Land Agreement Update

This week, we were planning to celebrate officially becoming part of the Gende people. However, things did not go as expected. On Tuesday, Nate, Mark, and Ricky flew into village Em. The plan was to spend two days with the people and then on the third day to sign an official lease agreement for the property where we were to build our houses.

When Nate, Mark, and Ricky arrived in the village, a meeting was called and everyone gathered inside a large shelter. Previously, we had been offered two pieces of land for our houses. Now, the people were ready to hear our decision. When we told them which plot of land we had chosen, the group of people whose land we didn't pick became angry and started shouting at the other group of people whose land we did pick. The two family lines moved outside to continue the argument, and a fight involving machetes broke out. One man, Joseph, (the man who wrote the letter asking for us to come to his village) was slashed in the back of the neck. His brother was cut in the lower back. Our guys immediately called for the chopper to come back. Joseph and his younger brother, Patrick, were flown out to the Goroka hospital for treatment. Both are fine.

Before the attack, you could sense a darkness before one of the men lunged at Joseph with his machete. Had the cut to his neck been slightly more up and severed an artery, he'd be dead. We may never know if something more was happening behind the scenes: Was this an attack from the enemy to stop the gospel from coming to these people and specifically to this man who was the first to express interest in it? The verse that comes to mind is "God knows who are his." It makes us think of the enemy trying to kill Joseph through that angry man, but then an angel of God intervening and saying, "No, this one is mine." It'll be years before we can communicate clearly enough to share the full gospel in the Gende language. Only time will tell if Joseph will become a believer and show that God indeed intervened in sparing his life this week because he was to become his child.

There is too much tension right now to sign the land agreement, and we need to wait for the community to cool down and sort things out. How will the family line that was attacked respond? Will they pursue legal action outside of the village court? Will they forgive the offending family? How long will remediation take, and when will we be able to make progress with moving in?

While we expect and hope that things will resolve within the next few weeks, we don’t know. All we can do is trust God's timing and trust that how things played out was and is part of His will. The darkness of the situation affirms that this place truly is in desperate need of the light of the gospel.

Please pray for the people in village Em.

- Nate and Laura