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I looked out Charlie's window (one of our Mission Cessna 206s), watching the rain come tumbling down. The lofty Finisterre ranges to the North, were lost in the poor visibility as I sat there dejectedly on the tarmac at Nadzab. Behind me was a plane load of perishable vegetables for our teachers at Sonoma and some cooked dishes from parents on the mainland for their kids over there at school. In front of me was a days flying organized by Nick Patilli the mission secretary on the Island of New Britain. I guess it is human to hate being held up and when you are working for the Lord it is pretty easy to surrender to 'righteous indignation' and feel a bit upset as you think of all the disruption the delay is causing to ‘God's work’. It was not safe to fly off into such weather in Charlie however. All I could do was to just sit and wait.
After waiting an hour or so, I began to wonder why God did not open up the weather this day like he had many times before so we could take off and provide the mission support that was so much needed.
I decided to walk over to the flight service unit for a while. Here I was greeted by the smiling face of a very efficient lady officer. As we discussed my flight she offered to call up the Bandierante that had left for Tokua (The new airport for Rabaul which was destroyed by volcanic eruption in1994) -15 minutes before and ask for a weather report. What a good idea I thought. He was over the straight between mainland New Guinea and New Britain at 14,000ft. just passed Finschafen. He had been in cloud most of the way and was very discouraging about my chances of get to New Britain visually. The cloud was packing in on the ranges North of Lae. These mountains rise to well over 11,000 feet in places and can produce some horrible weather in the rainy season. Wendy came back and we began chatting. I was in no hurry to go any where until the weather improved.
She recognized that I was an Adventist Missionary Pilot from the call sign on my flight plan. She began telling me how she had recently become an Adventist then she paused. A beaming smile broke out on her face, -but there was pain in her eyes as she spoke. I was curious about what might be troubling her, but did not know her very well and did not want to intrude. She began to fidget and after a few moments of quiet contemplation for both of us, the story of what had been happening to her started to come out. "I was the only one in my village that accepted Jesus at the time and it was very hard for me." She paused. I nodded. I knew it was very difficult for one person, particularly a woman to step out in this culture and change their life in spite of every body else in the village. She went on to relate how she tried in vain to interest others in her new found faith and new found friend Jesus. No one else was prepared to be different. She was tempted to backslide, but did not want to loose Jesus and committed her way to Him. Some how these family pressures did not take her out of Christ's hand, but the Devil was not going to give up too easy as I was about to discover.
Her superiors in the Department of Civil Aviation, decided to deny her the right to worship on the Sabbath day. "You cannot be different to every body else and have special privileges," they said. This was a very testing time for her. A Public Service job is highly prized and hard to get in PNG. It is not something that a person can throw away with out a very compelling reason. At the same time her friends at work were urging her to give up her new found faith. It was so hard to be true to her convictions. She had no one at home to go to for comfort and consolation. "I just prayed to Jesus in desperation," she blurted out with powerful but controlled emotion. "I told Him that I loved Him and that no one else could help me, but He could and I would tell Him my trouble and let Him help me." She related how the anguish she once felt gave way, as peace and strength came into her heart to challenge the pain and the loneliness when she talked to Jesus.
Wendy was impressed to remind her bosses of her constitutional rights. She did this and talk of her getting the sack died down for a while. Foiled from this direction Satan now fired his ammunition from another quarter. 4 colleagues of hers who worked in the control tower, now started to really intimidate her to change. She resisted their pressure and they became angry. They wrote a letter to her supervisor in Port Moresby containing fabricated stories about her work performance to denigrate her so that they would dismiss her from her job. "I was brought down 2 ranks in the public service in terms of my position and my pay, I did not know about the letter,” Wendy went on. “I thought the government was just trying to harass me to forsake the Lord." Tears began welling up in her eyes as she proceeded to relate how the typist that wrote the letter to her supervisor finally felt so bad about the injustice that had been done, she came and told Wendy about it. This was a very heavy thing for Wendy. To know her own colleagues whom she had worked with and trusted for such a long time would stoop to this sort of act to get rid of her, made her feelings of rejection sting all the more. She was upset for a long time. "Then one day I talked to Jesus about it again and said, "Jesus I don't know why this is happening to me, You are my friend, Your love is in my heart, I forgive these men in my heart for what they have done, you take this problem and look after it for me." She then related how the power of Christ's peace again surged through her soul, banishing the anger and the frustration and giving her new strength to cope with the struggle.
Very soon after this, things started to happen. Two of the controllers that had authored the letter and had given Wendy such a wretched time, came on duty to man the control tower one morning. It was a beautiful day and they were relaxed and taking it easy. Very quickly a large cloud bank moved in to the control zone while there was a lot of traffic coming and going. They lost control of the traffic and gave the wrong directions to 2 aircraft resulting in a very near miss situation. The pilots were furious and there was no way the controllers could cover up their mistake. These 2 men were suspended and had to go away for retraining.
Shortly after this event, the third of the 4 men who had falsely accused Wendy, was on duty early in the morning. He unlocked the tower, turned on the radios and other equipment and sat down to wait for the first aircraft to come. Very soon he was fast asleep. As he slept, two high speed aircraft were approaching the aerodrome. Both pilots called and called on their radios, but to no avail. One of the approaching aircraft was Kumul 1, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea's King Air with himself and his entourage on board. The other was an F28 jet with passengers on board coming in to Nadzab. What a time for the guy in the tower to take a nap!
I'll leave what was said by the PM, the Pilots and the Control tower supervisor to your imagination. Needless to say another of the 4 controllers had found the punishment he had designed for Wendy come down upon his own head.
The 4th. controller a day or 2 later met with a serious road accident and found himself off work indefinitely! Wendy expressed no joy at the demise of those who had wronged her. She said that the men had all admitted that they deserved what happened to them and they believe it is a judgment from God for persecuting one of His children who was following her conscience in the face of great adversity. "So I left the problem with God and He has helped me by taking away the people that were giving me a hard time."
Next her supervisor keen to get rid of this troublesome Sabbath keeper, devised a difficult test in an attempt to get evidence of incompetence against her. They tested her on the Flight service circuit after depriving her of recent experience for 6 months since her demotion. I was apprehensive about what she was going to say next. You need lots of recent experience to know the different aircraft and where they go in and out of different types of airspace to really be on top of this job. She paused and then beamed and said, "The words just flowed like I had never been away from the circuit. It was like God had control of my mouth. They could not find any fault with my work." God had preserved this ladies proficiency in this very demanding job. Even though they have demoted her, they can not take her ratings away because they can not fault her performance. I stood there feeling very small as I looked back on the insignificant battles I have fought for Jesus. I felt a Spiritual bond with this struggling soul and promised that I would remember her in my prayers. And now a few years later, Wendy now has a number of her family worshiping with her too. Her struggles are not over yet, but the biggest battle is. The battle to make the promises of God her own and know that the God of Heaven will use His omnipotent power in what ever measure is necessary to protect her personally even when she feels she is all alone. How can Satan overcome one who knows this by experience?
As I walked out of the flight service unit that morning, I felt a welcome burst of sunlight on my back. While it was no match for the warmth and joy in my heart, I stopped and looked heavenward and sure enough there was the patch of blue I had waited all morning for. I guess God knew I needed the encouragement of spending that hour with Wendy in the Flight Service Unit at Nadzab that Wednesday morning. My greatest expectation in coming to Papua New Guinea, was to be in a place where God's Spirit is working so vigorously and with such power and success for the salvation of Souls. My hope was that some of this would rub off in my own life and that I would find a closer walk with God and a deeper understanding of His workings on the human heart. Being a missionary pilot brings rich rewards in this area. I feel Him touch my life through others so often. I thank and praise Him for His goodness to me.
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