Trip Report to Bintuni

I flew Susi Air from Sorong on Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m.   It’s an expensive trip to Bintuni at about $240 round trip.  I’ve learned cheaper ways to get there next time.   Or in my case I flew on to Manokwari on Tuesday morning to catch a flight to Jayapura with Express Airs second flight.   But I’m jumping ahead.   So lets go back to the beginning.   When I consider going to a city for evangelism it first starts with many discussions with the district pastor.   I want him to understand that evangelism is not a 1 week event or even a 1 month event.   It’s a life time.  I want there to be a shift in thinking in his churches.   Then if he is seeming to get the idea I schedule an evaluation trip.   For the first time in a number of years a foreigner is coming to Bintuni.  My goal is to get a good feel for the area’s needs both inside and outside the church.

Upon arriving the pastors wife presents me a flower lei to welcome me.  About 15 or 20 church members have made it to the airstrip to greet me.   Photo’s are snapped.  

  After the lei we make our way into the rented car they’ve procured for this purpose and off we go to visit the churches.   They take me to the in town church.   It’s clearly got a problem. . . it leans oddly to one side just slightly but enough to cause me to second guess my eyes.    And there we met with a few church members and took photo’s again.   Then we went across the road to meet with a Mr Yance Titioka.   A number of years ago the Adventist church had a small airstrip in a village in the jungle several hours by car and foot into the jungle.   There was a small group of Adventists who met each Sabbath in this village but then death started happening and the old traditional beliefs outweighed the new belief so they gradually moved away from this area to a new area 1 kilometer away.   They were trying to keep the Evil Spirits from finding them.  This Mr Yance knows their native language and has a burden that the work reenter this area.   His own health is failing but he hopes before he dies that they can re-ignite the work in his village of Horna.   Pictures of this village show an airstrip in need of a few days of a good weed wacker.  Hey I’ve got experience with that.   Read my previous blog from early this year.  http://pastordarronboyd.blogspot.com/2012/04/evangelism-by-weed-wacker.html

From here we went to the second church and prayed and took photos and I asked a lot of questions along the way.   In the car with me was a very outgoing girl 9 year old Jani who grilled me for English vocab and I in turn grilled her for Indonesian words.  Loved the outgoing liveliness.   She has a look alike sister in Christ who they call the “broken Jani” because she is quiet but they look like twins. 

Our Pastor and his wife have been here for almost 2 years. This pastor and his two young daughters and wife live in this remote place with about 50,000 people in the greater area and pastor 2 churches, one branch Sabbath School (start up church) and over sees starting churches in remote places and in the city in his area.   No pressure!   Seriously understaffed and overworked and yet he faces it all with joy.   

Here he pretends to share the message.

Surrounding Bintuni are 4 jungle tribes and 3 sea and bay tribes mixed with more than 25,000 transmigrants in a number of camps with small homes on a good size lots where they farm vegetables for the markets in larger cities to the west.  Read my blog about our visit into one of the camps.

7 tribes making up about 25,000 people and 25,000 transmigrants from further west gives this town an interesting feeling.   There are native Papuan villagers who are Muslims.  It sort of sets my “Normal Papuan” world on end as I’m use to the “Normal Papuan” claiming Christianity as his/her religion of preference but not here.   Indonesians you’d expect to be Muslims are Christians and Papuan you’d expect to be Christians are Muslims.

After lunch they took me to my Hotel to drop my thinks off and to my surprise it was an air conditioned room.   In typical Papuan/Indonesian style they said, “You can take your rest now!”   I wasn’t the least bit tired but used the opportunity to pull my mosquito net out and hang it just incase.   And was I glad I did because mosquitoes seemed to be hatching from somewhere in the building.   The electricity was off because the power company was out of Diesel to run the cities generator.   Bintuni has more time off the grid than on the grid.   For this reason most store owners have their own backup generator.   The motel was running on their own power.   For the next hour I put down a long list of questions for the pastor and me to go over.   It gave us a good direction to go.  When the pastor came back after my “rest” at around 3 I grilled him for the next 1.5 hours as to population, what tribes were in the area, how many, how hard, what were the problems, what were the solutions to those problems, etc, etc.?!?!   Then we were “Interrupted” by this man.   Who just showed up and wanted to talk with me the white missionary.   He was very helpful to me because he knew a lot about the territory and had worked as a  helper to another missionary group.

 

The native man (red) and the pastor (grey)

That night I preached to a crowded church.   About the 5 keys to successful evangelism, 1) Revival, 2) Training and equipping, 3) community involvement, 4) Harvest, 5) Nurture and follow up.   Then I shared with them FORT a way of witnessing through conversational evangelism.   Moving the conversation from Family to Occupation to Religion and lastly Testimony.   I challenged them to try it with people the next day.   Then I gave them a teaser for the next night where I talked about the incredible growth in Peru where they use small groups to grow with.  They decided to come the next night to the other church so the in town folks rented a bus and came to hear me there.   I gave a review from the first night and then gave them some practical pointers on how to do a small group.

My translator the second night is the English teacher at this vocational High school.   He let me come and meet his students.   I had so much fun with them.   Love it because I can teach them in simple Indonesian and English.   They loved it too.   About 350 students were at this school that teaches mechanics and Accounting as well as other normal high school views.   There was a wide variety of ethnic and religious persuasions at this school.   On the way home from this school we got caught in the rain storm and we were on a motor bike.    Strangely it was dry in town.

That night I preached the small group stuff and then we went to my hotel after about 40-50 photo sessions which is typical after each seminar.    I’ve come to embrace random people coming up to me even on the street and wanting either my photo or my autograph.   Its an Indonesian/Papuan thing.   From our house in Bandung where we felt like Zoo exhibit # 1 until now it’s just a part of life.  

Bintuni needs missionaries to come to the 7 tribes who are mostly unreached in this Kabuputan (county).   They also, could use someone skilled in reaching Muslims and building relationships in the camps. 

An exciting potential is that there is an Adventist man whose family owns the local Voice of Bintuni Radio station.   They have agreed to let us use their radio station for free for 1 hour per day if we can provide the content.    Wow!   what an opportunity.

Bintuni could use $52,000 to build a new church on the old grounds before the old church leans too much further.   Wish they had a 1 day church or two in this area.

A major challenge is lack of a private school for the students to go to.   Public schools go to school 6 days a week in Indonesia which means Adventists have to skip school on Sabbath weekly.   Often they loose heart and go to school anyway.   But when we have our own schools they are able to still worship according to the dictates of their conscience.   Pray that we will be able to build and maintain a school in Bintuni in the near future.

I’ll be back there sometime in February or March for Training seminars.   I hope to bring a team to train the members to be active agents in winning people to Jesus.   Then I’ll be back again sometime latter for a reaping evangelism meeting.   Then I always return for follow-up both of those who were baptized and those who never made a decision last time but were worked with and now are ready.   Pray for our pastor especially.

In the mouth of a Giant Bird comes Divine Providences with a Muslim Mullah.

There is a A whole city right in the back of the mouth of the Bird’s head peninsula on the western part of New Guinea in West Papua Indonesia – Called Bintuni.   It’s a city of transition.   The Indonesian government has fostered transmigration camps from populated areas to the west in Indonesia to this small city less crowded city.    While the city has only about 50,000 in the greater area it gives one the impression of “It’s fixin’ to explode”.   There are 7 indigenous tribes in and surrounding the city plus the numerous non indigenous groups from all over Indonesia.

Through a series of Divine providences the district pastor and I were exploring the transmigration camps and seeing what we could learn.   After 2 visits with Muslim house wives they lead us to their Hanif or Mullah – teacher,  leader of their Mosque.   He gladly invited us into his place in the back of the mosque.   It was sort of spare bedroom slash office.   He gave me the best chair and then sat humbly on the bed.   I asked him a number of questions about his community including about his family (wife died several years ago).   He told us that 95% of those who lived here struggled because they had no ability to get their things to bigger markets.   I shared with us that 1 Adventist man lived in his camp  and that man had left a great impression on him.   From that man he knew that Adventist had the same belief about clean and unclean foods both in the Old and New Testaments.    He knew that we too believe in Allah (God).   We too believe in modesty and moral standards.   As we grew close to the end the woman care taker of the mosque came in with a smile on her face and began serving us water.   Then I asked if Muslims pray for their Christian friends who hold things in common with them?   He smiled, “Yes we do!”   I asked if he would pray for me.   For the next 3-5 minutes he poured his heart out asking God to bless my ministry and family and that he and I could work together.   Clearly this was a man who knew Allah.   As I and the district pastor left the care taker said that the Hanif was well read and knew a lot about Adventists.   I had told him that I read the Al Quran and found many things Muslims and Adventists have in common.   As I left in almost a whisper the care taker said, “He’s read the Bible, too..   He’s been praying to find a Christian who follows it fully.  Perhaps we can work together.” 

Could it be that this is a Mosque waiting for the second Advent of Isa?   Will I get crucified for suggesting such a thing?   Did you know that in the Al Quran (Muslims sacred writings), Isa (Jesus) is the way, truth and life, he is slain from the foundation of the world and will come again at the second coming?   Could it be that in these camps God could work on the minds and hearts of young people and old people to move to Salvation in Isa,  the way, truth and life?   So on this peninsula called the Birds’s Head Peninsula of New Guinea right in the “back of the mouth”  a Divine appointment was attended to by heavenly Angels and two pastors and one Mullah in the back of his mosque and we never even once had a Bible study.   We pray that He will shine His truth to this camp in Bintuni.

The Mullah and I.   He places his arm around my shoulder after he prayed for me.   What a kind and Godly man.  And the refrigerated water his helper gave me and the district pastor never gave so much relief on this hot day.   Thanks be to God Allah who guides our foot steps.