A Surprise Gathering of Chiefs in Papua New Guinea - MTC2536

It's all too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Well, I'd like to challenge this idea with my story of a surprise gathering of chiefs. Welcome to miracles in the 21st century. I'm Ann Browning. I was born in a missionary family's home, and at the time of this story, we were located in Rabel in png. My dad's territory was all of East New Britain, or New Britain Island. And my dad had a real passion to go to areas where people had never heard the story of Jesus. And so he looked at the map of New Britain and he felt that the Combi Islands was a place that he needed to go. So he called all the mission staff and told them his. Speaker A Idea of going down there and spreading the gospel. And so he said, we're not going to go straight away. We need to pray to God and ask God to tell us when the right time to go is and to plan everything out so that it can be according to his will, not according to my will. So we began. We lived on the mission station, and we had morning and evening worship with the people in the. On the staff of the. Of the compound. So morning and evening we used to gather together and we prayed specifically for this particular area. And at lunchtime when dad would come home, we prayed again. And we prayed three times a day and more in our own prayers. Speaker A For this particular outreach mission to go to the Combi Islands. And so we prayed one month, two months, three months, four months, five months, six months. And after six months, my dad came back from the office one day, said, God is saying now is the time to go. So he put out a call and he asked, were there any people that would be willing to go as missionaries to this new area? And 14 families offered to go and be missionaries. So I still remember my dad loading up the little mission vessel the day dawn and loading all these missionaries. And we said goodbye to them, and off they went. And dad told us the story when he came back. They went down the island. Number of things happened on the way. And they finally got down to the Combia Islands and they anchored the ship in a nice quiet area. And when they put the anchor down, my dad looked out and there was a little house. Speaker A Built over the water on stilts. And around this little house were a number of canoes. And it looked like they were having some sort of special happening in this little hut. Speaker A So after they anchored, a canoe came from that little hut out to the day dawn. And this one man was on this canoe, and he asked to speak to my dad. And he asked my dad, what are you doing here? How come you're anchored here? And my dad said, well, I've come down to tell all of the people in this area some amazing stories. He said, I'd like to share my stories. And this guy said, well, if you come with me, you can come out to this little house and tell some of the people your stories. So my dad took a picture roll. Now, a picture roll had 12 pictures that illustrated specific stories in the Bible. So dad took this picture roll under his arm, and he hopped in this canoe, and he went out to this house. And when he got in there, there were a number of men all gathered around, and they said to dad, tell us your stories. So my dad began at picture number one to tell the story of the Bible that was illustrated on that particular picture. So he told the first story, and they said, oh, that's interesting. Tell us another one. So throughout that morning, he told no, it was in the afternoon telling story after story. Finally, he got to number 12, and they said, we want some more. And my dad said to them, well, and speaking in pidgin English, he said, nek plomiya mi draitumas bayu kisi mi gona mi kisi m sampala wara behind. Speaker A So what he said was, I am so thirsty. I need to go back to my ship. I need to have something to drink, some food, refresh myself. After that, I'll come back and tell you more. So he went back to the ship. The canoe man took him back, and he had his drink. He had some food. He refreshed himself. Then he gathered two more picture rolls, and the guy took him back to the little hut. Speaker A And so he began to tell the stories. And he told the whole 12. And they wanted Mori told the second 12 stories. And this was getting very late by this time. And these people said, what do you want to do about this? And my dad says, well, I would like to put teachers in your areas so that they can tell you more of these kind of stories. And these men said to my dad, leave it with us. Let's sleep on it. You come back in the morning. And so the canoe man took my dad back to the ship, and he came back the next morning. And these men said, we haven't slept all night. We've been talking about this all night. And we have decided that we all want teachers. We want to hear about this God that you're talking about. Speaker A And my dad said, well, who are you and what are you doing here and how many teachers would you like? They said, well, a very big thing had come up in the area, and they'd collected all of the chiefs. Of all of the districts, there were 14 chiefs. They said, it's very rare for this to happen. It hasn't happened for many, many years. And we came for this one day to do this big talk to sort out this issue. And you arrived on the day that we were here. Now all of us would like teachers, and there are 14 districts. And guess how many teachers my dad had on the ship. He had 14 missionaries. So the next few days he spent going to all the different places, dropping all those teachers to be able to begin the work in this unentered territory in png. My dad said God knew exactly when to send them, where they were to anchor, how many teachers they knew because of all of the different areas where all the chiefs came from. And he had the chiefs in the. In the right place at the right time, so that it was a lot easier to start the gospel being spread in that area.