Captain's Log #37
December, 2003

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BOY #1
He's probably around five years old (no-one really seems to keep count)...  severely crippled. His arms and legs atrophied...   the muscles having never been used, shriveled up, his limbs pulled against his tiny body. Never has he been able to move by himself at all. Much is not right. He hears his name and turns his attention...  eyes bright, but not much else. Of course everyone in the village knows of him, they have known him since the beginning, they have watched for all these years with always the comments of who did what wrong that resulted in this. Always the comments! He lives way out in a village on the far side of an outer Fijian island.

BOY #2
The other little boy is about 3 years old and is the nephew of the bride we talked about in the last report; his family is Hindu and has been Hindu for very many generations. This boy came with some of his family to the Christian wedding a few weeks back and was playing around our feet. Since the wedding, the bride and groom have wanted to go to the other side of the island of Viti Levu to try and share more of Christ with these members of her family. The other day the little boy pulls a pot of boiling water down on top of himself...  instantly the skin peels off of him all down one side of his head, across his body, down his leg. Five days later he lays in the hospital in Lautoka, still in shock, shaking...  no response, he's not eating...  it doesn't look good.

FAMILY OF BOY #1
Her world is tearing her apart and she's nearing the end. Caught in the tragic gauntlets that we, the people of earth seem to create for each other. Her small humble home is filled with unbearable pain. Her husband is a stranger to her, they have long ago lost whatever it was that had pulled them so forcefully together in the beginning. There is anger and fear now, there is hatred and heartache...    no trust. Her father in law, the patriarch of the family has never wavered in his position and his rule is absolute...  "No member of my family will have anything whatsoever to do with these people called 'Nazarenes'...  nothing!" Her role in the family and village is not casual. Who she is and how she must and must not act is part of the very fiber of her makeup - the DNA of what makes her. There are no examples of anything else. But when you are at the end...   what do you do?

FAMILY OF BOY #2
This family has not been open to Christianity. It is seen as a threat to their beliefs, their culture, their identity. Their problems are seen as exactly that...  'their' problems and so for some serious problems there simply are no solutions.

BOY #1's MOTHER RISKS EVERYTHING
She turns to her husband through the smoke from the cooking fire she's bent over. The hut is still. "I am going tonight!" The resolve almost leaving her as she sees the shock in his eyes. These quite words she has just spoken, surely could never be uttered. "I am going tonight!" She says them a little firmer and the resolve returns. "If the price for going is that I can never come home again...   still, I have decided I am taking our crippled son and I am going tonight!"   -  The words of Luke's rendition of the most incredible story of Love that any person could fathom, fills the night air and then is lost...  absorbed into the deep tropical jungles that engulf the mountains around and behind them. But long before the thick undergrowth and darkness of these tropical islands eat up the sound from the JESUS Film...  it has successfully etched it's indelible message of Love, on the heart of this woman for whom God died. It has all of her attention.

BOY #2's FAMILY LISTENS
The bride and groom do whatever is necessary to make the trip way across this large island. They embrace a family in pain. They talk of One who knows pain...   who has walked down this road all the way to death and beyond. They talk of a reality that is very different, they talk of the truth. Strangely for the first time the family listens intently, wants to hear what they are saying. All their attention is focused, they want to hear more.

PRAYER FOR BOY #1
The miracles of bringing the JESUS Film and evangelism crusade right to the middle of her village could take a while for me to list. When the Film is over that first night she finds herself standing down in front of the pastor of a church we just organized this month, not far from here. This Nazarene pastor seems addicted to God's activity that he has been such witness to and he asks to take the boy. Gently she places the frail, crippled body into the arms of this big man...   the same one that she had clearly been instructed to avoid like the plague. He prays then hands her crippled little son back to her.

PRAYER FOR BOY #2
Across the islands, hundreds of miles away in a hospital room on the other side of the main island, standing next to the unresponsive, shaking little body of their 3 year old son, the Hindu family agrees to allow the groom to pray to the One he says is God. He prays and then they all leave. Nothing fancy, plenty of faith, plenty of trust.

THIS WEEK OUT IN MORE PRIMITIVE FIJI
The days of last week pass... one by one...   each night the crusade continues while no-one less than God Himself is at work and the work that He is doing in these moments is nothing less than eternal work. It would be something to report that the little boy jumped down and ran around the people, shouting and praising God. He didn't do that. Beyond crying out to Him who loves us so much, who are we to tell God what to do and how to handle these things? But by the morning before I left with the boat to bring everyone back (Friday) his mother said he wasn't the same little boy, he suddenly started moving around over these last days, squirming on his back on the mats. That morning she watched his tiny frame that for all these years has been completely limp, somehow work it's way all across the length of the hut over to the door. He seemed to be doing something by the door there where everyone leaves their sandals...   she just watched. Finally he got himself turned around to where he could see her, he had managed to get both of her big shoes onto his two little feet. His face lit up with a huge smile.

THIS WEEK IN LESS PRIMITIVE FIJI
Not long after the groom prays that God would touch this little boy...   the little boy begins to respond. Before they leave Lautoka to come back across the island, he starts eating, then he's up and walking around, then they take him outside, then they take him home...  all this was last week. Of course the family wants to know more of what the bride and groom know because a piercing light is starting to illuminate their darkness. His name is Jesus.
 
EMMANUEL
Physical miracles have our attention but they are the least of it, I think. What is happening in the life of the mother in the village and her family is what really matters and is so obviously supernatural and of eternal consequence. At least that is what her husband himself testified to up at the new Nazarene church a few days ago. What is happening in the life of the Hindu family is what really matters and also is so obviously supernatural and of eternal consequence. Tell me something more supernaturally miraculous than real hope...  where before there honestly was absolutely no way to find any hope at all? Real peace...   where there was no way to find any peace? Real compassion and love...   where there was no hope for love again? and on and on and on as God is going about the work that only He can do as He responds to hearts that cry out to Him and He effects the lives of people like only He can as He draws them to Himself.
 
SUMMING UP THIS YEAR - 2003
For all of us here in Fiji this year, the challenges have been big and real, sometimes almost overwhelming, but they fade into nothing in light of the victories! The last nine months we have seen nine new Nazarene churches established across this island nation of Fiji...   a new one every four weeks! We have watched new national leadership take root and begin moving forward with God breathed, God sized vision - requiring...      God! We have prayed and worked through the evolving of the JESUS Film ministry until it is entirely under Fiji district ownership in conjunction with our evangelism/church planting strategy. With Nazarene Maritime Ministries we have now transported well over 900 passengers - ministers, team members, and lay people - together with hundreds of tons of building material, cargo and disaster relief supplies over approximately 10,000 nautical miles of Pacific Ocean. This year it is about three times the total of what we did the previous 2 & 1/2 years combined, as we reach those who can only be reached by boat.   God is so very, very good...  and it all would be impossible if it were not for you and your faith and prayers and support - thank you for allowing us to represent you out here on this front of the Kingdom work - it is surely the greatest privilege!
 
OUR GOD REIGNS!
Harmon
 
Please pray for James and Joy Johnson with the huge responsibility of leading the church forward across the entire 33,000 islands that make up the 10 island nations of the South Pacific Field. Pray that God would continue to give wisdom and insight and work through the loving pastors heart that beats inside of Jim. Pray for Neville and Joyce Bartle as they leave Fiji and embrace with the same passion, the next great task that God has for them in New Zealand and beyond. Pray for us as God continues to stretch the Schmelzenbachs in every possible way and we keep doing our best to learn how to follow Him each day by faith.
 

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