Chad Wells Family Blog

We had another good chapel service this morning.  Pastor Lukas preached an excellent message on starting the new year with Christ.  We had a little bit of a problem with some of the kids leaving the station during the preaching and, amazingly enough, showing up right after it ended.  So, before everybody mixed back to together I separated them into two groups.  Those who were in church and those who were out of church.  The ones that were in church all got a little piece of purple ribbon, which would allow them to take part in the special mumu that we had prepared.  There were about 100 kids who were VERY disappointed!
This afternoon we finished the Bible Quiz and each team gave their Bible skit.  On Monday I told each team to prepare a Bible story skit.  They all did a terrific job!  They were exciting and hilarious to watch.

This evening’s service started with Pastor Sam preaching.  I asked him to preach before we showed a video about the life and death of Christ.  After Pastor Sam finished I began talking to the kids about their sin and about the wages of sin.  Before I even asked anyone to come forward, several kids started walking towards the front.  This small trickle led to a flood and by the end of the song there were 26 young people being dealt with about their soul.  After the invitation we showed the film and then I preached.  Another 30 kids came to receive Christ as their Savior.  All 8 of the Bible school boys present got to lead several kids to the Lord and were extremely excited about being able to use what they had just recently been taught about leading someone to Christ (from the soul winning class).

After the service we gave out little prize bags (with a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, comb, pen, highlighter, and small notebook) to the winning team.  By the time we got it all finished it was pushing 2:00am, and we were exhausted.  But, we could hardly go to sleep because of the excitement of seeing all those kids come to Christ!

Kirsten’s become the camp nurse.  She’s dealt with boils, eye infections, worms, cuts and bruises, and the like.  But, thankfully, no broken bones yet!

Pastor Ken Yama preached the chapel service this morning.  He said that it was the first time he’s ever preached in Pidgin.  But, since we have some kids from another language group I asked him to preach solely in Pidgin.

We finished up the volleyball tournament and field games today.  We also did the 2nd round of the Bible Quiz (we started it yesterday).  I finally did a count of the kids while they were standing in assembly.  We had 436 (although we still only have 334 signed up).  The fee for the camp was to bring 10 kau kau.  This was to help offset the cost of feeding them. However, since we’ve been short on food I thought I had better make a count to see how many people have snuck in.  We’ve been struggling with trying to come up with enough food for so many kids.  There doesn’t seem to be any more kau kau available in Pangia and I’ve had to start buying rice from the trade store.

This evening, before the preaching, we watched a video on the birth of Jesus.  Afterwards, Pastor Sam preached on the great sacrifice – that God should humble himself and send Jesus to be born in a stable.  However, I still did not give an invitation.  I have just continued with my first request of asking them to ask God to show them their spiritual condition.

This morning we started with chapel and then went in to several different field games (volleyball, tug-of-war, etc.).  I divided the kids into 8 teams.  I have 8 pastors and their wives here (from all across the Wiru tribe) to be counselors. This afternoon 33 young people arrived from Kaware.  This is a village in another language group.  These kids walked for 8 1/2 hours to come to camp!  Somehow, they still had energy to play in the last few volleyball games.  We have 334 kids signed up now.  There are more kids than we can realistically handle at this point.  We just don’t have enough room for any more kids to sleep.  We sent about 50 kids back this afternoon.  It was hard to do, but there is just no place to put them.
In order to provide some more areas to sleep we had a creative game this afternoon.  I gave the kids 1/2 an hour to see how much long “kunai” grass they could pull.  This will be used this evening for bedding in the tent.  It was unbelievable to see the huge piles of grass that the kids pulled in such a short amount of time.  Anything for a few points!  We also had a kau kau peeling contest (sweet potato) in order to help out the cooks a bit.

Before I preached this evening I showed the kids a documentary film show called “Without Warning”.  This film shows different kinds of “acts of God”; floods, tornadoes, avalanches, etc.  By the time the video was finished many of the kids were awestruck.  I preached a corresponding message about how we have no guarantees of tomorrow and that our life can end without warning.  However, I did not give an invitation.  I just asked them to think about their spiritual condition and to ask God to show them, individually, where their eternal future lies.

We had good services this morning.  Sunday School had an unusually high attendance.  Some kids wanted to make sure that they were here early for the start of the youth camp.  This afternoon Pastor Sam, the Bible School boys, and I started setting up the tent.  We didn’t get it all completed until about 6:00pm.  The rains and heavy winds really made it difficult to get the tent up!  David, one of the Bible school boys, is in charge of signing everybody in.  At the end of the day he had just over 200 kids signed up.

I got back to the house this morning, around 9:45am.  Kirsten had breakfast ready.  I ate a good breakfast then got in the Dinah (we were in the pickup before and I needed the flatbed truck) and drove back to Kulapini to get the tent. I can only get within 45 minutes of Kulapini with the Dinah, so we had to do a little bit of rotating with the vehicles in order to get it, and the long poles, there and back. I got back around 4:00pm.  It sure is good to be back home!  We’ll set the tent up tomorrow in preparation for the youth camp that will start Monday morning.

The Christmas Pastors Meeting went very well.  Two ladies accepted Christ as their Savior and many of the pastors came and said that they got some help in some of the areas they really needed help in.  It was hard to be away for Christmas, but since we had already celebrated it, it made it much easier.

Trevor’s tooth has been causing a lot of problems again.  The temporary filling proved to be extremely temporary and only lasted a few days.  He’s gotten another infection in his gums and we realized we just had to get the tooth out. It’s one of the molars, but is not a permanent tooth.  So, I worked on him this evening.  It took about 1/2 an hour, and my Leatherman, (poor guy!) but I finally got it out.  This is when you really appreciate the dentist!  Kirsten started him on antibiotics for the infection.  The tooth definitely wasn’t ready to come out, but we really didn’t have a choice. He was a trooper, though!

We went back to work today and made up for the day off yesterday.

The guinea pig had 3 babies during the night (Chad gave the kids a very pregnant guinea pig for Christmas).  The kids are pretty excited about it!  I was amazed at how big they are!  I was expecting them to be the same size as the kits rabbits have, but they were about the size of large mice (or a small rat).  They were running around the cage and having a great time.

Merry Christmas!  It’s definitely not feeling much like Christmas today!  I let the kids sleep in and I colored the milk green (o.k., it was turquoise, but I tried!)  We decided to take the afternoon off.  So after lunch we shut the front door (we only leave the front screen shut during the day and everybody knows we are available) and had some time of “just us”.  We missed having Chad with us for our “time off”, but it was very nice and relaxing.  We still got a couple of knocks on the door, but they were easily and quickly taken care of.

I talked to Chad this evening.  He said that the meeting is going well and that 2 ladies were saved in tonight’s services.  James preached for us here, in Pangia.

I was thinking back today on how many haus krais we passed on our way into Pangia Monday.  When someone dies the people will put mud on their faces.  It’s supposed to disguise who they are so that if the spirit of the person who died comes back to get revenge on them for any wrongs they might have done the spirit won’t recognize them.  There were about 5 groups of people we passed who were covered in mud, spread out from Hagen to Pangia.

Chad left this afternoon for the Kulapini Christmas Meeting. Pastor Sam, Vero, and the Bible School boys went with him. Before he left he was able to hook up the workshop to permanent power.  Up until now we’ve had an electrical cord plugged in at the house and the cord goes across the grass and ditch to the workshop.  We would switch the power back and forth, when we needed to fill up the header tank on the roof with more water.  Now we won’t need to do that.

We were all supposed to go with Chad to this meeting (someone had even given up their hut for us to use for the week), but the kids have come down with colds (and Amber’s just getting over the flu), so we decided that the kids and I should stay back.

When we got back in yesterday there was definite evidence of rats in the house.  I wasn’t very happy about that – I’m really not very fond of rats!  I decided I needed to make sure that the house was still rat proof (in case this rat wasn’t from the door being left open before).  I saw that the screens on the windows had pulled up quite a bit.  The windows are all louvered glass, so that makes a nice opening for them to get in.  I stapled all the screens back in place.  Hopefully that will help.  I went through the kitchen and “rat proofed” everything.  Since we’ve not had a problem with them before we haven’t been too careful about being sure things were in tupperware.

There’s a tent meeting going on here, in Pangia, with the Assembly of God church.  I can see the top of it in the distance. It sounds like there’s a rock concert going on.  It’s been very, very loud!  I am hoping it will be a very SHORT meeting!

We worked on getting the last of our errands done this morning and drove back to Pangia.  While still in Hagen I had to go to the bank and Kirsten needed to get the bread at Best Buy (the grocery store), so I sent Kaiape with her and I stood in line at the bank.  Kirsten and Kaiape had gotten across the street and were heading towards Best Buy when there was a very loud gunshot (Kirsten said that because of the metal buildings she was next to it was so loud that it actually hurt her ears)!  The doors to the shops were immediately shut and Kaiape got Kirsten back to the truck!  Once I saw that she was safely back in the truck I went back into the bank.  I heard on the security radio (there are many security men at the bank) that someone had tried to rob an “armoured truck” (PNG’s version of it) so the police shot him.  We didn’t see it happen and, thankfully, neither did the kids (who were in the truck with Jerry).

No roadblocks today, but while we were driving past the area where the biggest roadblock was on the 11th, the local kids started calling out “There’s Rambo! There’s Rambo!”  We got a good kick out of it!  I don’t think they know who Rambo is (and I’m sure they’ve never seen the movie!), they’ve just heard other people say the name.