Spiritual Renewal, PNG Day 19

Day 19 of 21: Sunday 7/26 

Spiritual Renewal

Today was the “big day” in my mind.  I have been gearing my talks/messages all along to bring people to a point of decision - to renew their relationship with the Lord and to follow Him faithfully.  By this time, the novelty of our presence at Yehebi was wearing off and mostly only the “regular” people were coming to church.  I asked that those who wanted to make things right with God and endeavor to follow Him faithfully to step to the front of the church.

Everyone came forward.

I then had the pastor pray for them.  Mode came up front, too.  He was not one to just join a crowd, so I knew that he meant it.  We were to leave in just a couple of days, and I was relieved to have the preaching “completed.”  It was very stressful trying to find the right things to say, and the right scriptures to quote to truly find a way into the hearts of the people.  

Trusting God for their future

There is a strong expectation of the people on a missionary.  They have nothing and hope deeply that the missionary can provide a better life for them.  When you walk away having done little to improve their lifestyle, they can be disillusioned. If the gospel is not real in their hearts then they can become hardened to hearing the gospel.  It is a situation that has to be trusted to the Lord.  In reality, there is little that can be done to improve their lives.  They are truly in the middle of the jungle with no easy access to the benefit of town areas (mixed benefits I should say).  They are and will remain, for some time, subsistence gardeners and hunters. 

In any case, we had completed our series of messages, both David and me.  The lawn mowers were “fixed,” and the water tank was hopefully repaired. We knew what the situation was regarding the tractor if we are able to return, and we have done the best we can with arranging further instruction in the Word for Sefasui and Kilas.  It seems so much is left undone but we have to be thankful for what was accomplished.  We can also be thankful that our health remained good throughout our visit.  

A Need to Rest

We both needed to mentally and physically unwind.  We were no longer used to the tropical environment and energy was pretty much depleted!  We spent the rest of the day relaxing and going over the preparation for leaving.  Also, I volunteered the remainder of our rice (we bought a 20 kilogram bag of rice for this purpose) for a small feast before leaving.  We had the whole of Monday and were supposed to be leaving Tuesday – something that we finally were able to confirm from the doctor who was helping us with the MAF contact.

My bed. The hot weather and the mesquito net made for restless sleeping. We were weary.

In any case it was good that we had time to relax throughout the remainder of the day…