PNG Milne Bay Day 10: "Following the Umbrella!"

Church ladies waiting for the group to gather

Our team took some of the church people out sharing and distributing the Jesus Film DVDs this morning.  I was teamed up with two ladies:  Angela and Eileen.  Angela had not been to all our training, but was an older,very confident, take-charge type of person...with an umbrella, which acted as a parasol.  Eileen was slightly younger with a quiet, gentle personality.  (I wish there was a video photographer following us.  What an unusual team we made!)

Being a stranger here, I asked the other two ladies where we should go as we started out from the church.  Angela said, "To the barracks!" and off we went...quickly.  (She's a fast walker!)    On the way, we came to a house and Angela said, "We'll stop here first."  It seems she had ministered to the lady who lived there and knew she needed to gospel.  Angela told us to wait on the bench outside the house while she went inside to fetch her friend.  She returned with her friend and a plastic chair for me...and told me I was the one who would do the sharing.

So...I shared to gospel with Marianne.  When I'd ask a question as we went along, Marianne would just smile.  (Being an older foreign white lady can be a handicap.)  I'd look over at my partners, who would both begin speaking "language," explaining my question, then Marianne would nod.  It was worth the effort of plowing ahead this way, because Marianne is now my sister in Christ!  However, when Angela told Marianne to go into the house to see if her daughter would also come out and here the gospel, I told Eileen she could do the talking this time.

On our way again, up went the umbrella and we followed Angela through to another house she had in mind on the way to the barracks.  We took a short-cut between two houses, down a narrow, muddy, rocky hill.  (Eileen, following me, said in her soft voice, "Just go easy...I'll hold your hand."  On the narrow path was no room for hand-holding!)  After wading through a small stream (!) and up another hill, we came to the house Angela had in mind.

I let my partners both do the talking as we shared the gospel to the old mother and her grown daughter.  As I listened to Angela and Eileen both sharing (one to the mother and one to the daughter,) I was struck with how quiet their voices were.  I really felt like a big, loud American sitting there...but what a privileged American!  I was sitting in a village in Papua New Guinea, hearing two newly trained local ladies share the gospel, and witnessing God at work, bringing people to Himself.  Wow!

We never did make it to the barracks.

Eileen and Angela are behind me, at my shoulders.