Transforming Lives In Papua New Guinea

[Editor’s Note:  The following story just arrived in my email Inbox a few days ago, and I wanted to pass it along to my readers right away.  Not only is it fascinating to see how God has used a good friend of mine over the years in a remote area of Papua New Guinea to bring the translated Word of God to the people there, but recently, Martha has been able to help bring Literacy to them as well.

As she has now been able to combine literacy with Scripture translation, via the avenue of the Sunday School program for local villages, slowly but surely a transformation of the people is happening, especially among the children.  Please pray for Martha and the people over there in PNG as you read this story.]

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“Just teach the little kids to pray like you teach your own kids to pray,” I quickly said in response to a question from the leader of another village. In response he said, “My kids don’t pray!  I pray!” His response left me at a bit of a loss and I looked at the couple from another village, who had also come for the Sunday School Teacher Training Course, but they also said, “Our kids don’t pray, we pray.”  

Internally I was thinking, “And these are the people who are supposed to be teaching the kids?” But, externally I said, “This is how we do it here.  I put my hand on the child’s head or shoulder to keep him quiet, and then I tell him to close his eyes and say the exact words that I say.  I say very short sentences like, ‘Big Father, we lift up your name [praise you]. Give us long ears [wisdom]. That is all of my little talk.'”

On Sunday evening when no one had shown up for the Sunday School Course, I had assumed it was cancelled.  No one came on Monday so I worked on translation preparation work and basically didn’t think anything more about the course. Courses normally “lose” people through the week so if you start with “zero”, there is no hope of a course running, but this week was different.”

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“The first leader had started hiking over on Monday, but rain stopped him.  He completed the 4 hour hike on Tuesday morning and said he was ready to start the course.  Teaching one person wasn’t much of an option so I walked to the school to see if two of the teenaged boys would want to attend the course.  

While up there waiting for a school break, the couple hiked in from another village. As they walked by me, the wife said, “My husband just got back yesterday from town, but I got him to come with me today.”  They had hiked over 2 hours to come to the course.  We started that afternoon when the two boys got out of school and then spent another 3 full days going over the material I had prepared.  

A woman from this village joined us on Wednesday and on Thursday, a lady from another distant village happened to come through the village, and decided to join us on Friday.  All of these adults have been Christian leaders in their villages for decades. On Friday morning, I had the teacher trainees explain to the new person each part of the Sunday School routine.  Having them do the “teaching” proved to be a good thing for them and allowed me to give some corrective teaching on parts they had not understood well.”

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“On Wednesday and Thursday we had periodically gathered kids from the village to allow the teachers to teach the lesson that they had just learned.  Then on Friday we “hid” away from the kids in my house and had some serious study time.  They chose a final lesson to teach, prepared their parts and then I went to collect the students.  

I wish I could have recorded the shouts of joy from all the kids when they heard that they were going to have another Sunday School lesson.  They came running from all directions and yelled to their friends to join them. At the end of a fun lesson, the older leader said to the other teachers, “Now don’t you expect it to be like that back in our own villages.  It won’t be. These kids have had years of Sunday School. It won’t go well for us.”  

My first thought was “What a negative thing to say,” but it probably was the truth.  I did, however, encourage them and said, “When we started things here, kids didn’t know anything about the Bible either, but look at them now.” Praise God for Sunday School and for kids who learn so quickly.”

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“Praise God for my sister-in-law, who years ago picked out the lessons to go with our translated material, bought the pictures and reproducible coloring pictures, organized them all and sent them over with all kinds of other helpful supplies such as crayons.  We have been using the materials here for years because I could teach without a written lesson plan, but this year, three more villages will be able to use the beautiful pictures that caught the interest of the adults as well as the kids.

I did have to laugh though when one of the teachers thought a camel was a donkey.  They don’t have those kinds of critters here.  Pray that I can write even better lesson plans for the lessons from Genesis and Exodus. Currently the teachers only have 13 lessons about Jesus’ birth and about his death and resurrection.”