Manam Island

The YWAM ship (m/v YWAM Liberty) left Madang port at the weekend and we have been ministering on the island of Madam (Madang Province in PNG) for the past couple of days now.

The main reason for choosing this island has been to identify, train and equip translators from among their own people to begin to orally translate the Scriptures into their own mother tongue.

God willing translation will begin next week during the second week of our visit to their beautiful island.

From a distance, as we travelled across the Bismarck Sea into the Stephan Strait, we could see that the volcano on the island was smoking. That evening on the first night of our visit there was quite a show of red spurts and lava flowing down the side of the peak of the volcano.

If you have been following this “journal” of our trip you will recall that the LORD gave us Deuteronomy ix 3 before we left Ireland and it keeps re-appearing on our travels.

We had a real sense that the flames of fire that shot up from the mountain was a reminder, not only because it happened to be Pentecost Sunday (reminiscent of the flames of fire over the disciples’ heads in Acts 2), but also because the LORD was showing us that He was already present on the island and going before us to do works of fire and victory against the witchcraft that has dominated this island for many years.

We are to be here for another ten days, God willing, and are trusting that the LORD will do an amazing work through the Oral Bible Translation training, through the medical team working alongside us and the outreach team working with people who are hanging round or curious about the flood of foreigners on their soil.

These are some of the pictures of this particular trip so far …