While attending Northeastern Bible Institute in New Jersey, God spoke to me about giving His Word to a group of people who had never heard it before; a remote people who didn't have access to radios or television, nor any other way of hearing His message unless someone went personally and told them. The Managalasi people, a Stone Age people, living in the isolated mountains of Papua New Guinea presented the challenge, and I went to live there with my husband Jim in the year 1962.
The Managalasis had never seen books or paper before, and had no words in their language for them. Neither was there a word for God; it would be up to us, Jim and me, to teach them who God was. The beginning days, trying to communicate, were the hardest. When they understood why we had come, they told us to go home - "We don't want your American God," they said. "We have our own gods." And they did - they worshipped the spirits of their dead ancestors, praying to them in the same manner as we pray to our living God.
The beginning hardships we faced helped us to become the instruments God needed us to be in order to fulfill His calling for our lives. Learning to speak their language was no easy task, and then teaching the people to read and write their own words presented different challenges: "Will learning to read and write help our gardens to grow well?" the men wanted to know.
The first book, Poking Holes in the Darkness, tells the story of how the Managalasi people found Christ and believed. Out of Darkness tells how these people changed and what is happening in their area as a result of that change today.
Was the pain from the transition of life in America to a stone-aged people in Papua New Guinea worth it? You'll find as you read this story that doing God's will gives you the very best, happiest, most satisfying life possible. In other words, would I do it all over again had I the opportunity to do so?
You bet!
