Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE

USA missionaries in PNG: 'I cried for a week'

SUZANNE NOLAN WISLER | Monroe News (Michigan USA)

Regular readers will know that PNG Attitude occasionally republishes articles about missionaries, usually from the USA, who are about to embark on a Papua New Guinea journey. Frequently these people have misconceived ideas about PNG and we publish perhaps in the forlorn hope that exposure of such misconceptions may assist remedy the deficiency. The New Tribes Mission seems to be an especially persistent offender....

A MONROE COUPLE AND THEIR CHILDREN are embarking on a 25-hour journey to Papua New Guinea, an island country just above Australia.

The family first sensed a need to serve nearly three years ago.

“We felt the Lord moving overseas missions on our hearts,” said Mrs. Cooke.

As proof, things fell together.

Rowena – a successful lawyer doing her Christian duty

PAUL DOBBYN | The Catholic Leader

ROWENA MCNALLY WAS MOVING on from a successful career as a lawyer, including a term as Queensland Sugar Industry Commissioner, when she asked God in prayer if He had any work for her.

The answer was not long in coming. Starting 2005, her roles within Church organisations would soon include director of Professional Standards for the Catholic Church in Queensland as well as trustee of Mary Aikenhead Ministries.

In the former role, she confronted the dark side of Church history meeting with victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse. By 2012, she was also chair of Catholic Health Australia.

As a young girl in Papua New Guinea, Rowena's initial response to Church life gave little indication of the intense engagement to come.

Aitape tsunami changed the face of bible translation

NICOLA MENZIE | The Christian Post

A MASSIVE TSUNAMI triggered by a magnitude seven earthquake wiped out thousands of villages, claimed hundreds of lives and forever changed the way Bible translations previously had been done in Papua New Guinea.

Two Wycliffe Bible translators credited with pioneering the movement, and who lost many of their friends in the storm, recently shared with The Christian Post how they believe God created a miracle out of tragedy.

John and Bonnie Nystrom, linguists for Wycliffe Bible Translators, recount in their recently published book, Sleeping Coconuts, how the devastating 17 July 1998 earthquake that shook the northern coast of Papua New Guinea claimed 800 lives from Arop village where they had moved 10 years prior to assist local pastors translate the Bible into their own language.

Society of the Divine Word – what a band of men!

DAVID WALL

WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY BODY of men were the Divine Word Missionaries (SVD) in Papua New Guinea – Americans, Germans, Dutch and others.

Fr Mike Clerkin was one of them. He came to Wewak before World War II and was interned by the Japanese during the war years – staying on after. Wherever he was posted, he was liked and respected.

He told me that when he arrived in Wewak around 1938 he gained a reputation as being a great drinker who was exceptional in his ability to hold his liquor – quite unjustified according to him. 

It came about, he said, when early in his time in Wewak he was asked to a party. He was sitting on the verandah and drinks were flowing freely, in fact the host would not allow anyone’s glass to be any way empty, filling each up with neat Scotch.

Bible fundamentalists & pubs engulf the suburbs

KELA KAPKORA SIL BOLKIN | Supported by the Phil Fitzpatrick Writing Fellowship

ONE WONDERS WHETHER they have inhaled heroin or cocaine to be so high with energy.  Your ears are assaulted on every street corner into which you turn in Port Moresby where a street preacher stands.

Most of them will be skinny with no muscles and their bones sticking out of their skin. Obvious signs of hunger and unemployment.  But that doesn’t hinder them from being charged with absolute energy.

Yet most of their theories about metaphysics will not stand up to scrutiny and one can clearly see that the poor preacher is half-baked, let alone a student of theology or philosophy.

A few of them are obese and you can tell that they have successfully manipulated their followers with skill and have taken advantage of them by milking every penny for their own hungry stomachs.

You will even see kids as young as five preaching on the street corners of Port Moresby.  Oh dear, what does this kid understand about the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament?

PNG Muslims: a new frontier for Islam in Melanesia

The Vatican Today | Agenzia Fides

PAPUA NEW GUINEA is the new frontier for the expansion of Islam in Melanesia.

Islam arrived in Papua New Guinea about 35 years ago, when a mosque near Kimbe in West New Britain was opened.

As Fr Franco Zocca SVD, a missionary in Goroka and scholar of Islam explained, Muslims in the area take inspiration from an Islamic reform movement called Ahmadi, founded in India in the late nineteenth century.

Islam was officially registered in PNG in 1983, with the recognition of the Islamic Society of Papua New Guinea, and from that moment on, Muslims who came from outside started recruiting at a local level.

Growth has been exponential growth. In 1986, there were four Muslims in PNG, in 1990 this had grown to 440, and in 2000 they numbered 756, scattered in different provinces. Today, according to the Islamic Centre in Port Moresby, the Muslim population is about 4,000.

Do some missions exaggerate what they find in PNG?

PHIL FITZPATRICK

PNG Attitude scours a range of publications for material of interest to readers. In doing so, we’ve discovered that a characteristic of many missionary organisations is a tendency to exaggerate the dangers and bizarreness of their work in Papua New Guinea. We publish these articles without comment, although we do omit the most offensive or insensitive parts. Here Phil Fitzpatrick addresses the issue….

I FIND THE PROPENSITY of missionaries in Papua New Guinea, both now and in the past, to discover things that aren't there extremely curious.

The recent account of ‘ritual widow-killing’ isn't an isolated story. In fact, a few of the missionaries’ more outrageous and ludicrous accounts occasionally feature on PNG Attitude.

These articles are the tip of the iceberg. If you check out some of mission blogs, especially the American fundamentalists like New Tribes, hideous pagan rituals and customs in Papua New Guinea are in plague proportions.

The most common modern missionary claim seems to be that their people go to places where no European has ever been before.

This pioneering trek is closely followed by the discovery of some licentious behaviour which is healed through the power of prayer.

Either these missionaries are extremely gullible or they are not telling the truth. I suspect the latter.

But I suppose making up wild and improbable stories is part and parcel of the Christian zealot's ethos.

What sad people. You'd think they'd have better things to do than bother hitherto happy villagers.

Ritual widow-killing did not end in PNG until the 1980s

LAURIE GUY | New Zealand Herald

I WAS IN WEST NEW BRITAIN as a missionary from 1983-89 and can confirm that Jared Diamond's latest book, The World Until Yesterday, is substantially correct in relation to widow-killing in a language group of about 2,000 speakers in New Britain.

Diamond’s ideas do, however, need a little nuancing. First, Kaulong was viewed as a derogatory term (similar to bush kanaka).

The self-description of this language group was Arawe (or Arove). And the practice did not end in the 1950s but persisted in pockets of people until the 1980s.

Traditionally the Arawe were semi-nomadic, settling in small groupings (maybe only 10 or 20 people) for a few years and then moving on as soil fertility was depleted.

In 1981, a diminutive, feisty, German woman in her late 50s, Helen Held, trekked into a remote mountainous part of New Britain to share the Christian gospel with some of the Arawe people.

This led to several of these groups coming together to form a settled village, which I shall call 'A'. Two years later (two months before I arrived in New Britain) Helen went with some of the people from Village A to Village B and preached the Christian message there.

The message was immediately embraced by the whole village, largely because the sister of the primary headman had had a dream a little earlier which she had shared with the village. The dream indicated that people with white skins would come to the village bringing good news.

Village B underwent major transformation over the next few years. With World Vision help it planted coconuts (then absent from that inland area) to lift the woefully low protein levels.

Two of the men went off to do a short-term medical course (the remoteness of the village meant that till then basic health care was totally lacking).

A primary school was started. Because of the difficulty of attracting teachers to the location, the village later got some of its children into secondary school and teacher training to provide home-grown teachers. The overall effect was a remarkable holistic transformation.

Certainly there had been widow-killing among these people. My understanding is that this occurred with the co-operation of the widow, who wanted to be with the spirit of her deceased husband.

A key headman at Village A had earlier been involved in the death of his mother on that basis.

In 1988, the Christian gospel was being preached to further small groups of the Arawe people. A new village ('C'), partly Christian, began to form.

An Arawe graduate from the Bible School I led was placed there as pastor. A man died and his widow wanted to be killed - usually this was shown by the widow doing certain ritual acts to provoke the men to kill her.

New Wycliffe aircraft to support Bible translation

Christian Today

WYCLIFFE ASSOCIATES is raising funds to purchase a fourth specially designed Kodiak aircraft to support its Bible translation efforts in Papua New Guinea.

Bible translation projects are underway for more than 190 of PNG’s 830 language groups but more than 300 do not yet have a single verse of Scripture.

Air travel is a vital part of Bible translation work in PNG because of the country's difficult terrain and 80% of Bible translators rely on air travel to get around the country.

Wycliffe reports that without an aircraft, reaching some language groups can take up to five days.

“The Kodiak is a critical tool to reach language groups who are crying out for God’s Word,” said president and CEO Bruce Smith, who is a former missionary pilot.

“Insurmountable mountain peaks, dense rainforests, and hard-to-reach islands in PNG make sharing the truth and hope of God’s Word time-consuming and extremely difficult.”

The Kodiak has been developed by the Quest Aircraft Company in Idaho with missionary work in mind.

The aircraft can take off in under 1,000 feet at full gross weight and climb at more than 1,300 feet a minute.

It carries more than three times the load than other planes previously used for mission work and uses jet fuel, which is less expensive and more readily available in PNG than avgas.

Christians say a law against polygamy is urgent

Agenzia Fides

POLYGAMY IS NOT JUST an anti-Christian practice and against the moral law, but it is also a social threat and this is why a law to prevent it is urgent, say Christian communities in Papua New  Guinea.

With these arguments, Christian leaders in PNG are leading a campaign to outlaw polygamy.

Legislative action to ban polygamy was recently proposed by Eastern Highlands governor Julie Soso.

Thirty years ago, another political leader, Peter Peipul, had demanded the banning of polygamy, calling it "disgusting" and "unconstitutional."

Although, in recent years, the reform of family law and the prohibition of polygamy was discussed, the practice remains legal in PNG.

"In areas where polygamy is still practiced, there are increasing cases of women accused of the murder of another of the wives of their husbands,” explains Paul Harricknen, a Catholic lawyer and consultant to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Papua.

“Women's rights will always be trampled until polygamy remains in force. Every human being, male or female, has equal rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

Harricknen says the bishops want the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.

"Usually polygamy is imposed on the first wives, who succumb due to their economic and social disadvantage, or simply choose to maintain their fidelity to marriage. It is a practice that causes chaos and abuse in society."

For this reason, Harricknen concludes, "polygamy is no longer suitable for Papua   New Guinea."

Abusive priest Fr Denis McAlinden: the PNG link

CATHERINE MASTERS & GREG ANSLEY | New Zealand Herald [extracts]

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH in Tokomaru Bay, Gisborne, is like many in small-town New Zealand - a picture of safety and innocence.

It's hard to imagine that the pretty little wooden chapel with the blue roof has been caught up in a top-level inquiry into the sexual abuse of children, which was launched in Australia but is likely to extend to New Zealand.

Among the practices to be investigated is that instead of prosecuting paedophile priests, the Catholic church transferred them from diocese to diocese.

One of the worst offenders was Father Denis McAlinden - thought to have abused hundreds of little girls - who turned up in Tokomaru Bay in the 1980s.

The current Bishop of Hamilton, Denis Browne, has confirmed McAlinden was in the remote part of the diocese for six months in 1984, telling radio there was only one known victim who had come forward after 25 years "to unburden her soul".

McAlinden, who also had stints in Papua New Guinea and Western Australia, was eventually defrocked but never prosecuted.

He was hidden by the church in his later years and is now dead…

Long-term institutional abuse has already been confirmed across Australia - a decade ago a Queensland inquiry into institutions run by the Anglican, Methodist and Catholic churches prompted an official State apology for the physical and sexual abuse suffered by their victims.

The Salvation Army is also facing a series of lawsuits, and accusations of cover-ups have been levelled against a number of private schools and the Scouts. Redress and compensation schemes have been set up for victims of abuse in state-run institutions in Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia.

The federal Royal Commission also comes as inquiries into child abuse continue in Queensland and Victoria. New South Wales, under fierce pressure after one its most senior investigators alleged obstruction and the destruction of evidence by the Catholic Church, announced its own inquiry this week….

The Victorian inquiry has already heard graphic accounts of abuse, much of it assembled by Broken Rites and involving the Order of St John of God, which operated in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

The inquiry heard claims that more than 70% of the order's brothers were suspected child abusers and that in Victoria it harboured up to 15 paedophiles between 1952 and 1986….

McAlinden was 26 when he arrived in Australia in 1949. Within four years the church had received the first of many complaints of his sexual abuse of mainly young girls.

As complaints mounted he was sent to PNG for four years and later shuffled between Newcastle-Maitland, Hamilton and Geraldton and Bunbury in Western Australia.

His abuse was well known to the church hierarchy, which organised the transfers.

What a great idea! 10 new trees to promote new life

Catholic News Service

WHEN BISHOP BERNARD UNABALI of Bougainville performs a baptism, confirmation or ordination, he asks churchgoers to plant 10 trees to promote new life.

Bishop Unabali considers the link between respecting the environment and the sacramental life of the church as inseparable.

Tree-planting is one way the bishop encourages people to respond to the rapid pace of climate change.

He was the keynote speaker at a three-day symposium on climate change held last week at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

In 2007, Bishop Unabali spent two weeks with the Halia people in the Carteret Islands and saw for himself evidence of the rising ocean.

The Washington meeting highlighted urgent calls from Pope Benedict XVI for Catholics to respond to this planetary crisis.

Precedent for PNG 'dumping ground' for abusive priests

KEITH JACKSON

INTERNATIONAL CRIME EXPERT Dr Kristian Lasslett has said “it stands to reason [that] church crimes”, such as child abuse, “may have occurred in Papua New Guinea.”

Dr Lasslett is co-director of the International State Crime Initiative and lecturer in criminology at the University of Ulster.

He was commenting on Peter Kranz’s article in PNG Attitude yesterday which said that PNG may have been used “as a [metaphorical] 'training ground' for priestly child molesters, and sometimes a convenient 'dumping ground' for the Church to send accused priests".

Yesterday the Australian government also announced an extensive Royal Commission into institutional child abuse in Australia.

“A timely and important issue, well done Peter for raising it,” Dr Lasslett remarked, “though I suspect it will be particularly hard for victims to report their abuse, even now.”

“Evidence has sporadically come to light that the Catholic church was involved in forced removals of children in PNG, replicating a pattern elsewhere,” he said.

“I know in Ireland many victims went through hell trying to corroborate their claims, before a disbelieving audience, and an Irish government extremely reluctant to engage in a frontal offensive against the Church.

“Certainly places like Kenya, when a British colony, was used as a dumping ground of sorts for priests 'under a cloud of accusations', so there is precedent.”

“This is an important issue - but one to handle with care,” Dr Lasslett added.

In his article, Peter Kranz provided details on the “surprising number of already convicted paedophile priests [who had] a background of service in PNG

“This matter needs to be brought into the open as a public service to the people of PNG, and it needs to be investigated further as a protection for children and young people who may still well be at risk,” he said.

Child abuse is believed to be widespread in PNG. A 2006 study revealed that children as young as 11 years of age were being forced into prostitution and trafficked as child brides. It said children are also sexually abused in their own communities, raped and abused by persons in authority including police.

Was PNG a training-ground for priestly child molesters?

PETER KRANZ

THERE IS A RAPIDLY ESCALATING SCANDAL in Australia about the extent and cover-up of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, with these crimes often going back generations.

The scandal extends to many hundreds of known cases and has revealed a sorry history of denial, cover-up and connivance of Church leaders in hiding the perpetrators to avoid embarrassment.

And, as revealed late last week in NSW, there Church has even failed to fully cooperate with police inquiries, perhaps up the level of Archbishop.

Church authorities may have even conspired with misguided police officers to thwart investigations into these heinous crimes.

There have been calls for an Australia-wide Royal Commission to investigate this issue, and there are already special commissions underway in Victoria and NSW.

So what has this got to do with Papua New Guinea?

What is less well known is that a surprising number of already convicted paedophile priests have a background of service in PNG.

In fact the extent of this might lead the cynical to suggest that PNG almost acted as a training-ground for priestly child molesters, and sometimes a convenient dumping ground for the Church to send accused priests. Out of sight, out of mind.

This matter needs to be brought into the open as a public service to the people of PNG, and it needs to be investigated further as a protection for children and young people who may still well be at risk.

If you have any direct experience of such activity, you should first go to the police – not the Church.

Also, of course, people are entitled to be presumed innocent until proven guilty by proper legal process.

I provide here a summary of just a few of the priests with a PNG connection who have been convicted of child abuse.

The list was compiled by the Australian victims support organisation Broken Rites.

Head of the Anglican church is visiting Papua New Guinea

Anglican Communion News Service

THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, Dr Rowan Williams, is visiting Papua New Guinea. He arrived today and will remain in the country until Wednesday.

Archbishop Williams and his wife, Dr Jane Williams, made courtesy calls on the Governor-General and political leaders and met and prayed with church families from the diocese.

Tomorrow, the Archbishop will be the preacher and principal concelebrant at a Holy Eucharist and provincial celebration at the cathedral in Popondetta.

Later the Archbishop and Dr Jane Williams will address a youth gathering where they will meet with youth leaders to hear their hopes and concerns and talk about the gifts that young people bring to their church and communities in a time of cultural change.

On M onday he will formally open a newly refurbished Anglican hospital in Oro Bay, and participate in a service of dedication of the hospital’s work, serving the coastal population.

In the afternoon he will meet with members of PNG’s Anglican religious communities which include the Melanesian Brotherhood, The Society of Saint Francis, and the Congregation of the Sisters of the Visitation of our Lady.

The Archbishop will participate in a ground-breaking ceremony for a new teacher training college, an institution which will help address the serious shortage of qualified teacher trainers while strengthening the Church’s own ministry in education.

A visit to a Theological College later on the same day will see the Archbishop and Dr Jane Williams speak with the trainee priests on their vision for theological education.

On Tuesday Dr Williams will visit Dogura, where the first Anglican missionaries landed in 1891.  He will visit the renowned Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul where he will celebrate and preach at a Eucharist with the local community, including the primary and secondary school students and staff.

Back in Port Moresby for the final day of the visit on Wedndesday, the Archbishop will meet with members of the Anglican/Roman Catholic Commission to share perspectives on ecumenical relations and affirm the nature of this longstanding dialogue.

During a visit to an elementary school run by the Anglican Church in a poor urban settlement, he will plant a modawa tree, symbolic to the local church. The Archbishop and Dr Jane Williams will then meet staff and patients at the Anglicare HIV Centre. The visit will conclude with a formal dinner hosted by the PNG government.

“I am delighted to be visiting Papua New Guinea and to be able to experience at first-hand the remarkable life of the church in this nation and its contribution to the wider community,” the Archbishop said speaking in advance of his visit:

“We also look forward to experiencing how the enduring assets of the country’s rich culture and strong social fabric allow a confident response to the challenges of the day. There is so much in the life of the church and nation which is a gift for the wider church and for the world.

“I look forward to discussions with church leaders from the different churches and with national leaders over the nation’s priorities for its people.  I am very grateful to the government of Papua New Guinea for its hospitality and its support.”

Pastor Buka Paul: A New Guinea jewel

KEN BOEHM

AROUND 1938, A 16-YEAR OLD BUKA YOUTH, Paul, and a friend sailed from their island of Bougainville to big New Guinea with Seventh Day Adventist missionary A J Campbell to begin the adventure of their young lives.

Landing at Salamaua, they walked with a team of village-recruited carriers to the newly formed mission post of Kainantu in the Eastern Highlands where they were to serve as general helpers for the newly appointed European workers.

Buka Paul proved to be a faithful employee and felt called to become a missionary himself After attending classes at Putput (later to become Kambubu Adventist Academy), chanting arithmetic tables and absorbing Bible stories to Grade 3 level, he was sent to a village near Omarau to teach under the direction of a senior Mussau Islander.

Because Paul was single and did not speak the local language, he failed to impress the older people. But the children loved him dearly and gained an appreciation of the gospel story.

Kamito, the village sorcerer, scolded the children and threatened to poison Paul's food, claiming no one could survive such strong poison. Paul assured Kamito that God would preserve his life and there was nothing to fear.

The work of God expanded rapidly and a new mission station was established at Bena Bena west of Kainantu when Sakimau, another worker from Mussau was attacked and died on the track while bringing supplies from Madang. Then Kuka, also from Mussau, disappeared mysteriously after accidentally killing a pig. Later it was discovered he had been murdered.

In 1942 the Japanese invaded PNG and all European missionaries were evacuated to Australia. Buka Paul was commandeered as an army cook.

Then a drought lasting 18 months set in, storage water ran out and creeks dried up. The military doctor asked Paul if he and his worshippers ever prayed for rain. Paul replied that they could, and if God saw fit to send rain He would.

So the doctor requested prayer. This was Friday, the sun was still shining but as it neared the west, the church bell rang for opening Sabbath worship on Saturday. Four boys and several mothers and children filed into Kainantu SDA Church sang some hymns, read a scripture and prayed earnestly for rain.

Soon after, dark clouds rolled up the Ramu gorge and rain began to fall, continuing all through Sabbath until the tanks were full and overflowing. From then on many soldiers attended church receiving messages from natives who had previously been in darkness.

How the Old Testament was brought to Lavege

CHRISTY ARMSTRONG | Cleveland Daily Banner

WHETHER OR NOT THEY BELIEVE what it says, many Americans are somewhat familiar with the Bible. Verses are often emblazoned on bumper stickers, and copies of Gideon Bibles still occupy drawer space in many hotel rooms.

However, Cleveland resident Danielle Jennings has discovered that people in some parts of the world are not familiar with the Bible at all.

A 21-year-old Lee University student from Bel Air, Maryland, Jennings spent part of her summer helping translate the Bible into a tribal language in Papua New Guinea, joining a group of others on a trip with Wycliffe Bible Translators.

The group of seven young women and three leaders from Wycliffe visited a village called Lavege in the West New Britain Province.

The Wycliffe group spent a week in Dallas preparing for the trip by learning about Bible translation and memorizing as much of the village’s language as they could.

After the group left the US, the events of the trip played out like movie scenes rife with action, drama and comedy.

“The first day we were there, our van was attacked,” Jennings said.

The van was surrounded by three men carrying a gun, a machete and a large rock. Their intention was to rob group members of their belongings and steal the van.

Jennings said there were some very tense moments, but all escaped safely. That event just confirmed for them that the Bible translation work they would do was important, she said.

There were a few more uplifting moments that happened while the translations were taking shape and even some humorous ones that happened when both trip participants and villagers ran into language barriers.

Papua New Guinea is home to many different languages. There are 863 languages spoken in the country, close to 10% of all the languages spoken in the world.

Villagers from Lavege have to speak different languages when they visit other villages and many are multilingual. Children learn multiple languages, including at least one of the country’s three official languages. Still, residents of many small villages can only read in their first language.

While the Wycliffe group learned some of the Mangseng language during their time in Dallas, Jennings said it was sometimes difficult to understand what people were saying because languages were often mixed together in conversation.

“It was kind of hard to pick up when they switched between languages,” Jennings said.

Appeal marks 70th anniversary of Anglican martyrs

DURING WORLD WAR II, 12 Anglicans working in Papua New Guinea lost their lives and this year marks the 70th anniversary of their deaths.

The Anglican martyrs were Lilla Lashmar (teacher), Margery Brenchley (nurse), John Duffill (builder), Bernard Moore (priest), Mavis Parkinson (teacher), May Hayman (nurse), Vivian Redlich (priest), Lucian Tapiedi (evangelist and teacher), John Barge (priest), Henry Matthews (priest), Henry Holland (priest) and Leslie Gariardi (evangelist and teacher).

These brave people are remembered and celebrated each Martyrs’ Day on 2 September and this year the Anglican Board of Mission has launched a campaign to continue its work in PNG. The focus is on St Margaret’s Hospital in Ono Bay, north-east of Port Moresby.

In recent years, ABM has been working with the Anglican Church in PNG to upgrade St Margaret’s Health Clinic to a Level 5 hospital. The hospital will now operate as a satellite hospital to the state-run Popondetta General Hospital while recruiting staff and improving skills.

“We hope our supporters will be inspired by the Martyrs of PNG and contribute to the work of St Margaret’s Hospital,” said ABM fundraising manager, Christopher Brooks

“St Margaret’s has been undergoing refurbishment but the project, supported by ABM, is living up to PNG’s name as the ‘land of the unexpected’.”

There have been setbacks due to weather, sporadic riots, flooding and a lack of skilled professionals. Despite this, the staff of St Margaret’s continue to provide services.

For St Margaret’s to be fully operational and staffed, the Anglican Church of PNG will need to build 13 new houses over the next three years at a total cost of $780,000. The houses will be sourced in PNG and built by local people.

ABM encourages its supporters to remember the martyrs in prayer and contribute to the work of the Anglican Church in PNG through the Martyrs’ Day Campaign. You can donate online at www.donations.abmission.org.

Meanwhile, the Summer Institute of Linguistics has produced a new version of the Bible in the Marik language, spoken by several thousand people in the Madang region.

Translators had to learn the language, develop an alphabet and then teach the Marik people to read the language before beginning the translation process.

The translation took 36 years to complete.

SIL director Tim Lithgow said the translation developed an alphabet based on roman numerals to align with other major languages spoken in the region such as English and Tok Pisin.

Mr Lithgow said there is still more language development work to do in PNG. "A growing problem in PNG is age, so part of the task we've done in community development is translating age booklets into local languages," he said.

Kabiufa Adventist church school attacked

JOE PONDUK/LINDEN CHUANG | Seventh Day Adventist Record

FOUR STUDENTS AND A STAFF MEMBER have been injured in an attack on an Adventist school in Papua New Guinea.

The attack at the Kabiufa Adventist Secondary School by two neighbouring villagers took place last Monday as students returned to the school for an evening program.

Three of the victims were admitted to hospital, while areas of school property were damaged during the attack.

The incident appeared to be part of post-election violence and prompted education authorities in Goroka, in consultation with the Papua New Guinea Union Mission administration, to close the school for a week.

While the climate around the school has quieted since the attack, principal Terry Haru said there is a high degree of tension in the area due to a continuing dispute between the two villages.