Sanders Party of Five

 Alex was waiting for us just on the other side of this gate where we loaded all of our luggage into the back of their pickup trucks and headed to the New Life Mission Station where they live. This mission station was started 30 years ago by an organization named New Life Missions. The former missionaries retired and moved on, but their work among the Bena people outside of Goroka prospered in their absence through the grace of God. In the wake of the original ministry’s work there is a network of self-sustaining national led churches that have been planting churches throughout their region. To Every Tribe was connected with this group of pastors in 2006. The goal is for first term missionaries to spend their first years in PNG learning culture and language while living among the Bena people at the New Life Mission Station. While they help us learn PNG’s language and varied cultures, we hope to be able to provide them with pastoral training through the LRI classes that To Every Tribe has facilitated at the station. Another benefit of this partnership is that Alex has been able to include some of the local pastors in his trips to Samiri and Gavamas. This has allowed them to see the need for discipleship and Gospel witness in other regions of their own country. Our hope is that one day we may see multi-cultural teams consisting of To Every Tribe missionaries and native New Life Mission pastors taking the gospel to unreached areas of PNG.

After a relaxing weekend at the station recovering from our long travel schedule, the LRI training on 2nd Timothy started Monday evening. The purpose of the LRI training is to teach the pastors to get to the heart of the message of a passage, chapter, or book. Then they can preach the heart of the passage or the main idea of the passage. The class consists of a mixture of formats. Each morning there is a demonstration session during which one of the CPCP students gave an example sermon from a related passage. Next there is a Dig session that allows us to teach a concept and walk them through implementing that concept in a passage of the text. The final sessions are Do sessions in which the pastor’s present work that they have done in pre-assigned passages. Alex translated all of this for us for about 6-7 hours a day Tuesday through Friday. The pastor’s worked very hard in their texts, and the brothers that really understood the methodology were able to help out those who didn’t quite get it yet. I was struck by the desire of these men to really preach the heart of the Word and not use Scripture to prove their own points. This was the third LRI class for some of them and several of them told us about using the material to preach through Jonah and Ruth (the two previous classes) with their congregations.

The pastors working in groups

Jeremy teaching with Alex translating

Some of the work from a Dig session

The work of one group’s Do session

The Dig session I was assigned to teach was on the big idea of a passage. I was able to use an analogy of a “house cook” to demonstrate the point. A house cook is a round hut that they typically build to house their kitchen. A normal “house cook” will have a woven mat for walls and several shorter poles on the perimeter with a tall pole in the center to support the roof. I told them that all of scripture is woven together like the walls of a “house cook” and it is supported by various ideas found within Scripture. Some of these are minor points that would be akin to the shorter poles on the perimeter of the “house cook”. Others are main points or ideas and would be like the center pole of the “house cook”. When we are looking for the big idea of a passage, we want to find that main support. What does the passage hang on? What provides the grounding and support for all of the other ideas? That is the message that we want to proclaim to our people.

Group shot at the end of the week

After the week in class, Kevin, Matt, and I split up to spend a week living in the village with our assigned pastor. I was able to talk to Pastor Albert during the LRI week a little bit, but we still didn’t know each other that well. Friday afternoon, I was able to tag along with him to the market to sell some pineapples which provided some time for us to get to know each other a little better. Let’s just say that the appearance of a waitskin (white guy) selling pineapple in the Goroka market must not be an everyday occurrence. I think this helped draw some customers away from the other vendors and Albert’s pineapples were sold out well before the market closed. We rode back in a PMV (public motor vehicle) and then walked back up to the station. Albert said goodbye for now and said he would come back to get me on Monday afternoon. Monday Alex, Matt, Kevin, and I went into town to buy some food to take along so we wouldn’t eat to much of their food and be burden. That afternoon, with our bags packed we headed out to our various destinations. Pastor Albert’s house is  only about a mile up the dirt road from Alex’s house so we made it there pretty quickly. His mother and various neighbors were waiting at the entrance to his property waiting to greet me. It was quite an occasion. Once there we started a fire and they prepared dinner. After dinner it was dark and bedtime came quickly after. That week I helped him spray pesticide in his coffee garden, gathered firewood, went to get drinking water, picked 200+ pineapples and sold them at the market, fed goats and pigs daily, preached at a house meeting on Wednesday night, watched them cook a goat for a celebration, ran various errands in town, worked on the church’s coffee garden on Saturday, and preached at his church on Sunday morning. We were together the entire week and I can honestly say that Pastor Albert is one of the hardest working men I have ever been around. From sun up until sun down he is moving. The only time he rested all week was Saturday afternoon when we finished with the church’s coffee garden. He rested and I was able to prepare for the sermon the next morning. Another key observation was his commitment to discipleship. He wakes up at 5:30 everyday and plays the guitar and sings a few songs with his family as they are waking up, then they all pray before they start their day. There are also about a half-dozen guys in the village the he is committed to training. They each have jobs in the church, but that is not the only training medium. He advises them on their gardens, their families, and market activities. He is truly living life with them. They help each other with their work as well as their ministerial activities. At the end of it all, saying goodbye to my new friends was sad, but by the end of this week, I was missing my family pretty bad as well.

Left to Right: Jeremy, Albert, Sandra, Tuey, Kero, Stanley, and Luanne

The last few days we were able to recover from our village living experience and debrief with Alex and the rest of the team about what we had learned and observed in each of our villages. Alex also was able to provide some additional insight into the plans for getting to the unreached areas of PNG. He shared his maps and experiences in Samiri and Gavamas with us. Neither of these areas have any church presence and are areas he is considering going into with a team to live if possible. There are also two more areas he hopes to investigate on his first term before coming back to the states for furlough. One of the questions we asked Alex was, “Why aren’t the local pastors here reaching out into these areas? Why do we need to send US based teams into these areas?” Unfortunately there isn’t a simple answer to that question. These are mostly subsistence farmers who can’t take significant time away from their farms to live in an area where they can’t earn a living on their tribal land. Another consideration is the cost of in-country travel. Some of these areas are an airplane ride away. You simply cannot get there on foot or in a truck. Chartering airplanes and canoes for non-business activities doesn’t fit into their budget. There are also significant cultural and language barriers for the Bena pastors as well as us. These people speak entirely different languages that aren’t even related. Pidgin is starting to unify the country, but this is a young country at only 35 years old. First contact with the interior of PNG was only made in the 1930’s. So the progress that has been made has occurred in the last 80 years. This progress is phenomenal, but there are many unreached tribes still out there. Alex’s job at the moment is finding the tribes that To Every Tribe can try to engage that are not being engaged by any other missions organizations.

Jeremy and the Sissons

The trip home was uneventful, and we arrived in Harlingen just an hour or so later than scheduled on Friday evening. Kandy and the kids were very happy to have me home. I think they were almost as happy as I was to be home! The time in PNG with Alex and his family was great. They are dear friends whom we miss a lot, but the work they are doing is worth the separation. Kandy and I have some big decisions to make and will be counting on all of your prayers and will call on some of you for advice and direction as we seek God’s will in the next phase of our lives.

As you go about the rest of your day, think about the theme of 2 Timothy: “Fulfill your ministry by the promise of life in Christ Jesus looking forward to the Day of Christ.” Remember, we have a ministry to fulfill and it is only by relying on the promise of life in Christ Jesus that we will fulfill it. Furthermore, we have a hope that is not of this world, but a hope that is based in looking forward to the Day of Christ. Does your heart yearn for this day? Paul’s heart did. He could see it. It seemed very close to him. How close does it seem for us?

I’ll leave you with some links to some picture albums and a video or two: