My Wretched Friend
The first plate crashed into the wall and we were awoken at 1:30 AM. We hear more plates, punches, and the cry of young child. I (Luke) spring up ready for action, but dizziness from a current sickness prevents my instinct to go and stop the all too common domestic abuse in the this country I had often heard about. After calling security (who never came), we lay there, celebrating our anniversary, in our hotel room, wincing at the sound of every broken plate and forceful punch.
In PNG culture, once you have paid your bride price, your wife is basically your property and beatings have little to no repercussions. In fact if you prevent someone from beating their wife (unless they are actually going to kill them) then you may be in the wrong. I could try and be like your friendly neighborhood spiderman, going around and trying to stop every beating I possibly could, and maybe I would stop even 100, but they will just wait for another time to take out their anger.
God has helped us to realize that the best way to turn things around in this backwards place truly is the gospel. If we put our effort to turning people towards Jesus and see even a small amount of people come to maturity in their faith, that will save not only their wives, but possibly even generations of women that will have loving husbands that obey the Lord.
One of our good friends beat his wife a few weeks ago and she went to stay with her parents until both their anger subsided. I have never been friends with a wife-beater before, but since Jesus was friends with tax-collectors, I know Jesus loves this man too. When we talked to our friend, he clearly understood that the Bible condemned this and that it was wrong. He reads his Bible often and we are glad to see that the Holy Spirit is convicting him of his sin. Eventually his wife came back, but he still has to ‘talk sorry’ to her family by buying them a chicken.
We recently went to a church that his wife’s brother is teaching at and it sounds like he really enjoyed it! We are excited to go to church with them every week and continue to discuss what God is showing them so that they and their marriage may be transformed by the Gospel!
Next up - Bush Orientation
Alongside learning the national language and culture as well as looking for teammates, we are currently preparing for our bush orientation. What is bush orientation you ask? It is where we will spend 2 months in a tribal location that has missionaries still working with that people group. We will be going into a place called Wubuku over in the Sepik region (a hot, swampy place). This particular place has had a struggle keeping missionaries, so there is not a strong church there yet. There may be some believers, but without continued teaching and discipleship they have seemingly gotten tangled up in their old ways of thinking and living. The missionaries are launching a literacy course while we are there so that people can read the Bible. Later, they will be going through a creation to Christ teaching with this people group and hopefully see many come to know Jesus and begin to gather together as a church body and grow on to maturity together. Please pray that we would be an encouragement to these people and that God would use this time to further equip us for ministry here in PNG.
Prayer and Praise:
Praise the Lord for potential teammates! Thank you much for being faithful to pray for God’s guidance as we look to form a team. We are in conversations with 2 other families about potentially partnering with them. Please continue to pray that God would guide us we move forward with these 2 families.
Please pray for my our friend Peter, his wife Julie, and his family. Peter especially seems very interested in learning about the Bible but his wife and brothers and sisters also show some interest.
Please continue to pray that we would gain fluency in the national language and culture.
Pray for the continued strengthening of our walks with the Lord as well as our marriage.