A Sad Day for the Lord's Work

Sue says:
A tragic situation has arisen at the large Wycliffe Bible Translators (known here as SIL) missionary base at Ukarumpa. It typifies the difficulties many Christian missions in the highlands have with neighboring villages. This is as clear as I could piece the story together.   

Early this year there were a number of forced entries and burglaries of homes at the SIL Ukarumpa base. At Easter a number of village youths committed their lives to the Lord. The break-ins stopped.


A while later the same tribe took up the breaking-and-entering again. Ukarumpa leaders appealed to the village leaders to rein in the illegal activities of their youth. The village leaders said it wasn't fair for them to be asked to "turn in" their youth. If they were being asked to act as security, they should have the security guard contract and get paid for what they were doing.

Recently, a drunken man from the same village was ejected by security guards from Ukarumpa property after he pulled a knife on the guards. After the 10 pm lock-up, the same man was found on the property again. The guards loosed a dog on the man, and he escaped with a dog bite over the security fence.About sunrise the next morning, the security guard at the Ukarumpa airstrip was beaten in retaliation by a few men from the man's village.

Later that morning, the village leaders showed up with the man with the dog bite. They demanded compensation for the dog-bite their relative had suffered. When they were informed that some of their tribe had already beaten a guard for compensation, they were angry at their relatives for negating their claim. Ukarumpa leaders saw that the man's dog-bite was treated at the Ukarumpa clinic. He did not need any further care. The leaders said no further action would be taken against the security guards. The police were made aware of the incident.

On the night of 31 October, an unknown person with a gun entered the Ukarumpa airstrip property. The person shot and killed a security guard. Local police are investigating.

The Ukarumpa leaders gave the whole security company the next day off to mourn the death of their co-worker. Some Ukarumpa missionaries also joined in the mourning and sent money to help the family with burial expenses. Some of the missions women brought cooked food to the mourners.

Leaders from Ukarumpa released this statement about the situation:

The culture dictates "payback" for every wrong, which leads to an
unending cycle of revenge. We ask our larger international community to
pray for a peaceful and lawful resolution to the current issues facing
our Papua New Guinean security contractor and the SIL-PNG community.

Many highlands cultures live by the "might makes right" motto. When opponents do not use force to back up their position, they are considered perfect targets. So where does this leave missions organizations? Asking God to intervene. Please join us.