PART ONE – God’s Provision

Can I just say that I have wanted to visit PNG, for at the very least, 13 years?  For Rick and I, our hearts have been pointed towards missions and ministry since before we were married.  So, this missions trip was an answer to prayer in many ways.

God has always met our financial needs but never really given us more.  Therefore, in 2020 when God handed us just the amount we needed for tickets to PNG we were elated.  We purchased the tickets and then within a week the entire world closed down due to COVID and we were not able to get our money back for over a year (and it also took the intervention of our banking institution).

It wasn’t until 2022 that we could see God opening doors.  Visas weren’t requiring so many restrictions and we had finally put some money aside to purchase tickets.  Then our furnace and A/C broke in the hottest week of the year.  ALL of our savings had to be used.  I felt bad that I couldn’t do anything to help financially toward the trip and I asked God to send me a special offer for Plasma donations in the mail if He wanted me to do that.

Nothing happened.

I was relieved because at that time I was recording my Christmas album and I felt my plate was full.  But right as I was finishing up that project I received not ONE but TWO offers in the mail that would cover half of the cost of the trip.  But the offers were only one part of things that “fell into place.”  

I also have struggled with blood oxygen levels for years and had stopped doing any Plasma or blood donations because I had been rejected so much.  The only way I could get the money was for God to help my blood stay strong for the next 16 donations.

I try not to share a lot about my health because I know how to manage it at this point, and while God has allowed some areas of me to go on overdrive, He has consistently kept me with chronic pain and managing my body’s overreaction to stress and blood sugar imbalances.    But He did keep my blood strong.  I was only asked to reschedule a Plasma donation once.  Yay! Half the cost of the tickets was in our bank account.

Simultaneously, our health share co-op was in the process of reimbursing the cost of a herniated disc I had incurred February of 2022.  It was nice that during our HVAC repairs, God had kept that money safe and sound.  Now, just as we were needing to buy tickets, we received our reimbursement.  It seemed to us that God orchestrated it in such a way that we had confidence it was His hand accomplishing the improbable.

Then, without us sharing our need, God spoke to two different people in our lives and we received monetary gifts (one anonymous) to help us with the cost of food and hotels.  We both cried that God would touch the hearts of others on our behalf.

So with our kids and pets safely at their grandma’s house, we headed out to PNG.

PART TWO – If it’s not one health thing, it’s another.

As I woke up at 1AM on the flight to Australia on my way HOME from PNG and knew without a doubt that I was going to throw up, I just started to laugh at this inside joke between God and I.  Of course, my departing gift from PNG was that the stomach virus that had been going through the mission station would rally one last time as I asked the flight attendant “How long am I allowed to stay in the bathroom?  I feel it would be safer to be sitting on the toilet while I throw up in the bag.  Is that okay?”  To which they replied, “Take all the time you need.”

You see these “health problems” all started as I opened the door to the bunk house where we were staying and I immediately sneezed three times.  “Oh boy!” I thought.  “I wonder if they have any seasonal allergy medicine around here.”  (It is perpetual spring there and I wasn’t thinking about that as I left Idaho in the middle of winter.)  I was so relieved when I was given a trip’s supply of 24 hour allergy relief.  “Phew!” I thought.  “Crisis averted.”  I would just have to carry a roll of toilet paper with me to ease my stuffy nose, but at least I had stopped sneezing.

But during our first full day there I also realized that I had no real idea how I was going to manage my hypo-glycemia without my own kitchen and eating on our host’s schedule.  Thankfully, they were very gracious and open and even let us go to the grocery store to get some food to get some extra protein in.  

While Kirsten is an amazing cook and I felt like each breakfast was amazing AND she always made me an extra egg to try to balance out the carb heavy ingredients (rice and flour) of PNG, what I hadn’t accounted for was that they were hosting a dinner for about 50 people that first night.  It was their preacher’s conference and we would be eating with them … at around 8 or 9PM.  We were needed to cook the meal and we wouldn’t eat until everyone had been served.

I prayed, “Dear God.  I don’t want to be a bad guest.  So, please just help me get through these next nine hours as graciously as possible.  I have jet lag.  I am so hungry and that hard boiled egg and cheese I had saved for dinner I just had to give to Rick so he could teach his lesson.”  And you know what?  I survived.  But I knew that this wasn’t sustainable.  I had to do something.

But the carb heavy / low protein food supply of PNG just meant I had to eat snacks way more frequently to keep up with my sugar crashes.  Needless to say, I gained several pounds but felt perpetually hungry … even though I was eating ALL the time.

But it wasn’t just allergies and hypo-glycemia that were a struggle. We had been there about five days when I realized that my throat was closing and my ear passages felt swollen.  “You’ll be fine.”  I thought.  But then it kept getting worse.  “I must have a cold,” I reasoned.  But then I started having asthmatic feelings … and I don’t have asthma. 

“Kirsten, do they have any inhalers here?” I asked.  She assured me that there was one on the property.  But at night I couldn’t breath and I officially started giving serious analysis to my health.  

• “Ok, Melissa.  You seem to be able to breathe when you are outside.  So, it’s not outside.”
• “Hmmm, you can also breathe well during the day when you are in the Wells house.  So, it’s not in the Wells house.”
• “Maybe it’s a fungal or mold infection in my lungs.  Maybe it’s from the bunk house!”  So, the Wells allowed me to sleep in their living room on their recliner.  I felt so grateful and equally so uncomfortable.  I wished I was invisible.

Rick and I were scheduled to go on a bush trip for 3 days and 2 nights and it was a good opportunity to see if the symptoms would go away.  Indeed, the symptoms were less on the trip.  We had narrowed it down to the bunk house.  

Even though by this point I was developing laryngitis and continued struggling for breath until two weeks after I was back in Idaho, I had hope.  This was an isolated problem, not a PNG problem.

But before I had figured out what it was, one of my very favorite highlights (well not IN the moment, but now) of PNG happened … in the bush. 

Let me set the stage.  In the bush there are these “little houses” with 3 ½ walls and a squat toilet, ie. a hole in the ground.  Each hole is a different size and takes some different physics to master.  I knew that there would be some extra challenges because I am not well versed in this method … in a skirt … with a half a wall in front of me open to whomever might pass by.  I decided that I would only use that “little house” in an emergency.

Well, an emergency is what presented itself.  At 2AM that first night, I knew that I had no choice but to get over my aversions.  I scurried to find a head lamp, with a strong sense of urgency.

Rick asked if I wanted him to come with me and I thought “NOOOOOO!  I don’t want anyone to be around me if what I think is going on is indeed happening.”  

Bravely, I donned my headlamp and headed to the little house only to be greeted by a 2 inch white moth who was attracted to the light and kept dive-bombing my face.  Teetering to find any form of balance while being attacked by a moth, only God and I both know everything that happened next.  Sigh!

Then at 4AM when my body woke me up again for another similar “adventure” I decided I would forego the headlamp and follow the moonlight.  No need to be bombarded by overly friendly moths.

There was more, but I save those stories for a more personal scenario.  When we got home to the mission station we found that a stomach virus had started in the school and was working its way through the family, but also … there was no rain and the water in the tanks could only be used for cooking.  So flushing was no longer an option.

To me it is funny that most of my memories of talking to Rick were when I was in the bathroom of the bunkhouse.  It was the only time I went in the bunkhouse (because of the mold) and it was the only time Rick and I were ever alone.  LOL.

So, from my first sneeze to my final night fighting a fever in the LA airport before our last flight, God allowed me to be sick the entire trip.

To be honest though, I have dealt with chronic health problems so long that I can just move on with life at a low grade level.  I was fully functioning.  I got to enjoy so many different elements of the ministry.  But when people ask me how the trip was and I say “It was the best of times for Rick and the worst of times for me.” there are some humorous reasons why.

The truth is, my greatest struggle was a spiritual one.

PART THREE – The hidden story behind the stories

One of the missionaries said something very shortly into our trip and I can’t agree more.  He said, “You can’t hide anything here.  If you have a bad marriage, it will be revealed.  If you have rebellious children, they will be found out.  If you struggle with your temper, you will be triggered.  Whatever your weakness is, it will come out.”

“Hello, I am Melissa and I am a recovering people-pleaser because I fear rejection.”  There, I said it.

But I. Was. Not. Prepared.  

In trying to help others, I have been open publicly for years about God’s working in this area of me. 

First, God helped me to understand that my value is not in what other people think of me, but in pleasing Him alone.

Second, He caused me to realize that even if no one may want me or see any redeeming qualities in me, He wanted me enough to redeem me with His blood.

But I believe God wanted to not only further purge my fear of rejection and its fleshy response of people-pleasing, but He wanted me to learn how to serve others in the midst of it.  What Satan meant for evil, God powerfully used for good.

He worked on three levels.

1. Emptying me so that He could work through me.
2. Showing He couldn’t use me if I was hiding.  The perfect love of God will cast out the fear of man. 
3. Allowing suffering, so that I could choose between living for the god of me or the God of all.

In the words of Nancy Sheppard,

God “wanted me totally humble before Him.  He wanted me totally aware of my inability to serve Him and to live a life pleasing to Him without His moment-by-moment grace.  All Nancy Sheppard had to give God was nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  But, When you are empty, it is enough.

And so I gave my emptiness to God.”

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT #1 – A “Mary” out of place.

To accomplish the first lesson, God put me in an environment where I needed to work on my “not strengths.”

Oh my!  On this end, it is humorous to see how masterful this all is; in the moment, not so much.

I will start this story on the plane.  I was reading Lyn Mullins book about her journey in PNG and she said that her mother’s motto was this: “Do you need a helping hand?  It’s at the end of your arm.” LOL.  I laughed when I read that because it is exactly how I feel.

My daughter has described me to others this way, “There are people who go fishing and bring you home a fish.  Then there are people who will teach you how to fish.  My mom is the latter.”  My love languages are quality time and words of affirmation.  My spiritual gifts are teaching and exhortation (encouragement).

I know three couples on the other hand who are amazing and would find great joy in fishing and bringing home fishes for people to eat.  I think it is no coincidence that their love languages are “Acts of Service and Giving” and their spiritual gifts are all identified as “Hospitality” and our gracious hosts are one of those couples.

But the struggle for me is that I have to take double the effort to see ways to “serve” in this manner. 

I have worked for years purposefully opening my home, gathering recipes, taking people out to coffee and all around observing the ways of these hospitable, giving couples as I try to learn their ways. 

But I still feel like I am a disappointment.  Whether that is true or not is irrelevant, the devil uses my weakness against me.

LESSON LEARNED: It is when I am empty that God can work through me.

I had to learn that in the future God might put me in an area where I am not strong.  It is likely that I will be like the widow with the two mites.  There might be onlookers who judge saying, “That widow isn’t very giving.” or “She should have given more.” 

But God knows it took double the effort to give my measly two mites and it is HIS power that makes much out of little.

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT #2 – Inescapable Tension

This one is a little trickier.  In practicality in PNG, I “failed this one.”  I felt the fear and hid.  LOL.  How embarrassing! But let me share how the devil brought me into the spirit of fear and later how God taught me about perfect love.

I need to give a little background and I am going to tell a story.  I read a book called “Foreign to Familiar: A Guide to Understanding Hot – And Cold – Climate Cultures “ by Sarah Lanier.  It humorously shares the differences between people who live in colder areas and people who live in warmer areas and how they communicate.

In it, a woman once visited an Asian country and she was lost.  She asked a person on the street where such-and-such road was.  Sadly the man she asked didn’t know.  But he couldn’t bear to disappoint her.  It would be impolite to not give her what she was asking.  And he pointed “that way, up a bit.”  

The lady went “that way, up a bit” and the street wasn’t there.  She asked another person and a similar scenario occurred.  In such frustration she later asked, “Why didn’t they just tell me they didn’t know?  It would have saved me so much time and effort!”  The reply was that they wanted to be polite and answer her question.

Warmer climate people are extremely polite.  They just cannot bare to express a thought that might offend their guest, even if it would be the most helpful thing in the long run.  

PNG is warm climate.  I live in the northwest.

In fact, my family is so cold climate culture (forthright, open and transparent) that the height of respect is to discuss everything openly and solve things immediately.  

What was loving and respectful communication to Rick and I was culturally awkward for people in this warm climate culture. I cringe when I think of things I would not have said if I had known this ahead of time.  

What a ripe opportunity for the devil to create discomfort, and my personality type more than any other experiences greater stress in these scenarios because of its ability to “absorb” the emotions of people around them.  All I could say is that I had this perpetual “sense” of strain and discomfort, and I couldn’t identify the root. This unfixable tension felt inescapably grieving. 

And since I couldn’t fix the discomfort, I began to avoid the discomfort.  I started to isolate myself.

LESSON LEARNED:  God couldn’t use me if I was hiding.  The perfect love of God will cast out the fear of man. 

Now, at the beginning of this lesson, I said that by all accounts I failed this test in PNG. It was once I got home that God started working on me.

Within a week of each other, I heard several different messages emphasizing where people had to overcome fear of man to share the message God has given them. 

1). One preacher spoke of serving at a church where the members threw stones through his windows and spray painted nasty messages on his home.  How he left the church because “they didn’t want him anyway.”  But that God smote him, because God had not told him to leave his post. He mentioned that his next church had people who didn’t want him, but this time he didn’t leave until God called him to the mission field.

2). Two separate messages (coincidence?) centered on Namaan’s servant girl who was in a country not her own and in faith of the God she knew (Who allowed her to be a slave by-the-way.) sent her master to the prophet in certainty that he would be healed. 

3). Another missionary spoke of training his young men to preach and an older pastor came and said, “You shouldn’t be preaching.  You are a new Christian.  You don’t know enough to preach.”  The missionary said to the young men, “That’s just the way he does things.  You share the message God has given you and don’t worry about him.”

4). Yet another message shared the story of when he was called to preach as a teenager.  Naturally, he wanted to share it with the man who led him to the Lord.  His mentor laughed and said, “The devil sure does like to fool us with pride, doesn’t he?”  This preacher described how it was difficult for him to obey God when other’s judged his motives, but here he was 40 years later with no regrets in that regard.

That’s a lot of messages saying the same thing.  The perfect love of God will cast out the fear of man.  

God said in my heart, “In every situation, ask me, ‘God, how do You want to use me here?”  And listen.  Then when the waves of fear come at you, I will give you confidence.

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS

Lest one think I hated the trip, that isn’t accurate at all.  I truly enjoyed the ministry there.

I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED working in the school.  Every moment smiling and laughing and listening to the kids, helping them do their reading, and answering their questions went by all too quickly.

I was in my element before and after the church services and conferences where I could get to know the people.  I could ask them questions.  Find out about their family.  See who belonged to who and where their village was.

It felt like home when I sat next to someone during church and we shared a hymnbook and they would help me pronounce the word properly in their language and we would lock eyes and giggle at my every mistake.

There was joy, not exhaustion, as we walked the four hour round trip through the bush trails as Rick was privileged to take part in a revival at three churches.  Why?  Because I got to spend it sharing an umbrella with a Christian lady who taught me about their customs, schools and her own family.

Riding in the bus on the way to church Sunday mornings and listening to the squished riders singing reminded me that we get to choose how we spend our time in the car.  We choose whether we praise God or complain.

I smile as I think of the blind lady I shared a laugh with when we both realized that I couldn’t understand her language and she couldn’t see my hand gestures.  She offered me a bilum (a PNG purse) and I placed my hand upon her arm in love.  It was sweet.

I loved the easy laughter of the missionary families.  Game nights.  Crazy stories.  Morning devotions.  Counsel, understanding and excellent food.

I still feel a sense of care as I think of the girls growing up on the mission station and how they each have unique challenges, distinct personalities and individual gifts of God in their own right.  Those girls stay with me through my days in America and I pray for them regularly.

It is a wonderful missionary work.  In fact, it is where my heart still is.  But God still needed me to put one more thing on the altar.

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT #3 – The devil’s ground.

You probably have heard pastors saying “Everybody needs to face the mission field and see if they will surrender to go.”  Ironically, I had surrendered to go years ago.  Then I had to surrender to being willing to NOT go.  

Now that I was in PNG God was daily asking me “Would you still go if …?”  And that “IF” changed regularly.

It’s like God was asking me “How far would I have to take you before you quit on me?”

It is with that thought that I want to digress.

I remember sitting in my own living room in America years ago and some missionaries were explaining that PNG chewed up and spit out missionaries. They said, “You will see many on the deputation trail and you would think there are a ton of them IN Papua New Guinea, but the truth is that many go and few stay.”

“Why is this?” I asked.

They explained that it is the spiritual oppression.  PNG is the devil’s ground.  It has been his country from the get-go and his demons are in full control.  The culture itself is evil.  The practices are evil.  The physical effects you feel are evil.  The voices in your head are evil.  

I scarcely spent any time on this spiritual battlefield of PNG and already my head was spinning with oppressive thoughts that would only upon occasion leave me when I was asleep, and I wasn’t sleeping all that well. 

I got home and people asked me “How was PNG?”  I would look to Rick for him to rescue me, because I could only cry.  It had just been a lot and I needed time to process it.

I just kept crying and I could explain to no one why.  And that was difficult.

It was right around then that my flesh and the devil started speaking loudly and clearly.

Why would God do this to you?  All you wanted to do was serve Him.  In fact, why does God allow suffering at all?  God says power belongs to Him and all the powers the be are ordained of Him, but He does nothing about suffering and oppression.

For the sake of time, I won’t go into all the accusations that were placed in my mind against God. But with the onslaught of fiery darts, it became easy to see how “many go to PNG to serve, but few stay.”  In fact, I began to understand how Satan convinced a third of the angels to rebel.

THE LESSON LEARNED: In the face of suffering, I had to choose between living for the god of me or the God of all.

I have studied, written and recorded the facts that support Scripture as truth.  I am SO THANKFUL for that, because I KNOW that God’s word is true and that if God says He is good that He cannot lie.  

But at that moment I couldn’t get past the seeming contradiction, “How can God be good if He tells us to submit to suffering?”

I talked to a missionary friend and asked “Can God not stop evil & suffering?”  He smiled and turned the question around to me.  “What is evil?” Then he said, “God defines what is good and evil is the opposite of that.”

My missionary friend furthered his reasoning, “In fact, in Hindu countries, idolatry is often defined by the image to whom one is praying, but I believe that the root of idolatry is self love.  Many Hindu will gladly change deities based on which one they believe will meet their needs and relieve their suffering.  Really, they aren’t worshiping the deity, they are worshiping self. 

And truly, suffering is the opposite of self love.  It is the final test of true worship.  You place your very being on the altar of sacrifice.”

I could see it clearly then.  Jesus Himself had to suffer to learn obedience.  Suffering is a good tool.  It isn’t in and of itself evil.  Its polar opposite is evil: self love.

God WAS asking me “How far would I have to take you before you quit on me?” 

And at that time I chose to serve the God of all and not the god of me.

IN CONCLUSION

I can only tell parts of my story.  There is so, so, so much more.  All the answers God gave us and taught us can’t be understood in just an overview of a much deeper journey.  I am certain that someday there will be the time and place to share everything.

But on this side of it, I am so glad that God brought me through my PNG experience as He did because I believe every difficulty fulfilled a purpose.  There had to be a perfect storm.  God needed all of me on the altar.

He taught me three major lessons.

1. It is when I am empty that God can work through me.
2. God couldn’t use me if I was hiding.  The perfect love of God will cast out the fear of man. 
3. In the face of suffering, I had to choose between living for the god of me or the God of all.

And so now when people ask me “How was PNG?”  I know that I can say “It was a worthwhile trip.  I would go back again.  Just this time, more prepared.”

THE END.