Amanab Visit – PNG

John and I arrived in Vanimo on Sunday afternoon after a great communion meeting in Wewak.

PNG is known as the ‘Land of the Unexpected’ We didn’t expect that Pastor Issac would leave the car keys for our vehicle to drive to Amanab in Port Moresby. This unexpected event delays our start to Amanab on Monday as we had to wait for the keys to be flown in Monday afternoon.

Tuesday 3:00 am dark – a convoy of vehicles set off for 6-8 hours drive into the heart of PNG jungle on the Papua New Guinea side of the West Papua border. 6-8 hours because that was the range of time different Pastor (who have never been to Amanab) said it would be. They were all wrong – it took 9 hours to travel 208 kilometres, the last 20 kilometres took 2 of the 9 hours.

We arrive to a fantastic PNG greeting, shown to our 5-star termite ridden guesthouse. No electricity, but a small kero stove to cook our breakfast, lunch and dinner at 4:00 pm. Come 7:00 pm it’s dark and I mean dark however since we had been up since 2:00 am it was right to go to bed early. The roosters woke us up at 4:00 am – still dark. Lucky we brought a torch. Remember I said no electricity that means no phone reception, no iPad, or Apple Watch and computer all switch off to conserve battery. Electronic Withdrawal Syndrome effected me; John didn’t seem to care.

The journey in the dark hours of the morning was slow, dusty, and as we climb the mountains – foggy. As daylight arrived, the scenery was spectacular.

See previous News Article report about the wedding in Amanab.

Amanab: Here we opened their new hall with great fanfare of singing, streamers and lots of observers. Their new hall was packed. In the afternoon we had our leadership meeting to a room full of young and older adults eager to hear words of encouragement from the scriptures as they bring the Good News to this region on PNG.

Thursday 7:00am ‘daylight’ we started the journey back to Vanimo. The first two hours down the mountain were the worse as it had rained the day before. The road – bush track was filled with potholes of water and clayey mud. Slip-slopping and hanging on we drove down the range. We had a small meeting at Dauri assembly at the bottom of the range. Shortly after leaving Dauri at the top of the hill there is a small area when you can get mobile reception. All the PNGers travelling with us were the first out of the vehicles to use their phones. John and I said when in PNG do as the PNGers do, so out came our phones to ring home.

An hour later into our journey, two of the vehicles had a water contamination problem in the diesel fuel that took two hours to fix. It only took eight and half hours to get back to Vanimo which included the two hours sit down by the side the road.

Vanimo, Friday leadership meeting – four and half hours

To Come: Saturday more leadership meetings with the Sissano Zone leaders. Some great stories have been coming out of Sissano more to come on this soon. Sissano had the tidal wave which hit the lagoon in 1998 kill 1000s of people. Pastor Vincent has rebuilt the assembly into two district and twelve centres.

Sunday 26th May final Communion meeting, then onto a plane back to Port Moresby. We fly home Monday 27th May. This will complete my 54th visit to PNG.

Darcy Ryan and John Andrews