Saturday, July 25, 1998

Retired missionary feels special tie to Papua New Guinea

By Tom Schaefer

Knight Ridder Newspapers

The plains of Kansas and the island of Papua New Guinea are a world apart. But Jim Larson of Chanute, Kan., feels a special tie to the tragedy that happened last week on the island nation in the western Pacific Ocean.

For 15 years, he and his wife, Marie, were Lutheran missionaries, working in primitive conditions and sharing a gospel message with inhabitants of the country's mountains.

Retired since 1995, Jim, 66, remembers visiting a coastal area years ago. An earthquake shook the area, destroying water tanks that provided drinking water and toppling some homes built on stilts. No one was killed in that incident, unlike the recent devastation.

Last week, a 27-foot tidal wave slammed into the northwest coast of Papua New Guinea. The death toll is at least 1,200. About 6,000 people are missing.

It's a catastrophe that will haunt the island for years, and the news had the Larsons thinking about their days on the other side of the world.

When Jim and Marie arrived in New Guinea in 1957, they had to travel 35 miles to reach a primitive mission station. They slowly got acquainted with the people in the western highlands.

During the week, the inhabitants, whose beliefs often included ancestor worship and animism, came to a cleared-out area for Bible study and then returned on weekends to their homes to teach others.

At the height of missionary activity, there were at least 125 Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod missionaries there. Catholic, Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches, among others, also sent ministers and teachers to the island, though cooperation among the different denominations was often limited.

Jim recalls the mistrust between the Lutheran missionaries and nearby Baptists: "They stayed on one side of the river, and we stayed on the other."

Only later did they learn that one group's efforts at translating the Bible could help the other's.

For the first five years in the country, Jim and Marie lived in a bush house with a grass roof, walls woven of split cane, and floors made of rough wood. They cooked on a wood stove and kept six buckets of water under the sink, delivered to them from a nearby stream.

In a nation that once had cannibals and headhunters, Jim said he never once feared for himself, his wife or their three children. "The people were most kind to us."

The only time he remembered being afraid was when he had to walk across a rushing stream on a single, slippery log.

"They (New Guineans) would hold your hands and gently lead you across," he said.

He fondly recalled a Christmas Day when 500 people were baptized, and the time government officials allowed him to be among the first to set up a new missionary site.

Nonetheless, the strategy of preaching the gospel and training local people to be spiritual leaders - discredited later by some religious and political leaders as colonialistic - seems to have proved its worth.

Today, New Guineans run the schools and churches; only about eight Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod missionaries are still there providing support. In a nation of 4 million people, more than half are Christian.

Two weeks ago, about 180 Lutheran missionaries met in St. Louis to celebrate 50 years of missionary work in New Guinea. They exchanged stories about their service to that country and caught up on family news. As Jim put it: "It was a foretaste of heaven."

Last week, Jim and Marie returned to Chanute in southeast Kansas. They didn't hear about the catastrophe in New Guinea until two days after it happened. They were stunned.

"I feel badly for the people," Jim said.

Still, he's hopeful about New Guinea's future.

Many of the people there have believed the gospel message and trust in God, he said, no matter how dire the situation may be.

And, he believes, many will offer helping hands to those in trouble, just as he was when he crossed that treacherous bridge over a rushing stream.

(Tom Schaefer writes about religion and ethics for the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Write to him at the Wichita Eagle, P.O. Box 820, Wichita, KS 67201, or send e-mail to tschaefer(at)wichitaeagle.com )

(c) 1998, The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.).

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.