Here at Mendi each person is trying to cope with more work than one can possibly do…
This work which God has sent us to do has outgrown us. John Rees, July 1962
The year has seen a remarkable increase in the number of our people coming forward to acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. This is due largely to the witness and personal evangelism of the converts themselves. Cliff Keightley, Annual Report 1962
When Gordon Young first arrived in Mendi in 1950, there were no roads, only narrow walking tracks through the bush and up the steep mountainsides. Ten years later, the Australian patrol officers had organised the local people to build a wide road from the government township of Murumbu to the north. This road went through the mission agricultural lease at Tende, on the other side of the Mendi River from the mission base at Unjamap. Now most people walked along this road instead of passing through Unja.
The mission leaders began to think about moving their main work across the river to Tende. There was already one permanent house at Tende, where the agriculturalist lived. When the mission leaders met for their Synod meetings in 1959, they discussed the idea of moving the main mission work from the western side of the Mendi River at Unjamap across to the eastern side of the river to Tende.
After that Synod meeting in 1959, there were so many other changes that, for a while, everyone forgot about moving. There were many changes of staff, with some leaving and some new people coming. The Rees family moved into the house at Tende at the end of 1960 but the church building, school and hospital were still at Unjamap.
Gwenda Rees wrote, early in 1961:
John has plans of shifting the whole of the rest of the mission over to this side of the river as soon as the government approves the lease plan. As soon as it is approved, buildings will be shooting up here everywhere.
On the Tende land, the Mendi River was on one side to the west and the Mangani River was on the other side to the east. The land where the Methodist mission hoped for a new lease used to be fighting ground. There were no gardens there with very few trees. The ground was almost all covered with kunai grass and pitpit. The agricultural lease was planted with food gardens and a small coffee plantation. John Rees had been working in forestry before he was a minister, and he soon started to plant many young casuarina and eucalyptus trees at Tende. By the start of 1962, new buildings were being built at Tende, including houses for the pastors, a permanent house for any women staff and a new school building.
The new minister, John Rees, saw that this was a time when the mission had to start again. Early in 1961, he and a new nurse, Sister Valerie Bock, were the only overseas staff in Mendi. A visitor commented that the mission was ‘very quiet’ since so many former staff had now moved on. Both Rees and Val Bock were new and they didn’t know the local language. Rees needed to rely on the experience of the pastors from the island regions, and he had confidence in them. In a letter in 1961, Rees described the pastors. At Unja, there was Setepano Nabwakulea from Papua ‘very intelligent’ and John Angello ‘an outstanding young Solomon Islander’ as well as Samson Taming and Saulo Wenoku from Solomons and Papua who ‘do not have very high educational qualifications.’. At the pastor station of Yaken to the south was Joseph Tirlua ‘a pit-sawyer and pastor but not a teacher’. To the north, at Wombip and Kamberep were pastors from Papua, Libai Tiengwa and Kemp Kabalua; ‘They are both excellent young men, very energetic, good teachers and getting good spiritual responses from the people’. At the new pastor station at Semp was Epineri Kopman from New Britain, ‘a senior man, a very fine chap’.
Rees saw that he needed to find new ways to work. First, he started to work hard to learn the Mendi language as quickly as possible. Instead of going to a different preaching place every Sunday, staying for a short time, he decided to visit one pastor station each month and stay with the pastor’s family for the whole weekend to encourage them and to spend time with the local people there.
Rees wrote:
These visits are proving worthwhile, and the hospitality of the teachers and their families is rich in Christian fellowship and love.
It was a long and demanding walk to visit the pastor stations in the Lai Valley over steep mountain trails but Rees was delighted with the beauty of the area. On his first visit to the Lai Valley, he met the pastors from New Guinea Islands, Sekri To Vodo at Homep and Tomas Tomar at Tukup, which was the main station then. They hoped to place a pastor soon at Kip, which had been vacant since Rev David Mone and his family left at the end of 1960. Rees visited each pastor station and met the local people. He wrote:
At each place I was asked to preach to the people. It is only over the past three weeks that I have been able to stammer a sermon in Mendi language, without a manuscript, and that is a joy to me. When the people understand and agree, they nod their heads vigorously as each point is made. I preached on Christ crucified and risen, and that is something to which they respond.
One day in the middle of 1961, John Rees received a letter from a senior missionary who had been working in Fiji. Rev Dr Alan Tippett wrote to say that now that the first people in the Highlands had become Christians, they should be ready for a lot of others very soon. They will come in families and clan groups and there will be many of them, Tippett wrote. (Alan Tippett was at that time a Professor of Missionary Anthropology and was studying the ways in which large communities in several Pacific countries had become Christians.) John Rees was very surprised to hear this. He thought, ‘At the moment there are only five or six Christian believers in the whole Mendi area. I don’t think there will be many more very soon.’
He was wrong. By the end of that year, after the baptism service in November, another forty people were asking for preparation for baptism in Mendi. As Tippett said, some of them were coming in family groups. In Tari, the number of people who were asking for baptism was much greater. By the end of 1961 in Tari, they had already recorded 200 baptised members and another 500 people who were preparing for baptism.
Back row: Saulo Wenoku, Sekri To Vodo, Joseph Tirlua, Libai Tiengwa, John Angello, Samson Taming, Epineri Kopman, Setepano Nabwakulea, Kemp Kabalua, Tomas Tomar, John Rees.
Front row: Margaret Higman, Parukia, Dorothy, Veorini, Sera, Lena, Kiloi, Villo, Linda, Val Bock, Gwenda Rees, with Rodney, Bronwyn and Erica Rees.
In every part of the Highlands District, they knew that they were short of staff. Who was able to help with teaching and encouraging all these new Christians? Most of the work was being done by the pastors and their wives from the island regions. Of the overseas staff, the only ministers were Keightley at Nipa and Rees at Mendi. The other staff members were teachers, nurses, builders and an office secretary. They all helped as much as they could with leading baptism classes and running groups for men and women, but they all had other work to do. They all knew that the work of education, health and practical trade skills were important, but at the centre of their work they wanted to introduce the Highland people to God, Jesus and the Christian faith. In the annual report for 1961, they wrote, ‘The Synod believes that the Highlands District is inadequately staffed to serve those already in contact, let alone to reach the thousands untouched.’ John Rees wrote:
Here at Mendi each person is trying to cope with more work than one can possibly do…
This work which God has sent us to do has outgrown us, we are no longer able to cope completely with the task before us and much must be left undone until more people offer themselves to missionary service, people who are trained specifically to pass knowledge on to other people. These people are eager to learn.
When the new Methodist mission started in the Southern Highlands in 1950, people from the other Methodist Districts were very interested and sent pastors to this new work from New Guinea islands, Papuan Islands and the Solomon Islands. They heard news about each other, but they did not often meet. In January 1962, maybe for the first time, an Inter-District committee meeting was held in Rabaul, New Guinea Islands. In the past, each of the Methodist Districts had worked independently of each other, connected by the Methodist Boards in Australia and New Zealand. Now they began to think about ways in which they could work together. One of the District Chairmen, Rev Wesley Lutton wrote:
‘The time has come for serious thought to be given to the future of our south-west Pacific districts. If the people of New Guinea are moving towards political independence, the church cannot afford to lag behind. A Melanesian conference consisting of the Papua, Solomon Islands, Highlands and New Guinea districts must become a fact in the not distant future. ‘
People from the older districts were quite surprised to hear news of the new work in the Highlands. For them, the Christian people in their area were second and third generation Christian believers and there were church buildings in most villages. At first, they were not convinced and more cautious about suggestions that illiterate people could be pastors. They had questions about some of the other ideas about how a Highlands Christian community might develop. But in the end, they agreed that it was good for the Highlands staff to be free to find new ways of working.
Even if some of the mission staff in the older districts were more conservative and slower to give much responsibility to local Christians, the mission staff in the Highlands were willing to experiment. They knew that Highland people were energetic and confident, and if they were now Christian believers, they would want to be actively engaged in this new community. The mission staff soon saw that it was the new Christians who were talking to their families and their clan groups about their new understanding about God. They were being far more effective than any of the workers from overseas or the island groups. In Tari, John Hutton was a strong leader who welcomed the participation of the Huli Christians and encouraged them. In Mendi, John Rees was also a person with the right gifts for that time, but the most important work was being done by the Highland Christians themselves. In a report in 1962, the Chairman Keightley wrote:
The year has seen a remarkable increase in the number of our people coming forward to acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. This is due largely to the witness and personal evangelism of the converts themselves.
Requests for more mission staff started to be answered. A new teacher, Margaret Higman, arrived in Mendi in June 1961. For Tari, in 1962 Rev John Atkinson transferred from New Guinea Islands, a new teacher, George Buckle, came from Australia to take over the school to free John Hutton for more direct church leadership, and Sister Joy Heal came to take the place of Sister Lydia Mohring. In Mendi, in 1962 Rev Graham Smith arrived to start a school to train Highland pastors, and agriculturalist Frank Coleman arrived to continue the agricultural work.
It was time for a new team to go on with the work of the Methodist mission.
Gwenda Rees, personal letter, 20 March 1961
John Rees, personal letter, 2 April 1961
Annual report, Missionary Review October 1962
Alan R.Tippett, Solomon Islands Christianity: a study in growth and obstruction 1967; People Movements in Southern Polynesia: a study in church growth, 1971
Valerie Bock, circular letter 5 February 1962
Annual report, Missionary Review November 1961
John Rees, Missionary Review, July 1962
Wesley Lutton, Missionary Review April 1961
Annual report, Missionary Review October 1962
Gordon Young, Roland Barnes, John Rees, David Mone, John Atkinson, Cliff Keightley, Alan Tippett, Graham Smith, Wesley Lutton, John Hutton, George Buckle, Margaret Higman, Joy Heal, Frank Coleman, Val Bock, Setepano Nabwakulea, Kiloi, John Angello, Veorini, Samson Taming, Sera, Saulo Wenoku, Linda, Joseph Tirlua, Libai Tiengwa, Dorothy, Kemp Kabalua, Villo, Epineri Kopman, Lena, Sekri To Vodo, Parukia, Tomas Tomar, Tari, Mendi, Murumb, Tende, Unjamap, Wombip, Yaken, Kamberep, Semb, Lai Valley, Kip, Tukup, Homep, Nipa, agriculture, Synod, mission lease, language, baptism
Margaret Reeson 