A Different Kind of Welcome

The spot where these Fijian martyrs are buried in East New Britain Province

In 1877 four intrepid Fijian missionaries landed on the shores of East New Britain where I was standing only a couple of weeks ago.

They landed in the town of Rabaul about 140 years after the Gospel arrived in Fiji.

Shortly after their arrival they were killed by the Tolai people and cannibalised after being cooked in a mumu (an underground oven).

The story goes that the Tolai thought that the shoes they were wearing were extensions of their bodies and tried to cook and eat the shoes too, turning them over and over in the mumu. Eventually not finding the shoes at all palatable, I was told by a Methodist Christian Tolai descendent that the shoes are also buried with the missionary remains under that tree.

Just after I arrived in the same area, and as I sat in a small hotel lobby, waiting to check in, I was greeted by Aidah, a waitress in the hotel, and she gave me a warm welcome, offering me a cold drink of water.

It was a matter of a couple of days later I saw her again and discovered that she is a Tolai. The reality of my encounter with this young woman, and how she had received this white foreigner from a very far place and culture much removed from her own, hit my heart heavily.

Here was a Tolai receiving me (a missionary) with smiles and a cup of cold water in contrast to how those first missionaries were received by her people a hundred and fifty years ago.

I know that there was a reconciliation event of Methodist Tolai in 2007 at the burial spot above, where tribal leaders asked Fijian leaders to forgive them for their atrocity in 1878, and that was spiritually important, but I also felt something further broke in the spirit when I told this young Christian woman that she had offered a disciple (of Jesus) a cup of cold water in His Name and that she would not lose receiving a disciple’s reward. (See Mark ix 41)

She prayed with me with much emotion, and later said that she had been praying for a better job so she could help her family better. And, just that morning she had received word that she was to start a new and better job the next day.