This is an interesting place we live in. (Papua) About 150 years ago the Gospel was first brought to this area of the world although only to limited places. Most mission work in the beginning was done along the coast. 50 years ago the Reformed church started mission work here and it went interior. With the missionaries came clothes and medicine and different food etc… There are people here who grew up in the “Stone Age” wearing nothing but a leaf, gourd or grass skirt, who now walk around with a cell phone and maybe a watch, wearing “brand name” clothing! Those of us in the West had thousands of years to get out of the Stone Age and into the “modern” age. It’s really incredible when you think about it. How can people make such a giant step without paying a price of some sort or missing some important piece of information?
50 years ago the people here lived in fear. That’s all they knew. Many of the tribal languages don’t even have a word for “love” in their vocabulary! Think about how you would teach these people about the love of Christ for us. If you don’t know what simple love between a husband and wife or between brothers and sisters is, how can you understand the great love that Christ had for us that he gave Himself up for us? This lack of understanding is still evident in their lives today.
People will listen to what you say, but they will actually retain more from what they observe from your life. So think about what the villagers thought when a missionary came on a plane and took many boxes out of it and put them in his house. The people never saw what was inside those boxes, just that there were many of them. Then there was the box that held the refrigerator…. They had never seen anyone live with so much and in such a “large” house with only one family. So what they observed was that in order to be a Christian you need to wear clothes and on Sundays you need to wear a dress shirt and tie and nice pants. When you are a Christian you have lots of money; who knows where it comes from? When you are an evangelist or missionary you can get the MAF plane to come whenever you need it and go fly somewhere. And that same plane brings more boxes for you. There have been villages where the people dug under the houses of the missionaries (while they were on furlough) because they thought that’s where the missionaries got all their stuff. There was also another missionary who upon leaving the village where he worked was asked, “Why did you never show me how to make money?”
If you think about how many years Christianity has had to grow and evolve to become what it is today in the “modern world” and compare that with the mere 150-50 years it has been here (depending on where you are), it certainly puts things into perspective. This can be of comfort to those of us who live here and despair at the lack of understanding of what it is to be a true Christian. Seeing as actions speak louder than words, I think we just need to start with showing true Christian love to those around us. So that’s what we try to do.

Here are two more photos from Pyramid. The rainbow we saw while on our hike up the mountain.