1960s
‘Little did we dream what was to happen’. Sister Edith James, Tari
‘In a service at Tari nineteen people have made a public confession of faith. A medical orderly at Mendi also accepted Christ’. Annual report 1960
There was nothing to warn them that something important was about to happen. In Tari, it was just another Sunday. It was a quiet day because it was holiday time, just after Christmas in 1959. The nursing sister from New Zealand, Edith James wrote:
The day dawned full and cold and little did we dream of what was to happen when the people gathered to worship Christ. Their singing was spasmodic. A baby began crying and, outside, children were playing. Inside a pig grunted from a woman’s string bag. But the people listened. Three of them offered prayer and as the words of the text ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’ were heard, we sensed the presence of God.
The Rev Roland Barnes preached in Huli language and used several thoughts for the word ‘life’ because in Huli there is no literal translation, but the meaning was conveyed to the people. At the end of the service Mr. Barnes challenged those who believed that Christ was the way, the truth and the life to remain after the service. Five men, three boys, four women and a small group of girls remained.
We wondered if a number of them were fully sincere in their decisions. Quietly, we talked of what following Christ could mean in their lives, and each of them decided to accept the challenge. Since that quiet Sunday when the first of the Huli people gave themselves to Christ each has grown in grace and strength. They have been regular in worship. They are learning to pray and they have received instruction at class meetings.
First, that group of people attended classes to prepare them for baptism. The mission staff wanted to help them to understand what it meant to be Christian. This was a new thing for them. They waited for a long time, until 2 July 1961, before the first baptisms, because their minister Rev Roland Barnes became sick and needed to leave the Highlands. By that time, more people had joined the first group of nineteen. Some of them were school boys and girls who had been influenced by their teachers, including John Hutton, Alpheus Alekera and others. Others were traditional men and women who had been coming to listen to the preaching of Roland Barnes and other leaders. A strong foundation of teaching and preaching had been laid, as well as successful classes for people learning to read in their own language.
The number of people who came to church services grew larger and larger at Hoiebia and sometimes they had the services outdoors because there were too many to fit in the first small church building.
John and Barbara Hutton, the teacher at Hoiebia and his wife, were important leaders of the mission at that time. At first, they hoped that their minister, the Rev Roland Barnes would recover his health and come back to Tari, but that did not happen. Rev Cliff Keightley had already gone to pioneer the work at Nipa and Rev John Rees had gone to Mendi to replace Rev Gordon Young. So John and Barbara Hutton did the work of minister as well as teaching, until a new minister arrived in 1962. They both learned the Huli language well and loved the people. (Later, John Hutton trained for Christian ministry and returned to the Highlands as an ordained minister.)
As well as classes to prepare people for baptism, and regular Bible studies and times of prayer, there were classes to teach Huli people how to read. These were successful and a number of local people learned to read in their own language.
WASUN KOKA
For Wasun Koka, the medical orderly in Mendi, the path to becoming a Christian was a long one. Years later, he told his story to Margaret Reeson, who recorded it in the book ‘Torn Between Two Worlds’, published in 1972.
In the first years that the Methodist Mission was at Unjamap, Wasun only visited that place once. He went there with his father to buy a steel axe. He did not know how old he was when the first white men entered his region and passed through his home area on their way to settle in the Mendi Valley at Murumbu but may have been about thirteen or fourteen. When he was a bit older, he was curious about the white patrol officers and the brown men who worked for them. He visited Murumbu and found work as a cook boy for a policeman and then as an untrained helper in the new government hospital.
Wasun was very interested in something that seemed like magic. One day, a doctor at the hospital made marks on a piece of paper. He told Wasun to take the paper to the office which was some distance away. Wasun was amazed at what happened next. When he passed the paper to the man at the office, the man looked at it and then gave him a parcel to take back to the doctor. This was very surprising. It was a wonderful way to send a message, but he didn’t understand how it was done.
He started to learn to speak Tok Pisin and, when the hospital staff needed to send a patient out to the coast, Wasun was sent as interpreter with him. This was the first time he flew in a plane and saw the ocean. Over the next few years, he worked for a short time at different jobs as a cook boy or at the hospital. Then he went back to his home village at Kondipa. He was not interested in the mission at all.
But then he had a dream. He was at home sleeping with the men of his family in the traditional men’s house. He dreamed that he was holding a book, full of writing – and he could read it. It was in a strange language and he didn’t understand what it meant, but he was able to read. This dream gripped him and he thought about it. Dreams were important. Wasun decided that he must learn to read. He knew that he was too old to go to the new government school which had just started near Murumbu. They were only enrolling young children and by now he was about twenty years old, or older. He knew that his older brother Mikmik worked for the agriculturalist at the Methodist Mission at Unja. Wasun heard that men in the team of workers were learning to read in their language in the afternoons after work. If he worked for the mission, he could learn to read.
Wasun’s first job at the mission was cutting grass, clearing ground for new gardens. He was pleased to work with the team on the agricultural block at Tende and joined the other men for the classes in reading in the afternoons. It wasn’t easy work but he was very keen and tried hard to understand how written language worked. Bit by bit, he began to understand how to read Tok Pisin and his own Angal Eneng. When the mission staff learned that he had done some basic work at the government hospital, they sent him to help the nurse, Sister Lydia, at the little mission hospital.
David Johnston, the agriculturalist, was fluent in speaking Angal Eneng. He wanted to translate the Gospel of Mark. Elsie Wilson had translated Bible stories into Angal Eneng for use in church and Sunday School, but no one had translated any of the Bible yet. Johnston needed someone to help him. When he saw that Wasun was able to read some Tok Pisin, although he was not very good at it, Johnston asked Wasun to help him with the translation. On Wednesdays, starting in 1957, Wasun went to help with Bible translation.
The Bible stories and parables in Mark’s Gospel were interesting, Wasun thought, but he didn’t understand them or believe them. He liked the parables because his people often used parables and appreciated them. The stories about travel, and enemies, and the things that Jesus did, were interesting, too. He often talked to David Johnston about what they were reading but he was more interested in the traditions and beliefs of his own people. Wasun was already an initiated man by this time and, although he now lived at the mission property at Unjamap and worked at the mission hospital, he still had important obligations to his own clan. When his clan worked together on the ritual of the Timb secrets, or prepared for big ceremonies or exchange of wealth, he was part of the group.
Two years went by. Johnston and Wasun were coming to the end of Mark’s Gospel. When they read Chapter 13, Wasun was surprised and a bit scared. That chapter was full of warnings. Jesus told his followers that troubles were coming, disasters that would make everyone very afraid. Jesus said, ‘No one knows when this will happen but you must be ready.’ This worried Wasun. Then they translated the end of Mark’s Gospel, with the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Near the end of chapter 15, they translated the words of the army officer who watched Jesus die on the cross: ‘This man was really the Son of God’.
Wasun often talked to his friend David Johnston about the words and ideas in Mark’s Gospel. He also talked to the pastors from New Guinea Islands or Papuan Islands. Epineri Kopman was a big man from New Guinea Islands and Wasun trusted him. Kopman assured Wasun that the story of Jesus was not just a white man’s fable but that he believed that Jesus had come to save all peoples. The Christian gospel of Jesus Christ had changed his own people in New Britain. They used to be cannibals who were afraid of their enemies and afraid of spirits. Now they were people of peace. Wasun listened but he wasn’t sure.
What was he to do about his loyalty to his clan? Did the Christian story about forgiving your enemies make sense or was it a trick? How could he belong, as an adult member of his clan, if he didn’t obey the laws of his people?
While he was thinking about these questions, Wasun had a big problem. One of his uncles died and all his tribal brothers said that an enemy had poisoned him. They all agreed that they should payback this crime and kill the guilty man. Wasun was very upset and worried about this. He was beginning to think that it would be wrong to kill but he was part of his family and had to join his brothers. But at the last minute, his father, a senior man, told the men of the family to wait. He said, ‘Let’s wait until our enemy relaxes and is not expecting an attack. Let him be afraid while he is waiting.’ So, they waited. Some time passed. Some of the islander pastors talked to Wasun about the words of Jesus that were in the Bible: ‘Love your enemies’ but that seemed very strange and hard to understand. Then Wasun heard the news. Some of his brothers had attacked their enemies and killed two men. Now they were in prison for murder. Wasun had not been part of the attack and so he was still free.
In November 1959, when Rev Cliff Keightley was getting ready to go to Nipa for the first time, he asked Wasun to go with the group. Keightley needed someone to take some medicine and offer first aid when his team needed it.
On that long walk and during the weeks at the camp site beside the airstrip at Nipa, Wasun spent a lot of time with Daniel Amen and John Teu. At night, they used to sit near the fire while they cooked their sweet potato. They talked about many things. Wasun had a lot of questions for Daniel and John about being Christians. They were both good men whom he respected and trusted and they were brown-skinned men like himself, who understood about tribal loyalty and the power of the spirit world.
One day Cliff Keightley told them some news. He had a message from Tari. Some Tari people had decided to follow Jesus. Daniel and John were very excited to hear this news. That night, Wasun talked with his islander friends again. He had been thinking about everything that he was learning for a long time. The words of the Gospel of Mark, his conversations over several years with David Johnston, the influence and wisdom of the islander pastors – everything was guiding him to decide to turn to Christ. The island men talked to him about fear and faith, revenge or forgiveness, darkness or light. They talked for a long time. It was very late at night when Wasun said a prayer to God. He knew that he didn’t understand very much of this new belief, but he prayed that God would accept him as one of God’s children. The next day he talked to Cliff Keightley about this.
In his diary of 17 January 1960, Keightley wrote:
Wasun, a medical orderly whom we brought with us from Mendi has also indicated his desire to be a Christian. He is emphatic about it and has requested that we start him on a course of instruction to prepare him for baptism. I am convinced that he is sincere and genuine in his search for Christ. God and Christ are most definitely at work in his life.
Wasun wanted to talk to his good friend David Johnston about this decision but he was still in Nipa and Johnston was in Mendi. So, he wrote a letter to Johnston, very slowly and carefully, with his inexpert handwriting at an angle across the page. When Johnston received this letter, he knew that it was precious and that he would always keep it. It was the news that, after years of work and waiting and hoping, the first person from Mendi was choosing to be Christian.
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In Mendi, Wasun was the first one but he was not the only one who was asking questions about becoming Christian. A youth who was attending the mission school at Unja, called Sondowe, talked with Wasun. He had been listening to the words of the missionaries for several years but it was when he spoke with Wasun that he, also, asked to be prepared for baptism.
Some of the other young people who had been attending the little school at Unjamap for several years were also listening to the story of Jesus. They had been part of the Sunday School and hearing about Jesus in the school classes. There were not many girls who were students in the mission school, but two girls from Unjamap had been coming to the school for a long time. They were Wesi and Angopa, girls who were part of the large clan of Urum Tiba, the senior man who had welcomed Gordon Young when he first came to Unja in 1950. Urum Tiba encouraged several of his very big family to go to the school and by late in 1960, Wesi and Angopa were in the top class in the school. Their education had been interrupted after their teacher Elsie Wilson left in 1957, and the next teacher was with them for only a year and a half, but the two girls did not give up.
The new minister in Mendi, John Rees, wrote near the end of 1960:
Since coming to Mendi, one event has thrilled us. We began the habit of sharing daily devotions with any Mendi person who happened to be helping in our house. When we were talking about ‘Jesus the door’, Wesi, a teenage girl who helps in our kitchen, said she wanted to follow Jesus. A quarter of an hour later, she said another girl also wanted to follow him. Previously there had been only one recorded decision at Mendi.
Rees was very encouraged by this. He wrote, ‘We are now beginning to see the Spirit of God moving in the lives of Mendi people after the labours of those who have worked here over ten years.’
Edith James, Missionary Review April 1960
Margaret Reeson, Torn Between Two Worlds, Kristen Pres 1972 pp. 26-27
Margaret Reeson, Torn Between Two Worlds, Kristen Pres 1972 pp. 39-40, 44-50, 56-57`
Cliff Keightley, Diary 17 January 1960
John Rees, The Missionary Review, February 1961
John Rees, The Missionary Review, May 1961
John Hutton, Barbara Hutton, John Rees, Cliff Keightley, David Johnston, Gordon Young, Roland Barnes, Edith James, Lydia Mohring, Elsie Wilson, Alpheus Alekera, Epineri Kopman, Daniel Amen, John Teu, Urum Tiba, Mikmik, Wesi, Angopa, Tari, Hoiebia, Unjamap, Mendi, Murumbu, Kondipa, school education, Christian conversion, tribal loyalty, payback, poison, literacy teaching, government hospital, mission hospital, mission school, Tok Pisin, agriculturalist, dream, Timb cult, Angal Eneng
Margaret Reeson 