{"id":212,"date":"2010-07-04T05:54:44","date_gmt":"2010-07-03T19:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/?p=212"},"modified":"2011-02-19T06:00:05","modified_gmt":"2011-02-18T20:00:05","slug":"the-4th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/2010\/07\/04\/the-4th\/","title":{"rendered":"The 4th"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DSCN1272\"Gathering on the 4th<\/sup> of July<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It is the 4th<\/sup> of July here in Papua New Guinea.\u00a0 It is a beautiful, warm, sunny day, but it doesn\u2019t feel like the 4th<\/sup>.\u00a0 There are no flags waving, no picnics planned, no red, white and blue (except for a banner my girls put up in the house and their toenails which were meticulously painted), no family reunions, and no fireworks.\u00a0 So much here is unlike what so many are experiencing back \u201cin the land of the free and the home of the brave.\u201d\u00a0 In fact no one here even knows that the 4th<\/sup> of July is significant in any way to any other day of the year.<\/p>\n

Yet there is a get together today.\u00a0 Almost the whole village is gathered.\u00a0 Food is being prepared and eaten.\u00a0 Friends and family are spending time together.\u00a0 Today is the funeral for an elderly woman who died yesterday.\u00a0 Her health had been deteriorating for over a month with the onset of\u00a0 heart failure.\u00a0 She was a good woman and many respected her.\u00a0 I had met her and talked some with her, but didn\u2019t know her well.\u00a0 She had never come to the teaching when we taught about the way of salvation.\u00a0 She had never come to the church.\u00a0 She had never interacted with the believers\u2026but they had interacted with her.<\/p>\n

As usual, since the time of her death I have heard a lot of stories.\u00a0 But this time the majority of the stories are not about possible poison or black magic being worked on her, or the consultation with fireflies or possessed-bamboo to find out who killed her, or fights over her few earthly possessions, or discussions about who will pay for the pigs in order to feed everybody.\u00a0 The majority of the stories are about the believers who interacted with her.<\/p>\n

Ironically the group of individuals who have been made fun of, disassociated with, rejected, and humiliated because of their faith in Christ and wanting to follow him, are the ones who had reached out to the elderly woman in her last days.\u00a0 One of the women, a Patpatar Christian, had spent days on end with her, taking care of her physical needs, giving her medicine, and sleeping in her hut to be on-call.\u00a0 Another believer consistently brought food from his garden to give to her.\u00a0 Another found out she wanted store bought food like rice and canned fish, so he bought it for her.\u00a0 At least 3 of them sat down with her at different times to share the Gospel message with her.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know if she ever accepted the truth.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know if the effort invested by the believers made an eternal difference in her life. \u00a0But I do know what they have done is making an impact on the community.\u00a0 You see, the believers are celebrating their independence.\u00a0 They have been set free by the truth of the Gospel of Christ.\u00a0 The freedom is costing them, but they are standing firm in the freedom they have been given and are living it out.\u00a0 They are being a witness, maybe a little bit like a firework giving off some light and impressing the community on this 4th<\/sup> of July.<\/p>\n

Because He has set us free,<\/p>\n

Aaron<\/p>\n

\"DSCN1273\"<\/p>\n

Fact:\u00a0 Papua New Guinea has been governed by several different countries in the last few hundred years, the last being Australia who gave PNG their independence on September 16th<\/sup> 1975.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gathering on the 4th of July It is the 4th of July here in Papua New Guinea.\u00a0 It is a beautiful, warm, sunny day, but it doesn\u2019t feel like the 4th.\u00a0 There are no flags waving, no picnics planned, no red, white and blue (except for a banner my girls put up in the house […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1368,3,4,3430],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-1368","7":"category-family","8":"category-ministry","9":"category-news-article","10":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-luse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}