NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

I would like to attempt to put into words a few events that have moved me. Everyday I head out to the villages at 6:30 am to spend the morning interacting with the tribe and to practice the language. In just a short while I have made many new friends and have been adapting as I learn about their culture and their ways and have witnessed a couple rare cultural events. A few days ago, I was in a village talking with some of the men. Slowly, more and more people began to show up. I soon found myself surrounded by about 30 men all interested in what I had to say. Most of them had bow and arrows, spears, knives, or guns slung over their shoulders. I had a flashback of our life in America, and then back to the circle of tribal men, thinking to myself, why am I not afraid? Why am I not scared being the only white man here and encircled by them? In an instant I saw myself from a businessman in America to standing in the middle of a tribe fearlessly interacting with these men. It is truly amazing how God can equip, prepare, and give us everything we need. I was blown away as I pondered these thoughts all the while engaging in a cultural experience with these men. People continued to come to the village and in a short while there were over a hundred people in the village and the circle of men around me got quiet and focused their attention elsewhere. One of the men I had been talking with whispered to me that I was getting ready to experience something. Soon everything got quiet and all the attention turned to a man who had come with a group of people from another village in the tribe. They had come to offer a “bride price” for a woman one of them desired to marry. They laid a pink cloth on the ground with some money on it as the bride price. It was very interesting to watch this whole thing go down. Normally these kind of things can take a day or longer to figure out. But because of some specific reasons, this bride price offer was declined within an hour or two. I was thankful I was able to witness this cultural event take place.

Yesterday I decided to go listen to the teaching of the NTM tribal church planter to a clan of the Bena people group, in a village right outside of Interface. (I have included a picture of this) I was awstruck by the fact that I was sitting in the dirt watching the core and sole objective of NTM take place; to reach the unreached with the Gospel. Again, I had a flashback of our life in America and how all of the sudden I am sitting here in the bush, in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, watching a fellow American missionary teach tribal people in their own native language and how God has brought us from our homeland to here and how God has provided so much peace, endurance, and strength to move ahead in His perfect will one day at a time. Emotions were high for me during this time and it’s hard to explain.

The third experience I would like to share happened today. (I have included multiple pics of this) I headed up to the village as normal and greeted one of the men who I have been talking with. He said that he wanted me to walk with him a few villages down to go visit a houseline of people who had just lost everything to a bush fire including a suitcase of money which had been savings from selling crops like coffee. They feel it’s more secure to lock a suitcase in their house than to take a 3 hour journey into a town to a bank and risk getting robbed by rascals. A total of 14 houses were burned to the ground. As we approached the houseline, you could hear wailing, crying and mourning. Our culture does not express sadness or emotion over loss to the extent they do here in PNG. Here it is customary for people to come from nearby villages when there is a tragic experience to mourn the loss with them and tell them how sorry they are for them. So, we went around to the families who had lost their houses and we hugged the men, shaked hands with the ladies and said our sorries to them. The ladies would gather together in large groups and cry, wail and mourn together. Eventually all the commotion would turn into a song that they would sing…but is was like a never-ending wailing cry song. Here in PNG, even if you might not really be so upset that you cry loud like this, it is customary to do so anyway. It was so sad to see all of this take place and to think they all have to start over again. After awhile everyone gathered and sat down to discuss how they were going to move forward and if they could figure out who started the bush fire. It was neat to see how everyone from different villages gathered around the people of this houseline to help them out. I just kept praying that the Holy Spirit would some how use this as an opportunity to reach these people and glorify himself.

Please pray for the Bena people and specifically the clan in the surrounding villages. Recently they have been experiencing many difficulties. Pray that their hearts would be open to the teaching and that the people would respond by giving their hearts to Christ.

Drew

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 3:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.