Have you ever discovered that you were the answer to the prayer of another? that God was acting behind the scenes to promote his own glory? I have, and it changed me.

While my sister and I were happily homeschooling, God drew a man from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea into town where he heard of Jesus Christ. Being born-again, he took the good news back to his remote tribe in the mountains. After hearing the gospel, many from the village believed on Jesus to the saving of their souls, but they were left with a thirst to know more about their God. They began to pray for God to send someone to tell them more about Jesus. Wow! Unknown to us, God decided we would be the answer to that prayer.

Through a series of divine appointments, (which you may have read about in my sister’s daily journal, Rebekah’s Diary) God led us on a journey to the Simbai Valley.

Madang

It’s been almost 30 years since I first set foot in Papua New Guinea. I was a 17-year-old country boy, and that experience changed me in ways I still cannot quantify. It wasn’t the jungle food—if you can call it food—, or the tribal life that so impacted me. It was the people.

When my 22-year-old sister and I first got to the small town of Madang, the doorway to many remote tribes, we were plunged into an alien world. The ever present bats were the size of opossums, hanging in the tops of tress towering 200 feet in the air. As weird as that was, in some ways, I fit right in. The local boys would run around with gigantic homemade slingshots, requiring two people to operate, firing rocks into the tops of the trees, hoping to knock down their supper. That is exactly what my brother and I would be doing if we grew up there. It was bats instead of squirrels, sling shots instead of shotguns, but the locals and I were the same country boys with different addresses.

In town Rebekah and I bought enough groceries to last a month in the mountains.We then caught the last airplane ride on a journey that had taken us from the hills of Tennessee to the mountains of PNG. Leaving civilization behind, we flew above 80 miles of dense rainforest. As my ears filled with the sound of the twin-engine, bush plane, I looked out of the window and saw an untouched world of winding rivers and dense rainforests, periodically dotted with grass huts. Strangely enough, l felt at home.

At the time I was a student pilot, so when our captain started lowering the landing gear, I wondered how we could land in these steep mountains. And then I suddenly saw a small, narrow clearing that ended abruptly into the face of the mountain. The end of the narrow grass strip was littered with the wreckage of failed landings. Truly, it was a do or die landing straight into the mountain—no second tries.

Getting to the Mountains

Finally, having landed safely, we got out of the airplane, and soon hundreds of little people were gawking at this tall lanky white boy and his also tall sister. As they watched, we unloaded our tin meat, and rice. I laughed because I felt at home being the object of curiosity. We had grown up in a small Amish community, and whenever somebody new came by, we all gathered and gawked.

The village folks came to help us carry our supplies that we would need to set up housekeeping. They looked and talked quite a bit differently from us, they lived in different houses, but it was still just a community working together. It felt normal.

Getting to the Village

After an eight hour climb over the mountain, we settled into daily life in our village. After a few days, some of the young men ask me in broken English why I was different. When I questioned what they meant, they said that the white people they had met before didn’t go out into the Bush with them to cut firewood or hunt cassowary (a big ostrich like bird). I told them, “I’m a country boy; it’s what we do.”

We lived with the natives, drank out of the open streams, cooked kaukau (sweet potatoes) around the fire; we ate with our hands and spit out the ashes. God had raised me up for an occasion such as this. I felt at home.

Village, Love of God

My most vivid memories are not of the food or lifestyle but of the love these people had for God. What they had is called “the first love.” Knowing God was new and beautiful to them. They could not articulate doctrine, and had never even heard most of the Bible stories so familiar to children in America. But I could feel the Christian fellowship of this primitive community. It was one life at a time lived for Jesus, founded in faith, held in hope, and experienced in love unfeigned.

A day in the Life of the Village.

Our days became routine. We would begin the morning by getting a fire going to make breakfast and tea. Then prayer. Afterward, I would head out to work in the bush, and my sister would be in her language studies for the day. I would hike for about three miles up the mountain to the site where we had felled a big tree. Throughout the day we would saw logs, eat, and sometimes hunt together. That evening we would go back down the mountain to the village carrying 60 pounds of lumber on our shoulders. After supper, Rebekah and I would go down to the spring to each take a turn under the cold mountain water.

Prayer Time

As we picked our way back in the darkness, I would hear the men praying with their families. There is no privacy to be had with a grass wall, so I could hear them in their native language begin talking to God, “Ohh Papa God,” the one man would always start in a song like cadence, “yu gutpela tru, mi amamas taim mi lukim yu.”  The zeal, longing and passion from those words would pour out from the heart of a father praying for the life of his community. Translated it said, “Oh Heavenly father, you are so good to us, I am longing to see you face to face.” He would thank God for the freedom that they have from the evil spirits, for the hope that’s found in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. They would repent of sin and pray for their families, the lost, their community, their gardens and on it went for more than an hour every night.

As each voice around the little community was lifted in prayer and adoration, we could not help but begin to recognize that this was different from anything we’d ever experienced. We love God, and in our home growing up we prayed every day, had Bible studies multiple times a week, and talked about God throughout the day. But these people loved God with a passion that only comes with being rescued from the abyss. These saints had not forgotten their first love, they were still discovering it. There was so much about the Bible that I took for granted and they didn’t even know. That changed me. They were by no means perfect, but they loved God, and they experienced an intimacy with him that is impossible to articulate with mere words.

Personal Friends

I fell in love with those folk, and I learned a baseline of what intimacy with God looks like. My tribal friend Jerry, with whom I hiked all over those mountains, and his wife Natalie are some of the dearest people I’ve ever met. I told Jerry that when we get to glory, I’m going to ask if I can have a mansion close to his so we can again live together in the same village.

Good and Evil, Start and Bible School

Because of glaring need for clear, chronological Bible teaching, my dad started the Picture Bible project. Years later it would go on to become a 330-page, full-color, award-winning graphic novel called Good and Evil. At the time I am writing this it has been published in more than 80 languages, with tens of thousands of new copies printed around the world every year.

After spending almost two years in the village, my sister felt led to start praying for a man who could come and lead a small Bible school there in the jungle. My parents wrote of the need in this very magazine and God raised up a man and his family to continue the work that God had been curating. After I got the new family settled, it was time for me to come home. Over the next 18 months, the young preacher boys that had been so faithful in prayer had many of those prayers answered. The Bible school was a roaring success, and they were taught chronologically through the Bible they loved.

Since those first few trips up into the village, I’ve only been back one time. I’ve often asked God to station me on that field with those beloved brothers. Every time but once, God has shut the door and told me no. I don’t think they’ve needed me, and God wanted them to mature with dependency on him, not on the church in America.

2015 Trip

In 2015, almost 20 years after the Good and Evil project started, I finally got the opportunity to go back and deliver to the village the first finished copies in their trade language, Tok Pisin. Upon entering the remote village, we all laughed and cried tears of joy to see each other again. I told them that the Good and Evil project that started in their village was now in many different languages all around the world. They told me of the progress of the church in the region, of new children born, and of even more churches planted. We rejoiced together at the growing goodness of God in our lives. Hebrews 6:4 says it best, for we “have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost . . .”

New work needed

Through the years, some of the village men have made it into town. They’ve received an education and a job, and we can now e-mail back and forth. Sometimes I get to answer theological questions, and we pray for one another. It is through those emails that I have become aware of pressing needs their church has. I believe God is directing us to once again partner with the saints there in Simbai valley.

American Money can Make a Mess

It is easy to mess up what God is doing by introducing American money into a third world environment. In many ways the church in that village was the healthiest church I’ve ever been a part of, and I have no desire to take away the dependency they have on God and transfer it to us. But they have a need for further instruction that we here in America can provide.

Let me tell you about the Simbai Saints.

Story of Simbai Saints Giving

When I was there in 2015, I left the village where we were staying for a two day “walk-about” to another church. We hiked eight soggy hours through a rain forest that was doing its best to live up to its name. Muddy, cold, and tired, we trudged up to the village that evening with several boxes of Good and Evil in Tok Pisin.

I had been to the village a couple times in the late ’90s and it was encouraging to see the changes. The church had blossomed, and the young preacher boy had turned into a seasoned pastor with a beautiful family. After spending the night catching up, we joined the village for a special church service the next morning.

The church building was the biggest, nicest building in the village by far. It was decorated with fresh flowers and tended as carefully as a grass building with a dirt floor could be tended. The pastor told everyone that we had flown back from America to bless their church with new outreach resources. After we sang some songs together, they passed out some of the books and divided the responsibility for delivering others to even more remote villages. He called the elders of the church up front where they began talking intensely while everyone waited.

After about ten minutes the pastor addressed the church in their native tongue and then started passing the offering plate around. As I watched the growing pile of coins and bills tumble into the baskets, I started feeling smaller and smaller. I was hoping they were not taking an offering up for me. I began beseeching God for wisdom. I asked, “Lord, how do I turn down this generous offer without spurning the heart with which it was given?”

After a commensurate amount of time, they presented me with 159.15 Kina (75 dollars). This doesn’t seem like much to us, but it could easily be the annual household budget for a sustenance farmer in the mountains. I began to struggle not to weep. With the gravity that this moment required, the pastor asked me to receive this offering from their church for our generosity in coming to their village with the Good and Evil books.

Choking back emotion, I answered with equal solemnity. I told them we would like to take the money they gave us with thanksgiving. But we would also like to make a donation to their church for the mission outreach work that they are so faithful to accomplish.

He said, “Let me discuss it with the elders” and they did, right there.

After three minutes of murmured discussion, they turned back to me and said, “We are sorry, but we cannot accept that.” The Bible says that “the laborer is worthy of his reward” and it would be inappropriate for me to leave their church without them taking up a love offering.

I could no longer hold back my tears, weeping now with gratitude, I had them translate for me as I addressed the whole church. I told them that I’ve preached in churches around the world, and no one has ever given me so much. I told them through my tears that I would humbly receive this offering with thanksgiving to the Lord for his goodness and the generosity of his servants.

I still have that small bag of Kina to remind me that when I stand among my five-foot-tall PNG brothers, I stand among giants in faith. We look on the outward appearance, but God looks upon the heart.

Moving Forward with Care

We must recognize the responsibility that we have not to diminish Christ’s Bride by giving without wisdom. More destruction has been done by the dollar than could ever be done by persecution. Money has a way of gently wooing the Bride away from the loving embrace of the Savior. It offers security without salvation, rest without relationship.

That being said, some of the facts on the ground have changed since 1995 when the church started and even since 2015 when I was there last.

Living in the Mountains Is Hard

What God started 30 years ago in the heart of one young man has now blossomed into ten seasoned churches. They’ve gone from relatively unknown to a well-known entity in the valley. They have matured, and with that comes pressure from the inside to grow. The church, now resplendent with second- and third-generation Christians, must make unbelievably difficult choices.

Subsistence farming is not an attractive lifestyle. Eking out a living on the side of a mountain by planting potatoes and peanuts is barely enough to stave off starvation. My sister’s native language helper died a few years after we were there at around 20 years of age. It was a bad stomachache, likely appendicitis, that took her life. If you can get an education and a job with a company in town, life will still be hard, but more certain than life in the mountains.

Many of the young people would like to leave the jungle and get a formal education on the coast. To accomplish this their parents would have to scrape up the money needed for a one-way flight to a town full of godlessness. At the tender age of 12 or 13 years old they would start high school while living with a friend or on the street, inundated by previously unknown temptation.

From my perspective, I would tell the young people to stay in the mountains and build a better life where they are. But I don’t blame them for looking for more.

School Outline

In the Simbai Valley, there are around 40,000 people who live off the land. What I would like to do is be able to fund a Christian school in the mountains that would take kids from fourth grade to high school graduation. It would give them a diploma so that if they want to move to town, they are ready to find a job. It would allow them to come to maturity surrounded by people they know.

It is an ambitious endeavor. The teachers would be Christians from PNG, and it would be a door to share the gospel day in and day out with an entire generation of young people.

Most of the villages have a person who will teach the children the basics, but only a few will have the wherewithal to go further. To make this vision a reality we would need a building with a metal roof, books, and chalkboards. We would need a steady supply of pencils, paper, and food for the kids that have traveled to where the school is. We would need a stipend for the teachers and steady contact to keep up with what is needed. I would like to see an annual trip put together with short-term outreaches to some of the outlying villages. If any medically minded folks can help, we could use vitamins and medicine with a steady supply of first aid on hand.

To our way of thinking all of this is so basic and simple, but there is no way to get these things to the mountains except to fly them in. When you think about flying all the sheet metal needed for a roof, you begin to realize what an expensive undertaking this would be. We would need rice to feed a couple hundred teenagers, and computers to teach typing. There would be uniforms, a strict code of conduct, and accreditation from the country.

There are already educated Christian nationals trying to get a school established for their people. They’ve applied with the state for the funding needed to do a fraction of what I’m talking about, and they have been turned down repeatedly. It’s not a lack of will by the country; it’s simply a lack of resources in the capital city, much less in the highland mountains district.

The Plan for Now

It is my hope to fly back sometime early next year and do some fact-finding to determine what’s needed for the betterment of the church. I intend to teach a pastors’ conference and speak with the educators from the valley to find out what they think is possible. I would like to look at location, material availability, and manpower to get a project of this scope off the ground. If you’re interested in getting involved with this project, please let me know. For now, we’ll be looking for financial backers. In the future we’ll be looking for short-term mission leaders, guest speakers for the school and church, medical personnel, and English teachers.

PNG is a dangerous country and not to be traveled lightly. I seek the prayers of the saints that we would have safety and go in the will of God. I am working my way through reading the New Testament in Pidgin and ask for prayer to understand the language well enough to be able to preach it by the time I go there next winter. If God puts it on your heart to support this ministry, please write to us and let us know.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
(Matthew 28:19–20)