After 8 years of living among the Amdu people, the church has been born. We continue to praise the Lord for the small group of believers here in our village. And this was the very first Resurrection Day we celebrated together. As we rejoiced in the amazing work that Christ did for us, it was neat to hear people again expressing their simple faith. What Christ did was enough to satisfy the Father and free them from the penalty of sin. No matter their past, they are now forgiven children of God.
But there are still many who have never heard this clear message! One of the things that drew us to the field of Papua New Guinea was that there were many language groups here still unreached with the Gospel and ASKING for missionaries! We had heard stories from other missionaries of people from neighboring language groups coming to ask for their own missionaries, but that had never happened to us. Until a few days ago.
A group of nine guys was sent from a neighboring language group to formally request that New Tribes Mission Papua New Guinea (NTMPNG) send them a missionary team to live with them, learn their language, translate the Bible into their language and teach them what the Bible says. As I sat with them, it was quite moving to hear them sincerely express that they recognized that they were in darkness and needed to understand God’s word. While some of them have a very limited knowledge of the Amdu language and also use the trade language of PNG, they were adamant that they MUST hear it in their own language. We heartily agree.
One of our new believers is a lady from that language group who is married to a man from our village. Through her, this neighboring language group had learned that the Amdu people were hearing the message of the Bible clearly and they wanted the same thing for their people. They come from a vast people group with large villages and dark jungles. Our people refer to them as “heathen” and when they’ve come to visit our village, they only bring things from the jungle to trade. This is an indicator that they live farther from town than our people do and have no other way to get clothes and other things they would like. This interaction with our village has also created an opportunity by which they can see the change in the Amdu people who have been taught the life changing message of the gospel of grace!
How long will it be before there is someone to go to these people asking for missionaries? We don’t know. Are they asking with totally sincere motives? Probably not. But they have heard a bit of the Truth and they have seen the change the Gospel brings and they are asking for it to come to them! Please pray for our new believers as they are having opportunities to be salt and light even as they themselves are still babies and need to be fed more of God’s Word. Pray for the spread of the Gospel among the many other villages in our language group as well as opportunities for neighboring language groups to hear the Good News as well.
There are still dark places where the light of the gospel has not gone. People are still needed to answer the call to go!