Unrest

We have had a few slightly tense situations around that I wanted to
share with you. The first happened a couple of weeks ago. A local
village hosted a rugby game and invited the team from our village of
Kiari to participate. Men from another village (Nomane) were
refereeing the game. Apparently some of the Kiari guys were upset at
one of the umpiring decisions and chased the referee off the field
with bush knives (like machetes) and bows and arrows. The Nomane guys
were understandably angry and demanded a compensation payment of a pig
and 1500 kina (about 700 US dollars). When we went through Nomane on
the way to the ladies meeting, some of these guys surrounded the truck
and did not want to let us past since we were from Kiari. They
threatened the ladies that were with us and waved their bush knives
around, but the Lord was good and they finally let us through. Well,
that situation was finally resolved with payment of appropriate
compensation so all was good again for a while.

Then last week, the ambulance from the small hospital in Nomane came
to Kiari bringing immunization shots for the school children. They ran
short of immunizations before they finished, so they intended to leave
and get more and then return to finish. Well, some guys from Kiari
blocked the road and refused to allow the ambulance to leave. Early in
2009, the government had asked villagers along the road to pitch in to
do the work to reopen the road and promised to pay them. Well, that
payment has never come. Since it was the government that never paid,
and the ambulance is a government vehicle, the guys apparently decided
that holding the ambulance hostage was the best way to get their pay.
So the government ambulance has been sitting in Kiari for the last
week or so. The word is that the folks in Nomane have paid the police
to come and get it, but they haven't arrived yet.

As I write this, I realized that all of this incidents sound
incredibly foreign to our American mindset. The thinking that
underscores them (besides man's inherent sinfulness, of course) is
that if one person does something, his entire group or village is
responsible. Hence Nomane trying to stop our truck full of women even
though none of them, or even their husbands, were even at the rugby
game. We as foreigners are not in any real danger besides getting
yelled at, but often our national Christians can find themselves in
very difficult situations. Thank you so much for your prayers for our
and their safety. Please pray for the Lord to be glorified, even in
these kinds of situations.