“When you teach us about Jesus, don’t go fast. We must hear everything that He has done so that we can understand this road that God has made.” – A PNG tribal person hearing God’s Word taught chronologically in his heart language for the first time
“One evening the conversation started leaning toward the natural human bent of ‘we must be good, then God will accept us.’ These comments have been uttered for decades on this island with the masses always nodding affirmation. Well, this time was different. A young guy who’s been coming to the teaching quickly fired back, ‘Guys wait. That’s not true talk. Remember, our pay for sin (sin debt) cannot be taken away with good works. God says death alone is the pay for our sin. Because of that, we cannot think anymore that our good behavior will get us into heaven. No way.’ Oh how I wish you could sit here and listen to this! After months of teaching, these foundational truths are being cemented in minds, and it’s exhilarating to watch!” – One of our church-planting co-workers
Get this! One of our church-planting missionary co-workers, working in a village where the church has already been birthed, was approached recently by a group of people from another village. This is what he heard: “We live far away from here but see the difference in the lives of the people here in [your village], and we were wondering, could you send some missionaries to our village?”
While you may not have time to sit down and read about ALL the accounts of God’s amazing work in the hearts of people here in the country of Papua New Guinea, if you know Jesus as your personal Savior, I believe that you and I will delight in hearing each and every story throughout eternity as God receives the glory, honor, and praise for all He has done! The stories are truly too many to tell in one blog entry. God is at work in a mighty way in this country where the fields are ripe unto the spiritual harvest of souls! May you be encouraged today knowing and seeing evidence that God is very much alive and still drawing people to Himself.
Besides saving the souls of people, God has also been at work in saving the physical lives of two of our co-workers whom we know personally and who have had near-death encounters. One of them is one of our dearest friends on our center. He suddenly became very ill and nearly died as his blood pressure dropped critically. God spared his life when it looked like our dear friend would not make it through the night. The second instance was when a co-worker was on a boat in the middle of the ocean between some of the islands here in PNG. The boat sank, and this man and some PNG nationals were left stranded on the open waters, clinging to parts of the boat for 15 hours during a long, dark night. Yet God saw fit in His sovereignty to spare them all! God be magnified!