A Barren Place - Now Fruitful
by David Ringer
Papua New Guinea
Hita* speaks a language called Abau, which means “barren,” or “a place where nothing grows.” She lives near the Sepik River in remote western Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Hita had to leave school after the first grade, which is not unusual for children in PNG. Years passed. As a young woman, Hita demonstrated a quick mind and a desire to learn, and she enrolled in a beginning readers class organized by Wycliffe missionaries Arjen and Maija Lock. She learned to read her language quickly and went on to take a six-week Bible study course.
Then one Sunday morning, Hita’s life turned upside-down. She had been refusing the advances of a man who wanted her as his third wife, and he finally attacked her in a rage, injuring her severely.
Through the pain-filled days that followed, Hita found help and strength reading portions of God’s Word in the Abau language. She clung to verses like 1 John 3:8, which says that Jesus has come to destroy the works of the devil.
Hita recovered from her wounds, and on October 12, 2006, she joined hundreds of others in celebrating the arrival of the Abau New Testament. It was a day of singing, dancing, thanksgiving and tears. It was the day that Hita made her way to the front of the crowd and purchased a copy of the New Testament in her own language.
For Arjen and Maija, life among the Abau had begun 24 years earlier when they arrived in the area on a small airplane. From that first day on, they have depended heavily on aviation services provided through Wycliffe partner organizations SIL (PNG Branch) and JAARS. “This program would not be possible without planes,” says Arjen, “because it’s really the only way to get here.”
Twenty-five Abau-speaking villages are scattered along the Sepik River and its tributaries. Vast freshwater swamps provide the people with their staple food, sago, but also make road-building impossible. The Abau people travel in dugout canoes, sometimes paddling for days to reach distant villages.
If they had not been able to travel by plane, Arjen, Maija and their children would have faced a rough drive from the town of Wewak to the Sepik River and from there a six- to seven-day trip on a barge before they reached Yabru village where they lived. Making such a trip over and over could have added literally years to the time it took to translate the New Testament.
And if it weren’t for planes, Obow Inaru would not have lived to see his people receive God’s Word. Obow has worked on the translation team since the very beginning in 1982. As a boy in the 1950s, he lost his leg to a near-fatal infection, and he has faced death many times since. In 1998, Arjen and Maija were away from the village when they received a message by radio: “Obow is dying.” Arjen contacted the aviation department immediately, and the pilots and flight coordinators helped him schedule a flight for the next morning. When the plane flew over Yabru village, the people realized Arjen had come for Obow and carried him out to meet the plane. The rescue flight took Obow to a hospital, and his life was saved again.
Obow stood on stage at the dedication, weeping as he embraced Arjen and held the New Testament high for all to see. “I am like Simeon,” he said, expressing his thankfulness that God had let him live to see that very special day.
At the conclusion of the dedication service, so many people crowded onto the stage to get their New Testaments that organizers feared the structure would crack. “Not so many at once!” they shouted.
Within a week of the dedication, the Abau people had bought about a thousand copies of their New Testament. One man named Jethro bought eight copies—enough for all his children, he said.
Arjen, Maija and their Abau co-workers had worked for many years to prepare for such a response. Early on, they realized that the New Testament would be of little use to the Abau people if they could not read their language. “It would be just impossible to give this book to someone without any preparation,” says Maija. So, they began training teachers to establish Abau-language schools in which children could learn to read and write Abau. The schools eventually reached all 25 Abau villages, and the couple estimates that around 2000 children learned to read and write in those schools. They also built the Abau Training Center, which gives adults the opportunity to learn reading, math, bookkeeping and administrative skills and to participate in distance education courses through PNG’s Christian Leaders Training College.
Mane is one woman who received training at the center. “Being able to read,” she says, “feels like a new trail has been cleared for me."
“Studying together ... has been excellent preparation for the Word,” says Maija. “When the day came, people were ready to take the book.”
People were ready to receive the New Testaments, and Jonathan Federwitz is one of the pilots who made sure that the books were available to them. He and several other SIL-PNG and Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots flew hundreds of boxes of New Testaments to Yabru village in preparation for dedication day.
Jonathan has flown in and out of Yabru village regularly for the last several years, transporting people and supplies and developing relationships with some of the Abau people. He says he’s privileged to be a part of Bible translation from beginning to end, whether delivering a load of much-needed supplies or reuniting children with their parents after a term away at school. To see his Abau friends holding their own New Testaments moved Jonathan to tears. “This was a very special, significant event,” he says. “I can say, ‘Wow. Thank you, Lord, for allowing me to be a part of this.’”
In the months since the dedication, an Abau outreach team has begun making trips to other villages to show the Abau-language version of the JESUS film (completed with the help of vernacular media specialist Jerry Walker) and to promote use of the Abau New Testament. “The villagers housed the team, fed them, and showed every sign of renewed devotion to God and to His ways,” says Maija.
For Arjen and Maija, life among the Abau people is drawing to a close. They plan to turn the project over completely to Abau leadership by mid-2007. “We have tried to be more and more out of the picture, and we believe they can do it. We believe that the Abau project will continue,” says Arjen.
Arjen and Maija say they are thankful for the part God has given them in His work among the Abau people. In the end, they think not of schools or statistics but of people like Hita, for whom God’s Word has made such a difference.
“I don’t care about numbers, or any accomplishments or buildings or anything. I care about those life-changing moments,” says Maija.
Abau, the name of Hita’s language, means barrenness. Indeed, the circumstances of Hita’s life could have left her barren physically, emotionally and spiritually. But God has a different plan for Hita, for Obow, for Mane, for Jethro and even for Hita’s attacker, who wept when he received a copy of the Abau New Testament in prison.
God has promised that the words that go out of His mouth will not return void. Though once barren, the Abau people have now become a fruitful branch in the living body of Jesus Christ.
* pseudonym