The Delegation

I couldn’t sleep.  The long hike in to Marbata, the celebration, the runway inspection, the pig feast and the icy bath in the stream were all behind us.  It was night now.  I was bone tired and desperately ready for sleep.

I had a decent sleeping mat and the woven floor of the hut had enough spring in it to be comfortable, but the rhythmic beat of the dancers’ feet outside the door and the cadence of their chants kept my brain from shutting down for the night.  That, and the embers in the fire pit in the center of the hut were making it uncomfortably warm.  I glanced over at Mark, the only other occupant of our sleeping quarters—he appeared to be dozing soundly under a mosquito net.  Thinking uncharitable thoughts about Mark, the dancers and the embers, I stripped down to my boxers and once again shut my eyes.

The only photograph I took of the hut that night. 
Fire pit in the center of the floor.

Time passed, and sleep still eluded me.  I heard some rustling and figured Enos had come in for the night—I knew he and another companion from the hike were going to share the hut with us that night. 

Some time later, still unable to sleep, I rolled over and in the process must have accidentally jostled open my heavy eyelids.  In the glow of the fire pit I could make out a stunning image:  a group of men, seated in a semi-circle around me. 

The one closest to me spoke my name.  It was Demi.  By now the once-droopy eyelids stood at full attention having auto-adjusted to the position commonly referred to as wide open.  I counted 12 men in the hut.  I’m not sure how long Demi would have waited for me to open my eyes, but my guess is a very, very long time—the Ketengban do not share their Western brothers’ lack of patience.  Whipping on a t-shirt, I made a mental note to find my bucket list and cross off “opening eyes to find self surrounded by 12 men while self clad only in boxers.”

Demi, a long-time friend who helped with the New Testament translation for his Ketengban people, explained that these men were the elders from three distant villages.  They had hiked through the mountains—some of them had been on the trail for days—to get to Marbata because they had heard through the jungle grapevine that Mark and I would be here.  One by one the elders made their case, pleading with us to come to their villages and open the runways their people had built.

I listened to these dear men speak with earnestness and humility.  When it was time for me to speak, I wished that I could promise them something.  All I could do was attempt to convey how much our team cared for each of their communities, but what a huge undertaking opening each new runway was for us, and how limited our capacity was as a team.

We talked deep into the night.  Eventually we spent some time praying together, asking the God we all worshipped to make a way for their runways to be opened and their communities to begin to benefit from the ministry of the aircraft.  Each man then filed past my sleeping mat and we shook hands before they slipped out the door into the night.

I looked over at Mark’s corner of the hut.  He was still dozing peacefully.  More uncharitable thoughts. 

With Demi, a few weeks after the night in the hut.

-----------------------------------

I write this sitting at a kitchen table a world away from that hut deep in the Star Mountains of Papua.  Sheri and I miss many things about living and ministering in Papua, but near the top of the list has got to be the opportunity to fellowship with dear believers like those men in the night.  Believers who, though so radically different than us, love the same Lord and inspire us with their patience, endurance and joy in the midst of lives much more difficult than our own.

Goodbyes And Gifts

Our last month in Papua before leaving for the U.S. was filled with goodbyes.  We had a number of more formal events with our aviation team at Yajasi, our greater Wycliffe team and with our church that we will treasure.  In the more intimate setting of our living room or at a meal table, we shared warmth and tears with many dear friends we’ve known for two decades.

At the airport.

As though the years of friendship and privilege of serving our Lord together weren’t enough, some brought gifts.  These too we will treasure.  And we’ll treasure none more deeply than a simple stone-aged tool.    

In early May, I was on my second-to-last flight in Papua.  After landing at a mountain airstrip in the Eastern Highlands, one of the village elders told me that he’d heard through the grapevine that we’d be gone for a while.  He and the local pastor came over carrying a stone axe. 

It’s one of the last stone axes we have,

passed down by our ancestors.

We want you to take it with you to America,

to remember us back here in these mountains,

and come back and serve among us again.

Undeserving… and yet so grateful, so appreciative of the enormous kindness of these friends with huge hearts.

Marbata Mama

After 30 minutes of hiking pretty much non-stop uphill, we came to a bit of a clearing.  I looked back at the airstrip where we had started the hike, now clearly in view.  We had made it to the ridgeline that marks the last section of the final approach to Omban’s short little runway.  My mind did some quick math: the airplane passes over this point 10 seconds before touchdown.  It had taken us 30 minutes to cover the same ground.  Flying from Omban to overhead our destination of Marbata takes 2 minutes.  So, at this rate we should get there in… my head began to hurt.  

Five hours later, when we crested the last of many hills and finally saw the hamlet of Marbata, my head hurt far less than the rest of me.

30 minutes in to the hike, with the Omban airstrip behind us

There are hundreds of isolated communities in Papua’s rugged mountainous interior whose people make hikes far longer than ours to get to the nearest airstrip for access to supplies, medicine, education and a connection to the outside world.

The people of Marbata were willing to literally move part of their mountain to eliminate that isolation.  My colleague, Mark, and I made the hike from the closest existing airstrip to ensure that they had sufficiently rearranged the mountain to make landing an expensive 5000 pound projectile on it a relatively safe proposition. 

The welcoming committee was something that is better experienced than described.  Ecstatic.  Rhythmic.  Deafening.  

Here's fifteen seconds of it:

With the hubbub somewhat subsided, they led us to a roofed platform that they had special-built for the occasion.  The pastor who had made the hike with us from Omban (and didn’t appear to have broken a sweat in the process) pulled out his Bible to share from the Word of God, as the entire community sat on the airstrip.  Before he spoke, a tiny old woman slowly climbed the steps to the platform and came over to Mark and me.  She had an ancient face but her eyes held sparkle.  Someone translated the words she spoke:

I have been praying that before I die, God would allow our airstrip to be opened.  Thank you for coming.  I will die in peace.

-------------------------------------------------

Four weeks after walking through the mountains to inspect the runway at Marbata, I had the privilege of returning.  This time I took the easy way, landing an airplane on Marbata’s runway for the first time.  I marveled again at the amount of work these industrious people had accomplished.  They had moved truckload upon truckload of earth by hand.  Crowbars--and sticks sharpened to impersonate crowbars--were their only tools.

After working with the community to install runway markers, we were preparing to leave when I saw a familiar figure shuffling across the top of the runway towards the airplane, steadied on the arm of her adult daughter.  She looked more feeble than when I’d last seen her a month ago, and her eyes seemed to have lost some of their sparkle. 

Reaching the airplane, she clasped my hand.  She came to thank us again, but this was my time to speak.

Mama, you prayed that God would allow your runway to get opened before you go to heaven.  God heard your prayers.  He listens to you just like he listens to me.  

The folks standing around us did a quick translation.  I saw the flash of recognition on her face, and those eyes sparkled once again.  Speaking with passion, she pointed her walking stick at the heavens and said: 

I prayed and God heard.

They Will Inherit The Earth

Getting checked out as a missionary pilot in Papua is a lot more than learning how to land on short, slippery runways or navigate mountain passes.  For many of us, learning to interface well with the many different people groups of Papua is a steep learning curve.  So, having passed along as much knowledge I could dig out of my aging mind to my new colleague, Andy, it was time for me to quit getting in the way and allow him to handle a complete ‘turn-around’—the time we spend on the ground at a remote village.

The people of Maksum come out to meet the airplane.

I turned to my friend Pies and said, “Let’s take a walk through the village.”  Pies led me down the path that led to the picturesque village of Maksum.  Weaving our way through the patchwork of huts, Pies and I caught up on each other’s lives.  Floating through the open doorways came smoke from the morning cooking fires and the warm Ketengban greeting, Telebe.  I felt among family.

As we approached the center of the village, I noticed a large, obviously temporary thatch-roofed structure that had been erected in the center of the village and asked Pies about it.  “That’s where I’m taking you.”

Pies began to explain that one of their elders had just passed away.  The large hut is where folks could gather and pass the hours of mourning together.  Most of the mourners had gone up to meet the arrival of our flight, but a few men were still gathered around a fire chatting quietly.

“He must have been an important person.”  Half statement, half question, I waited for Pies to respond.  

“Yes, he was.” Pies’ eyes lit up.  “Gerson was the first person to receive the Good News in Maksum.  When the missionaries first came, Gerson protected them from hostility and told our people that we needed to listen to the message these strange people were bringing into the valley.”

Pies told me that Gerson was the first person in Maksum transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  He turned away from the darkness that had gripped his people for millennia and towards the light of a restored relationship with his Creator.  Gerson spent the rest of his life encouraging his people to do the same.  And they had responded.  It was obvious to me how cherished this man was to his people.

Instead of heading to the mourning area, Pies grabbed my arm and led me down a side path to a hut.  Inside, in a handmade coffin of rough wooden planks, lay Gerson’s empty shell.  On a rough shelf in the corner there’s a book--a reminder that Gerson lived to see the day when God’s Word could be read in his Ketengban language.  Some of his family sat on the floor around the coffin.  They would bury him later that day.

I expressed my condolences, asked a few questions, and took a photograph.  As I put my phone back in my pocket, I was reminded of images of the kings of this world lying in state.  Gilded caskets, honor guards, vaulted cathedrals, the world’s leaders lining up to pay their respects… and here?  In a simple hut, in a tiny, isolated village, totally hidden from the view of the powerful of this world, I can’t help but wonder if I’m looking at one who will be a king in the next version of this world.

Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the earth.

Any Given Day

I took a day off a few weeks ago.  As is my habit when I’m not in the office, I logged in to our flight tracking site that morning to see what our aircraft were up to… and took the screenshot below.

On any given day, you’ll see our fleet, the yellow dots, streaming into Papua’s interior to touch the least of these… and retrieve bundles off the ground.

On this particular day, the yellow dots were out serving missionaries, picking up two sets of patients, and flying for the local people of the Eastern Highlands.

Would you pray for those yellow dots?  Each one represents a generous gift God’s community has passed along to Yajasi to be used to reach the isolated peoples of this region.  Each yellow dot has a pilot on board needing to make good decisions under pressure all day long.  Each yellow dot has a team standing behind it—a group of dedicated mechanics, finance people, ground operations staff and administrators tirelessly doing their jobs to keep the yellow dots in the air. 

Pray for the dots!

An Unwrinkled Nose

The bundle on the ground

I walked from the airplane to the bundle on the ground.  The first thing I noticed was the flies.  Then the smell.    The smell was the smell of death, and the flies flew vulture circles around the bundle.  The bundle on the ground contained the perfectly still figure of a tiny woman, the image of God clinging tenaciously to her tired features.  All that is evil and broken in this world sought to mercilessly destroy this weak and weary image-bearer.  

She’d been carried on a makeshift litter over the steep mountain trail from a nearby village to reach the airstrip where my airplane was now parked.  Her husband stood beside her, holding another bundle in his hands, a noken—one of the net bags woven from tree bark fibers that his people have been making for as long as anyone has memory of this place.   I peered into the noken.  It contained perhaps the most uncorrupted vision of the image of God we’re likely to see on this broken planet: the woman’s perfect newborn child.  While the child’s mother lay on the ground enveloped in a struggle for life, her baby slept serenely in his father’s arms.  The miracle of childbirth, cursed when our race turned away from God, now threatened the life of the baby’s young mother.

Moving her into the aircraft

Stepping out of the airplane in Sentani, I went to help one of our ground staff with the stretcher.  As we gently moved our patient from the airplane to the stretcher, I watched my co-worker’s face as the stench hit him.

Not a flinch.

Not the tiniest wrinkling of the nose.  I knew that the only reason he didn’t react to his senses was out of respect for this little tribal woman, wrapped in filthy, blood-soaked blankets.   You don’t wrinkle your nose at someone you believe carries God’s image. 

Our team has had to navigate some really rough waters this year.  At that moment under the wing of the PC-6, watching my colleague restrain the very natural instinct to gag, my heart leapt and said, 

Yes!  This is it.  This is why we’re here.  This is why we fight on.  This is why we don’t quit when everything in us wants to.  As a flawed and broken team, we’re somehow being used to touch the least of God’s image-bearers.’

Sometimes all that's asked of us is an unwrinkled nose.

The brand new image bearer

Bacon and Eggs

With a satisfying smack of the hammer, the last runway marker was pounded into place and the job was done.  Well, almost done.  We still had to climb the hill.

For the Ngalum tribesmen helping mark their new airstrip at Diphikin, the walk back up to the top of their new airstrip is one of the easiest in their entire territory.  A different story entirely for me, the middle-aged wimp whose middle-aged eyes are looking at the 14% grade that the middle-aged legs will have to walk up if his middle-aged self wants to get back to the airplane and fly home.  Trudging up the hill, I do my best to mute the awful rasping that my middle-aged lungs are making, hoping to hide the racket from the maddeningly cheerful Ngalum for whom this wouldn’t even qualify as a Sunday stroll. 

14%.  The maximum grade for a road in mountainous areas of the United States is 7%.  In Papua’s Eastern Highlands you’ll be hard pressed to find a straight piece of land longer than 100 meters with only a 7% grade.  For the Ngalum of Diphikin, the only straight piece of land suitable for an airstrip site just happens to have this ridiculous grade.  Don’t mind landing on it, not one bit, but walking up it is for the birds.

To my delighted surprise, I don’t pass out on the way up the hill.  Cresting the top into the flat parking area, we arrive to a hubbub in full kerfuffle.  The folks who stayed at the top of the airstrip are butchering a large pig.  A Ngalum man deftly uses an axe to do the job.  They will send out the prized pork with me as gifts to our team in thanks for opening up their airstrip for service.  A huge hind-quarter has my name on it--they present it to me dripping with blood, ready for the grill.  It’s easily a $150 piece of meat, probably worth much more.  

In the midst of this melee, a tiny little old woman weaves her way through the crowd carrying one of those ubiquitous little black plastic bags that are everywhere in these parts.  She hands me her treasure gingerly.  “For the pilot,” she says, and disappears back into the crowd.

I peek in the bag.  It’s full of tiny eggs from her chickens.  I can buy much larger eggs back in town for 15 cents a piece.  But these are worth much more than money.

The pork is given with equal parts of pure gratitude mixed with hopeful expectation that we’ll return the favor with frequent air service to the village.  The eggs are given…why?  She knows I don’t need them.  She knows that I live like a king compared to her.  I really don’t know why she gave me those eggs.  All I can think of is that she was simply being kind.

I continue to be blessed by these ‘little’ people who belong to the the Lord, scattered throughout the hinterlands of Papua.  May I learn from them.  May I grow to become like the little woman in Diphikin who gives to those who don’t deserve, gives without strings attached, and walks away with nothing but the sweetness of knowing her Master is smiling.  

[originally written November 2014]

Orchids In The Ditch

In the jungles of Papua the men’s room is always easy to find: it’s located any place not currently being used as a lady’s room.  And so it was at Sekame; no fancy signage, just a couple of bushes next to the ditch at the side of the airstrip and I had found the vital facilities I was looking for. 

I looked down at the floor of the ditch where something caught my eye as being out of place.  Here, standing tall among the dirt and the weeds, were wild orchids in all their delicate, regal beauty. 

This one followed me home for my bride...
it's now a part of our garden 

Orchids in the ditch.  Considered by some the most beautiful flowers in the world…costly, sought after, highly prized.  And here they are, in a ditch. 

The thing is, the orchids didn’t know they were in a ditch.  There they were, doing exactly what they were put on earth to do: bloom. They screamed out God’s creative brilliance, his love of beauty and his desire for us to be enraptured by that beauty.  And they are doing this in a ditch, just like they would if they were the centerpiece attraction at a world class botanic garden being oohed and aahed by professional flower people. 

I pay way too much attention to the context in which I find myself.  Am I willing to fulfill what God has me on earth to do when I find myself in some anonymous ditch in a backwater village deep in the interior of Papua?  Or do I put in the effort to shine only when I have an audience of professional Christian people from whom I might coax an ooh or an aah? 

Am I willing to scream out God’s creative brilliance, the beauty of who he is, by producing my best work and allowing joy to rule in my heart even when all I see around me is dirt, weeds and the steep walls of the ditch I’m in?

Thank you, God, for orchids in the ditches.

The Tenth Leper

“I have nothing with which to repay you.

God will reward you.”

I heard those words yesterday afternoon from the lips of a grizzled old man as we stood under the wing of the plane at an isolated mountain airstrip. Tearful words of thanks for adding on a flight to fly his grieving family home after burying their son in a distant village.

It had been a long, hard, hot day with multiple stops, long delays, plenty of sweat and not a few frustrations.  At one point, I felt something moving on my stomach and looked down to see a cockroach running uphill on a beeline for getting under my shirt sleeve.  Another one zipped across the instrument panel.  They must have jumped ship from the evil smelling sago I had hoisted aboard at the previous stop.  I smushed the one on my shirt a few millimeters short of his destination.  This didn’t help the appearance of the shirt any… but I felt better.  The day’s difficulties, like the cockroaches, were multiple, ugly and unwanted.  They filled my senses, cried for the attention of my corruptible spirit and clamored for me to conclude that life stinks. 

Touching lives...

And then the words of an old tribal man challenge me to see the unseen.  To make real the unreal.  To believe the unbelievable.  That there is a God.  That he is watching.  That he delights when his children make feeble attempts at mimicking his love and mercy.

This place is overrun with what I like to call tenth lepers.  Following in the footsteps of the original tenth leper who returned to Jesus to thank him for wiping the scourge from his skin, I find so many folks doubling back to say thanks for the smallest of things.  (The most creative thanks I ever received was written on a roll of toilet paper and left prominently on my desk… appreciation from missionaries whose massive shipment of the vital stuff I’d frantically stashed in a dry water tank by the side of the runway during a tropical downpour.)

What about me?  What about you?  Are we one of the nine?  Or do we, like #10, take the time to look around us and marvel at the healing that God has done on our leprous hearts?  Do we shake our heads in wonder at the goodness God allows into our lives despite the fact that we live in a horribly broken place?

...in a beautiful place.

I’m jarred by a man who, having just buried his son, still doubled back to thank the pilot who has known no such suffering.  I flew home counting the ways that God has already rewarded me.  I was struck by the privilege our team has of being involved in so many different ministries, the privilege of touching so many lives, the privilege of getting a God’s eye view of one of the most beautiful, pristine places left on the planet, the privilege of knowing that as a result of our collective efforts the Word of God will remain in this place long after we are gone.  I found myself doubling back to my Master to ask for forgiveness for thinking that life isn’t fair because a cockroach makes for my armpit.  

Then I thanked him that life is indeed not fair: he showers good things on the undeserving. 

The Girl And The Box

After three and a half years in Papua, we were looking forward to heading home for a seven month furlough.  Things were wrapping up nicely.  My next day at work was to be my last day of flying.  A single out-and-back flight with a load of medical supplies for a team of doctors.

Then the phone rang.

Could I add one more flight?  A woman from one of the interior villages had died and her family was asking if we’d fly her body back home.  A chance for our team to show compassion to a grieving family.

The next morning, as the shadows gave way to the gentle light of a new day, our ground operations crew gingerly loaded the casket into the back of the Pilatus Porter.  A man stood in the shadows watching.  In his arms he held a little girl.

Caskets must not come in a standard size in Papua; this one was a bit wider than others I’ve flown.  With the polished wooden box taking up most of the cabin, our guys were having trouble installing seats on the seat tracks.  Leaving the guys to work on the problem, I walked over to the man in the shadows.

“Was she your wife?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“And the little girl?” I nodded at the beautiful child clinging to his neck, still sleepy.

“She’s my daughter.”

We were quiet for a while, then walked over to the aircraft together.  The team had planned for the two of them to sit together in the cabin alongside the casket, but they were only able to fit one seat into the seat tracks, all the way against the back wall of the cabin. I posed the dilemma to the father: would his daughter rather ride up front next to me or in the back with the casket?  He asked her the question in their native tongue.  She shook her head vigorously.  The father gave me a tired smile.  She was more afraid of riding next to the scary foreigner than of sitting alone next to the box that held her mom’s body.

She climbed up into that seat, alone in the back of the airplane.  I fastened her seat belt and showed her how to open it.  I began to pray for her.  A little hand clutched mine and held on tight. When I finished, she smiled.

I’m now a world away from the jungles of Papua. Comfortable, relaxed and secure, I reflect on the ministry ‘back there.’  In the grand scheme of things, it often feels like we don’t really accomplish that much.  And that which we do accomplish?   It takes an awful lot of effort.  It takes an awful lot of money.  It has more risk than I’d like.  It wears people out.

Why go back?

The Lord brings this little girl to mind.  I’ll likely never see her again.  I have no idea what her life will hold.  But as I remember her, sitting next to her mother’s coffin, squeezing my hand as we prayed, I sense the Lord saying that the ministry in Papua is measured by moments like this one. It’s not measured by impressive lines on some graph.  It is measured by unimpressive, unnoticed moments.  Moments where the feeble faithfulness of a flawed team of men and women brings a taste of Jesus’ unflawed love to one of his ‘least of these.’