Search For One

Reaching the remote islands of Kiribati

 

On March 10, 2009 twelve travelers with a monstrous heap of luggage landed on Tarawa in the Republic of Kiribati.  Kiribati is a small country of islands of which only 26 are inhabited.  It lies on the equator half way between Hawaii and Australia.  We had one big mission – conduct an evangelistic series in their own language.  Search For One had been taking medical and dental teams into the country for the past 13 years but holding an evangelistic series would be a first.  The plan was to video the series and reproduce it so it could be used by lay people on the outer islands.  We also had several smaller side missions of conducting health screenings in the villages and replacing the tired engine in Sugar Blues, our forty foot trimaran that we use to travel to the outer islands.

 

It took two trucks to haul the 32 max size and weight pieces of luggage plus the 12 of us the fifteen miles to the SDA mission headquarter in the village of Korobu.  The evangelistic series was due to start in one week and we had LOTS to accomplish!

 

We spent several days and talking to many officials before we settled on having the series right there at the mission.  This is a low tech country with an even lower tech electrical system.  It became a Herculean task to set up lights (lots of lights), cameras, mixing and control boards for the audio and video, head sets for the cameramen, microphones and speakers, two satellite screens outside with projectors.  Five of our team tackled this job.

 

Two of us liasoned with the Ministry of Health and enlisted their enthusiasm and cooperation with the health screening project.  We plotted where they would be conducted each day, who from their department would assist with equipment, transportation and translators.  We planned how the data would be used and marketing of the clinics so the public would know where they were and attend.  It was exciting to see how happy and helpful they wanted to be.  In the 10 days of clinics we saw just shy of 1000 people.

 

Two men wearily struggled to get the boat motor that had been shipped three months prior out of customs.  This motor was brand new and retails for 11k.  Through God’s provision we were able to procure it with shipping for 7k.  It was amazing when we arrived to discover that the motor had safely made the 3-month journey and had arrived just in time.  We discovered it takes an unbelievable number of signatures, LOTS of patience and a big God to liberate a motor from customs.  On top of that, they were going to charge thousands of dollars of duty, which we didn’t have.  In the end they gave it to us duty free.  God is so good!!  This consumed most of the first week. Several days before we left the motor was completely installed and functioning beautifully!

 

Eight days into our trip, four more people arrived including Brooks Dentzinger the pastor of the Moses Lake, WA church who was going to be the speaker for the evangelistic series and Vivian Newhearth a health educator nurse who works for the railroad in Missouri who would lead the health screenings and do the health talks each night.

 

Everyone had their day jobs:  editing and condensing the previous night’s meetings, working on the boat, doing village health screenings.  At night everyone transformed into cameramen, mixing/sound board operators, projector operators, health lecturer.  Of course there was a few of us who did the cooking, laundry, water hauling and grocery shopping for the gang.  All sixteen worked hard and each person was an essential cog in the wheel.

 

Near the end of the meetings we had a baptism of ten people who had started studying prior to the meetings.  Many more Bible studies were underway by the time we departed.  What was most exciting was to see how this revitalized the mission staff.  They have a new vision for the work.  NEVER had evangelism been done in this way and never has there been a three-camera-videoing of anything in this country.  It drew attention from all over.  Having the series done in their language was going to be a wonderful avenue to spread the gospel within a country with few workers and distant islands.

 

This last September we were back in Kiribati and the report was so encouraging.  The videos are being used all over the country with really good results.  This has and will have a long lasting impact.  It was so worth the time, energy and money.

 

Another exciting piece is Drue and Joy Wagner (a family practice doctor and his nurse wife) have moved out to Search For One’s base camp on an outer island to care for the medical needs of the Adventist boarding academy.  During his 1-2 years out there he really wants to reach unreached islands that want the medical team but are not allowing entry to pastors or teachers.  We are told the medical work will be the entering wedge.  Search For One is seeing that as a reality. 

 

It is exciting to see the long term volunteers lining up for 2010:  a sailor to captain the boat and an aircraft mechanic to work on Search For One’s Aztec.  We are always looking for long and short term volunteers.  Anyone interested, email Gary Morgan at gmorgan182@juno.com or call 509-750-7818.  We’d love to hear from you.