school of ministry for ministerial training. I left them a message that I would return for them next morning at an early hour before the wind normally comes up and set off on my next errand away out to Telefomin to take Pr. Luke Tanop the District Director in that area out to Mianmin. I am not aware of our mission plane ever having gone in there before. It is a brand new work area.
At Mianmin there is a faithful Adventist school teacher in the State school system. He has been witnessing for his faith in Jesus in this isolated place with no other church members there to encourage him. Pr. Luke had received a message that there were now 4 new people there at Mianmin studying for baptism. Pr. Luke was going in there to encourage our teacher and to visit with this new small group and baptize them if they were ready.
As I took off from there I noticed the clouds were beginning to build up menacingly, and hoped that I would be able to get through the rest of the program for the day. I got back to Telefomin and picked up the Tasiap family who are also heading to Omaura for ministerial training. After arriving back in Hagen I refueled and looked out through the Baiyer Gap. It was cloudy and raining everywhere else but where I had to go on my next errand. It seemed inevitable that I would not get back into the relative comfort of Hagen for the night, but I knew Pr Abel Ware had been patiently waiting for me at Kompiam for a day or two and decided to head out and try and get him across to Yenkis where the church members were waiting for him to run programs for them for the week. After circling monotonously up and down and weaving through gaps in the cloud, we finally arrived at Yenkis. It was clear that it was not possible to continue flying for the day, the bad weather had set in for the night. So I relaxed in a simple cabin with Pr. Abel. He is a short man of stocky build and a buoyant personality. He has spent most of his ministry in the bush and is now district director in this area. As we talked he quietly told me this encouraging story.
Earlier this year around April there was a death in Kompiam and in accordance with Melanesian custom, all the important people gathered for a few days to pay their respects. A few of Pr Abel’s members were involved, so he went along too so that he could support them in their grief.
There were plenty of speeches and weeping happening, but he noticed that no one was saying anything about eternity and the blessed hope of the righteous to these sorrowing people. He prayed about it felt impressed to get up in front of the gathered throng and begin to tell them about the great controversy between Christ and Satan, the origin of sin and death and God’s glorious remedy for the sorrow and suffering of this old world.
Many of the people came up to him afterwards and told him they had never understood the state of the world like that before. One man took Pr Abel aside with great earnestness and asked to speak to him. As Pr. Abel looked into the earnest face of this elderly man, he wondered what it was that was weighing so heavily on his mind. “Pr. Abel, where are you from?” was the question. Pr. Abel paused for a moment, not that this was an unusual question to ask in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, but “Why was it so important to this Baptist pastor who was standing in rapt attention before him.” he wondered. “ I am from Liagam…” Pr Abel began and stopped mid-sentence as he looked into Ambo’s face and saw the contortions of anxiety instantly replaced by the radiant joy of one who had finally found something he had been searching intently for, for some time. Pr. Abel paused, pondering what the body language of the man before him could mean. Presently Ambo blurted out his story. “I have been a pastor for 40 years.” He went on. “I have for a long time realized that there are more truths in the Bible that I do not know and have prayed that God would send someone to help me. One night after praying about this I had a dream. A tall figure of commanding appearance dressed in radiant white stood before me. He said to me, “’I will send you a man from Liagam who will come to your village to preach. This is the man to whom I have given the truths you are longing to learn. Listen to him and he will show you from the Bible the truth for this time.’”
Pr Abel stood there for a moment contemplating the gravity of what he had just heard. He looked at all the eager faces surrounding him as this pastor’s parishioners crowded around to see the man that God had sent to bring the light of heaven to them. He thought about all the work he already had planned and wondered how on earth he could teach these people. “If only we could afford to employ more pastors,” he thought. It brought home to him again the urgent need for laymen to assist him in the growing work in his area.
Since then Pr Abel has struggled to look after this group as well as all his other work. There are currently 59 people worshiping in a new bush material church there in Waiakam and Kipunge – another pastor has already made his decision join Ambo to follow Jesus a little further and become a member of the Seventh –day Adventist Church. They are in the baptismal class as I write. One of Ambo’s sons has already been baptized. Jon another of his sons was a rascal (rebel, criminal) until the truth of Jesus came into his life. Now everything for him has changed and he is with his Dad in our baptismal class. Minjokare is another pastor in the area who is privately studying the Bible with Abel but has not at this point made his decision. Please pray for him as he wrestles with his eternal destiny. Pray that God will supply a well educated Layman to help Abel lead this new congregation of people who are eager to learn the truth for this time and other similar groups scattered about on the mountains around Yenkis and Kompiam. God is calling these people into His kingdom. He calls us to nurture and lead them.
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