Ministry Weekend at the AOG Church

Jeff writes ...

One of the ways we reach out to the local community around us is to participate in a ministry weekend.

Sue and I work with a cell group with six guys in it, and our group has been assigned an Assemblies of God (AOG) church. These men have been meeting with the church for the entire year, but last weekend was my first time to take part. (Sue's back was hurting from a rough ride to Mt. Hagen the day before so she stayed home to rest.) These ministry opportunities are real answers to prayer because of the connections they bring and the opportunities they offer for us to get to know the culture better.

The photo at the right shows some of the guys as we walked down a muddy road toward a Nazarene church which was close by. We had to turn back shortly after reaching the church because there had been trouble in the village.



The trouble had started over an election dispute. Apparently the candidate a clan within the tribe was supporting for a local council position lost, and so they took out their anger on the winning candidate's clan. We turned back because a group of people were burning something alongside the road ahead.

Can you see the chopped tree in this picture? The disgruntled clan members came through this area with bush knives and chopped banana and other trees. As far as I could see no houses were burnt down.


Trouble can come up quickly here, but just as quickly it can die down. We were told that the village planned a bel kol or peace ceremony for the following Wednesday after our visit. Hopefully the ceremony took place.

The house at the right is a fairly large Highlands home. Can you spot the little girl? How about the wash hanging out to dry?







I snuck up on these boys and took this photo with a telephoto lens. They were all busily engaged in pushing rocks through the mud and making car noises. These mangi (kids), like children everywhere, are incredibly inventive in their play. You can see why our Lord loved children so!










This is our ministry team warming up for the church service with a private time of worship. This was a really special time for all of us as different individuals led in singing and in prayer. The five are (from right to left): Abel, Daniel, Justin, Mathias and Michael.

One of our members, whose name is August, did not come to our service. Instead he was at a Nazarene youth revival at Kudjip. He led music there and later reported that over a 1,000 people came and that many were converted or had rededicated their lives to the Lord.

When our service began, Mathias led the congregation in worship. Michael played the guitar as well, and Abel contributed his enthusiam.

As cell-group advisors, we encourage our students to lead the ministry weekends. Michael, who is our cell-group leader, asked me to preach, but I declined. It is good that I did because these guys really came alive during the service. During cell-group time they are a reserved bunch, but during this worship time they really brought us all into a wonderful experience with the Lord!


It was Abel's turn to preach. He did a good job. One of the things I like about him is his smile. When he preached, he smiled constantly! It was infectious. Also Abel has only had a sixth-grade education. However, since leaving school he worked as a welder, and then he helped a SIL (Wycliffe) missionary translate the Bible into his tok ples (tribal language). Abel is still shy about his English, but that did not hinder his ability to preach in tok pisin. It is great to watch your students perform so well.




At the left is Pasta James. He met us on our way up to the church. I only got to speak with him briefly, so I hope that at our next visit, which will not be until October, we will be able to sit down and stori (talk) some more.

He did encourage his congregation to seek peace with the other disgruntled clan members. He was also instrumental in setting up the bel kol ceremony.






This is our farewell photo with the team and the AOG church congregation. This is one of the prettiest little churches I have been to in PNG. Perhaps you can spot me. I am the guy wearing the hat.

Needy People, Generous Team

Sue writes ...

So many times we see people in PNG who are suffering. We are thankful that we are able to help out some of them through the generous giving of our support team. Let me tell you who we have been able to help in just the seven weeks we have been back in-country.

We were able to clear the debts of a family whose baby was born with Down's Syndrome. The family had done all they medically could do for their daughter Jane. The Lord took Jane home to Himself in January. The family was deeply grieved to lose Jane. They were also assured they would see her with the Lord, and grateful they could clear their debts to the college and their tribal members who had loaned them money.

A student whom we know well and who has several children has been short on food money a couple times. We have given him small amounts of cash to tide him over until the next kaukau distribution. We also have students for evening meals to make sure they are eating well. (There is no food service on campus. Every student or household of students cooks for their own needs.)

A family's house was burned down by a relative who was angry at them for not supporting his candidate for local elections. Many of the family's other relatives said they should take revenge. The family has five children, and the husband's mother is fighting cancer. The couple has witnessed to their tribe, saying Jesus' way is not to take one's own revenge. We gave them the encouragement of some money to rebuild and assurances of our prayers.

A woman came to me with a small problem patch on her neck. She said the problem was grile. I wasn't familiar with the problem, and I asked her if she had talked to the clinic nurse. The nurse had said grile is ringworm, a fungal infection, and the clinic was out of the medication the woman needed. I looked in my supply of medications. I had an herbal remedy for skin fungus. The woman is trying it.

One of our co-workers is a widow with two school-aged children. When I was wondering what to do with some skirts that are used but still wearable, I thought of this woman's daughter. The mother thanked me heartily for "helping to give her daughter a feeling of a security within the community around her."

A student and his wife who are serving their year's internship, the third of their four years, are running a large AWANA club for a church in Goroka. The leaders decided to provide a meal for kids before the meeting, and they are inviting street kids to attend. They are gaining lots of new clubbers who are growing in their faith. The parents of several of these kids has renewed their faith and begun attending church. The church was running out of funds for the growing food bill, so we contributed toward the meals the church is providing.

Different needs, but each one keenly felt by those who have them. Part of our the money that our team provides is earmarked for such situations. We give thanks to our financial team who has helped to ease some of the suffering that we have seen around us.

Last Three Weeks of Term

Sue says:

The pace of a term seems to move to fast forward during the last three weeks. This one is true to form.

We enjoyed having three single guys from our student cell group to dinner one night this week. It is always fascinating to hear more of the nationals' personal stories. Before he came here, one of the guys had helped a Korean man translate the Psalms and New Testament into the student's village language. (There are over 800 separate languages in PNG alone.) . Another guy has a successful youth ministry going at Kudjip, the Nazarene village near us. The third student has lived in Port Moresby, the PNG capital, so he was used to city life.

There are more assignments to grade at the end of term, and we want to be certain we clear up any questions students have about the topics we are covering. Jeff is having some outstanding discussions with his students on the work of the Holy Spirit presently. As our student body includes a wide range of denominations, you can imagine the varying positions held.

More fuel for prayer: A 2006 CLTC graduate, Hedwig, and a small team plan to visit a village near them where a charismatic cult has taken root. The cultic group has burned their Bibles and taken up some other strange practices, saying they don't need the Bible, only the Holy Spirit to guide them. Please pray the team will be able to relate to the cult members and to explain Christian practice in a way that makes sense to the cult members.

On top of the usual added responsibilities at the end of term, this term also has about a dozen outsiders coming in for meetings right now. One group will evaluate our academic program to prepare the college for accreditation with a South Pacific organization. The other group is our oversight board. We faculty (and the rest of the college community) are asked to host these visitors for meals, and both board meetings will mean changing some faculty assignments. Pray that we faculty members will be gracious to our visitors and allow the Lord to strengthen us for added tasks.

Building a Bush House

Jeff writes ...

One of our students, Matthias Koim, is a pastor in our area. We have gotten to know Matthias and his family well. I have had several opportunities to preach in his church at Warala. I told him that one of my goals for this term is to get off of the CLTC campus and spend more time in the villages learning more about their customs. When he heard that he told me that he was in the process of finishing his house, and he asked me if I wanted to see what he was up to. Of course, I was interested, and this photographic essay is the result. Hope you enjoy it.

These photos depict the finishing of the interior of his house. In the States we use a material called sheet rock to finish our inside walls. In Matthias' home he will weave his walls from a material called pitpit. Pitpit is a cane-like grass which grows along the Waghi River. The pitpit is cut, bundled and carried to the job site where the house will be constructed. This photo shows some pitpit laying on the ground waiting to be processed.








Matthias' mother is flattening the pitpit with a large stick. Once flattened the pitpit is ready to be woven into wall material. Like mothers everywhere she is multi-tasking. This little boy was content to sleep on her lap while she was working.












These three are in the process of weaving the pitpit wall or blain (pronounced as "bline"). The man on the left is Matthias' father.

They can weave different decorative patterns into the wall. The woven wall stretched out behind them for about 7 meters. When finished they roll it up for transport or to sell. The individual wall sections can be cut to measure.

Matthias' father was one of the first to settle in this area. He cleared the land and marked it by planting a tree to indicate his ownership. He said the process they use to identify their land is the same that the Israelites did, but instead of using stones, they plant hedges made of a red-, green- and white-leafed plant called tanget.



This picture shows a closer view of the weaving process.
















Matthias (on the right) and his friend Michael are carrying a cut piece of blain through the front door to install in one of the rooms of his house. Note that the outside walls of the house are made from hand-split wood planks. The roof consists of around 1,500 tightly wrapped bundles of kunai grass. They are woven into place on top of the roof rafters and cross members. The grass roof provides shelter against the torrential rains of the Highland's wet season. Special woods are used for the framing and for the flooring. Certain trees are more resistant to insects, and their wood is used wherever the house comes into contact with the ground.

Matthias has also cut holes into the walls where he will install his store-bought louvered glass windows. Other than nails these are the only non-natural materials in the entire house. To keep things dry he has built his house off of the ground. He will use the pitpit blain for flooring as well. It is laid over the floor joists.

Matthias and Michael are getting ready to hang the pitpit blain on a wall of Matthias' study. The house has a central area surrounded by four small rooms. Cooking will be done outdoors in another small shelter, and there is no indoor plumbing. Matthias will build a liklik haus or latrine for his family to use.











This photo shows the house located in the midst of Matthias' garden. When his wife Jennifer needs some fresh vegetables or fruit for dinner, she doesn't go to the refrigerator to get them. Instead with her garden at her front door, she merely steps outside and harvests the meal.

During our "summer" break, which takes place over Christmas (Think about it.) Matthias wants to begin construction of his new church building. I told him that I would like to help, so if it works out, look for a blog article about it in the coming months.

Update on "A Day in the Life"

The counseling role plays were worthy first efforts. It is difficult for the students to do counseling in front of everyone using techniques that are new to them. One significant insight a counselor had was to address bitterness that may be the root of the man's anger (Hebrews 12:15). I thought that was worth pursuing. In the role plays, the counselors stayed with anger as a problem and didn't get into the counselee's taking his anger out on his wife. We mentioned that it would be valuable for the counselors to do their own scriptural studies on anger and marital relationships so they would be ready to discuss those with the counselee.

The evening gathering was more a social time. Our guests were tired after traveling from New Zealand and Australia. We hope the positive social contact will bridge to other discussions in the next two weeks of accreditation and board meetings.

Thanksgiving Salvation Poem

Jeff writes ...

In the class I teach on the Holy Spirit, I gave an assignment to the students to write a thank you to the Lord for their salvation. It could have been in the form of a poem, or a prayer, or a song or a drawing. Below is a poem I received. The student gave me permission to publish it. I will publish more as time permits.

Why na mi Bikpela? (Why me, Lord?)
by Joro Girupano

Did you call me, a man from a distant village?
Did you seek me, a man without hope nor future?
Do you need me, a man bound in sin for eternal death?
A sinner condemned with guilt, shame and fear?
Why na mi Bikpela?

Enemies confronted me every day to destroy my life,
The snares of enemies all around me.
What joy shall my enemies have to destroy an innocent life like mine?
From one village to another I seek refuge to hide from my foes.
Why na mi Bikepela?

Your calling is eternal, so I rose up and responded.
Your seeking was genuine, so I chose to obey you.
Your interest in me was divine, so I thank you Lord,
For you have redeemed me,
For you have predestined me,
And now I am bound to Christ
Having eternal life.
Now I enjoy victory, freedom and joy in Christ,
And with no regret I repeat ...
Why na mi Bikpela?

A Day in the Life...

Sue writes...

Some significant events taking place today.

In counseling class, some students will role play an angry man and others will role play his counselor. Different counselors will assist the man in his relationships, his thinking, his choices, and his emotional being. Parts of Hebrews 12 were recommended as useful to pointing him toward the help of the Lord in his situation. I look forward to seeing what happens.

Tonight, three of us faculty couples will host dinner for two other couples who have just arrived for council and academic advisory meetings. Sometimes these meetings are seen by those here and those coming in as "us" vs "them." We pray that these kinds of evening gatherings, that will go on in the next two weeks, aid both sides in coming together in their vision for the future of Christian Leaders' Training College.

Washer Update

Sue writes:

Thanks to you who have been praying that my washer would get fixed. It is still in the workshop, but the Lord has sent a helpful answer. A loaner was delivered to me by a national friend who had bought a newer washer. I can use it until my regular one gets fixed. What a convenience it is to have!

Learning a New Skill

Sue writes:

Just a short report on a baking project that worked out.

A few weeks ago, a Pioneers friend had asked me to bake hamburger buns for a gathering. (None are available here commercially.) I'd never done such a thing before so I asked to bring something else. That was fine.

Today without the pressure of a large gathering judging my product, I asked the Pioneers friend to show me how to form hamburger buns. It wasn't so difficult. And it was rewarding to bring those nicely browned, yeasty smelling shapes out of the oven. Yum! (We've already started eating the evidence. No pictures this time.)

Ethics in the Scriptures: Revenge for Witchcraft Killings

Jeff writes ...

My ethics class is designed to teach the students how to apply biblical ethics to today's problems. One way I do this is to have them find a newspaper article which presents an ethical issue (like Michael Yambal did below) and determine what the Bible says about it. I also assign them a Scripture verse or verses and ask them to come up with four ways that Scripture is being followed or ignored in contemporary Melanesia. Below is a response one of my students gave. Jeffrey M. Hapeli applies Lev. 19:18 and Deut. 32:35, which speak of the need to allow God to take vengeance, to the Melanesian practice of murder by witchcraft.

(The photo is NOT of a witch. It is of a Highland's woman in mourning.)

It is a practice in my area that people use witchcraft to kill others. When one uses that means to have another person killed, it is always difficult to find out who actually did it at the time of the person's death. However, sometimes later, say after four or five years, the news about the killing normally is made known to the relatives of the deceased. During such times, the relatives of the dead man seek revenge for the loss of their family member against those that have killed their family member by witchcraft. Most believers in the Lord still do that nowadays in my area. Thus this is against Biblical ethics and should be forbidden. Let God alone deal with them that do us harm.

Later on in his paper Jeffrey cites an example where God did take revenge on a man who assaulted a CLTC student in Mt. Hagen with a knife. The student forgave his attacker, who was himself later stabbed at a fast-food restaurant in the city.

Student Highlight: Michael Yambal

Jeff writes ...

Sue mentioned that we had students over last Friday for a hospitality night. One of them was a single man by the name of Michael Yambal.

Michael is a fourth year diploma student which means he will graduate this November. He is from the Tsenglap tribe which occupies land close to the town of Banz.

He finished grade 11 before coming to the CLTC. His education was cut short due to a tribal fight over election results in the Southern Highlands.

He is part of the Evangelical Brethren Church. He spent a year's internship at a Lutheran Revival Church in Goroka where he worked with the youth. He was selected to preach one of the graduating student's sermons in chapel, and he did a fine job with Galatians 5:1 as his text.

When he completes his studies here at the CLTC, he may go on to a teacher's college in Goroka, or he may come back to the CLTC to pursue his bachelors of theology.

Michael is in my ethics class, and he gave an oral report about a newspaper article on a man who "beat his wife for no reason." Now Michael is one of the nicest people you would ever meet, but I had to ask the question whether it is all right in some circumstances for a man to beat his wife. In the Highlands where we live apparently it is acceptable. The problem he saw with the article was the man had no good reason to beat his wife.

Spousal abuse is a major issue in Papua New Guinea. A good missionary friend of mine told me of a man he witnessed who early one morning repeatedly smashed his wife's head into a concrete block wall of the church they attended. However, another PNG faculty member said that in his province, if a man did that to his wife, he would be "meat in someone's mouth." In other words, her family would kill him, (and perhaps in the past eat him too).

Of course we did bring the Scripture to bear on the situation, especially Ephesians 5:28-29. I asked the class when was the last time the men had hit themselves in the head with a sauce (frying) pan? Husbands, who love their own wives as their own bodies, would never abuse them.

However, it takes time to change a culture. Men, who do not beat their wives here, are often referred to as merimen or as Arnold Schwarzenegger said at one time "girly men." Sometimes the husband's mother encourages him to beat his wife. And sadly, some women feel that for their husband to be a respected man, he must beat her.

Pray for us as we teach and interact with students. Certain notions run deep in their lives, and we need wisdom to make sure that we don't impose American cultural values but that we bring Biblical truth to bear in situations like these. Godly convictions change culture for the good. Pray that the Holy Spirit would act in this area to protect the helpless.

For Biology Enthusiasts

Sue writes:

Cicadas are some of the first creatures we noticed when we arrived in PNG in 2005. They are the national alarm clocks, but they are rarely seen.

In the eastern US, when the 17-year cicadas come out of their underground homes, they are seen everywhere. Not so in PNG. These cicadas must hatch each year. They seem to have their own territories, and before dawn they call out to the other cicadas that they had better stay away.

Who can notice a way that this PNG cicada is different from ones that live in the eastern US? They are about the same size; their bodies about three inches long, including the wings.

Another biology related thing: Jeff and I have been reading a book called What Darwin Didn't Know by Geoffrey Simmonds. It was published in Eugene, Oregon, by Harvest House in 2004. Simmonds is a physician who has studied Darwinism for about 40 years. He has accumulated a number of medical facts that were not known in Darwin's time. He presents his findings in a respectful way to Darwin, pointing out that some of his objections to Darwinism were even acknowledged by Darwin himself. The section on chromosomes was most fascinating to me. I didn't know that animal species have varying numbers of chromosomes from other species, making macroevolution improbable. See what you think about this book.

Hospitality Night

Sue writes...

Last Friday was hospitality night. Faculty and staff invited student families to their homes for dinner and fun. We enjoyed having three students visit us. Having time with just a few individuals allows us to get to know them better and ask questions that help us understand the different cultures better. Our students were from different tribes around Banz, the closest town to us.

This year, all the students are receiving decreased allotments of kau kau, the sweet potato that is the staple of Highlands diets, so they welcome a chance to get more and different food than they eat all the time. I thought spiced pound cake with a chocolate swirl would be unusual for them.

The students appreciate learning new games. We taught them Yahtzee. It was fun see them laugh and enjoy the evening. And we were heartened to see the ways they are applying the biblical concepts we are teaching them in class.

*****
Washer update--Please continue to pray for our patience as we allow time for our washer to get fixed. The part we thought was broken wasn't. Now we need to find out which one is.

As I was washing out clothes in the sink today, Esly was helping me. It struck me that she washes all her family's clothes by hand all the time. O Lord, help me be more grateful for my blessings.

Allowing for Time to Wait

Maintenance takes more time in an under-developed country. Take our washing machine. It has been agitating on a irregular basis for quite a while. There is no such thing around here, however, as a washer repairer.

An engineer friend helped us procure a timer box from Australia to put into the washer. It has so many unmarked wires that Jeff decided not to try installing it. A washer that works part of the time is better than no washer.

But the clothes weren't getting very clean any more. It was time to try something else.

We had arranged to send the washer with our college egg delivery truck to a place five hours away where they said they'd take a look at it. At the last minute, we decided to let a local guy try to help us out. The washer's at his workshop, and he'll work on it when he has spare time.

The last couple of days, I've washed some clothes by hand in our kitchen sink. There's hot water there--none in the laundry room--and the clothes actually look better. But I'll need to wash sheets and towels soon.

A neighbor offered to let me use her washer from time to time. Even though I'll carry things back and forth, it's probably worth it for the big things. I can't wring things out as well as a washer spins them. The socks I washed yesterday and was drying indoors still are a bit wet.

There are lots of reasons that things take longer to accomplish in countries like this. We need to bake our own bread because there isn't a reliable supply. Computer parts often have to come from Australia or Hong Kong. The internet speed is too slow to up- or download pictures or long articles if very many people are online at once. We can only use the car on rare occasions because gas is so expensive. We have to wait to be helped one by one at the window outside our college grocery store because shoplifters were making the store unprofitable.

Allowing time for mundane things isn't a part of life in modern countries, but in other countries one must be willing to wait. And we have it a lot better than most of the population here.

August Praises and Prayer Requests

We returned safely and happily from our anniversary time in Hagen. Here's whazzup in this new month.

Praises

Sue had a refreshing time at an off-campus women’s retreat with the CLTC employees and missionaries. It was a time to get to know God and the other women better in a relaxing atmosphere.

Jeff and Sue celebrated their 34^th wedding anniversary recently. God has been good to assist them in communicating and caring for each other better and better over the years.

Sue’s dad is receiving excellent medical treatment for cancer, and her mom is able to be a help to him.

Prayer

Jeff is teaching four courses this term (an unusually high number), and fighting off requests for assisting folks with IT problems. Please pray that the Management Team will hire an IT manager so Jeff can stick to his calling, teaching.

Ask God to continue to give Sue insight into culturally appropriate ways to teach counseling and the time to rewrite her History of Missions course for next term.

Request that God will restore Sue’s dad’s strength and health as he undergoes radiation therapy all of August.

The Retreat that Refreshed

The time away with the women employees and wives of employees last week-end was refreshing and fun! It was refreshing to get off campus and away from the usual home/college duties and hear teaching directed toward us women. It was fun to get to know the women better and to do camp chores, prepare an "item," and experience electives sessions together .

The theme of the week-end was "bloom where you are planted (kamap gutpela long hap yu stap, in pidgin) . It was mostly a pidgin-speaking time. Hearing the teaching and the discussion that followed helped me to identify the needs of the national women more clearly.

We were assigned to huts like Jeff pictured below. Ours had eight women assigned to it. All of us had brought sleeping pads, sheets, blankets, or whatever we thought we'd need (and we had to carry them about a half-mile up a hill). There were three sleeping platforms in our hut, so five women slept on their sleeping pads on the floor. I offered to be one on the floor, but since I was the oldest woman, I was told to enjoy one of the sleeping platforms. And I did!

Our hut had kitchen duty first. We cut up vegetables together and cooked rice in a huge cast iron pot over an open fire. Conversation flows more easily when doing something, so the KP (kitchen patrol) time was enjoyable together with my hutmates. There were 21 women in attendance for the week-end.

One of the fun things was an elective on worship dance. A young gal showed us how to use a tambourine to praise the Lord in song. We laughed and had fun trying to learn what she was showing us.

On Saturday, we were given time to prepare items, as they call them. Each hut was to ready a song, poem, skit, or whatever we thought would illustrate the teaching we had heard. One hut did a funny skit about following a leader (according to their own drumbeat). Ours did a creative one about a flower God planted in a forest setting. After the skit we sang "In the Garden," that I had taught to the group in my hut. The women were touched to sing the words, "And He tells me I am His own."

When I got home on Sunday, Jeff had arranged some flowers from our garden as a remembrance of our thirty-fourth wedding anniversary. They're beautiful, aren't they! This week-end Jeff and I will get away for a night in Hagen for our anniversary.