| On
Monday 30th June 2003, a team of 16 Ulster people left
Belfast City Airport bound for Papua New Guinea. On
our way through London Heathrow we picked up another
team member, who was joining us from Scotland.
A
few days later after many, many hours of flying and
hanging around airports, we arrived in Kaveing, New
Ireland, Papua New Guinea. The purpose of our trip was
to build, or rather to complete work on a guesthouse
for New Tribes Mission in the town there. The guesthouse
will serve the missionaries working with various tribes
in New Ireland and the surrounding islands. They will
be able to stay there while they come to buy supplies,
have translations checked, or simply take a break from
living with the tribes.
New
Tribes Mission is an organisation which exists to assist
the ministry of the local church through mobilising,
equipping and co-ordinating of missionaries to evangelise
those who have not yet been reached with the gospel,
to translate the scriptures, and to see the establishment
of New Testament churches that truly glorify God. They
have more than 3000 missionaries throughout the world,
in diverse places such as Central and South America,
Africa, Russia and, of course, Australasia.
Our
trip was a short-term mission trip organised by Norman
McCready who belongs to our Hillsborough congregation.
He is a full-time support missionary with New Tribes
Mission, which basically means that he builds houses
and furniture and provides material assistance to the
teaching missionaries who are learning the various tribal
languages. The trip was an opportunity for us to do
some work for the Lord and to see how His work is progressing
in another part of the world. Most of our time was spent
working on the guesthouse – there was a lot of
work to be done – plumbing, electrical work, painting,
sanding, digging, pruning, etc. The guesthouse is actually
split into 2 separate units, and by the time we left,
1 of the units was ready for occupation and whilst the
other 1 still needed some work, it was almost there.
In the evenings we had great times of fun and fellowship
with singing and testifying. During the course of the
three weeks we were there, we also had the chance to
visit and have fellowship with the Beall and Shively
families working on the island of Tigak and with other
families on the island of Tsoi and inland with the Madak
tribe. Hopefully we were an encouragement to them!
97%
of the people in Papua New Guinea claim to be Christian,
however, they have mixed in a lot of their traditional
beliefs with the gospel. The people are still afraid
of the spirits of their ancestors who died many years
ago. There is a lot of violence in the country as well.
This is due to the tribal law of ‘payback’.
As the Bible says, ‘the heart of man is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked’. Many
tribes have yet to hear the gospel or ‘God’s
Talk’ as they call it. In fact, 6 tribal groups
have requested missionaries to come and give them ‘God’s
Talk’ but there is no one to send. Pray that God
will ‘send forth labourers into His harvest.’
|
Papua New Guinea