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Richard & Andrea Carver

April-June 2009 Newsletter:

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Andrea's Baby Room - All ready to go! Yes, it's a girl... we think (99% sure)!

July 16th, 2009

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Well, the biggest news from us is that Andrea is expecting to give birth to our third child any day now... but since that hasn't happened yet, I'll try to catch up on some news of the past two months!

We had a very busy month during April and May, with the General Conference in Port Moresby in April, and two overseas guests visiting and preaching at a series of seminars around PNG in May. Bro Paitadra from Fiji came for a month, and Bro. Nathan from Australia for two weeks. The seminars were wonderful, and a great blessing to New Guinea. To avoid repeating that same information, I won't go into the details again, but you can read about it here. Instead, I'll go into some background details which happened during their stay, which goes to show how interesting life in PNG can be.

A Problem We Could Not Solve:

While I was travelling with Bro Pai, Andrea stayed back at home with the children. She was a little anxious about staying alone, especially since this "tour" of PNG would go on for a month, with me away for most of the week and back home for a couple of days before heading out again.

A day or two before we embarked on our seminar tour to Chimbu, our next-door neighbour came to see us. He told us that the night before, four men, one with a gun, were walking through his yard. They were looking around the yard, and looking carefully at our fence - obviously checking for any weak spot or point of entry.

This of course was quite disturbing news; there has been rumours since February that the Headquarters (with our house on top) was going to be a target for a break-in. What made it even more worrying for me was that I was going away that weekend with Bro Koko our security guard, and that would leave Andrea and the kids alone by themselves.

I almost didn't tell Andrea about it, not wanting her to worry, and not wanting to cancel the trip with Bro Pai. But I decided to tell her, and we prayed about it together, asking for the Lord's protection and safety; and she felt peaceful about the whole situation.

Us at the market less than 1 hour before the hold-up incident... we probably walked past the criminals on our way home.

Something happened the very next day which made me realise that God answers our prayers in ways we simply don't expect. Our doctor, an excellent Christian doctor from the US working with New Tribes Mission, who has cared for us wonderfully during Andrea's pregnancy (and who actually picked up on Andrea's thyroid problem), was walking down to Goroka market with a group of nurses from the medical clinic. Two men with machetes stepped in front of the nurses and attempted to cut the bags off their sholders. Our doctor stepped in to intervene, but one of the robbers swung his knife at the doctor's neck, cutting open a large gash just near his jugular vein. Two more men surrounded them behind, and one had a gun. He attempted to shoot the gun, but the gun would not fire.

When the Goroka townspeople saw what was happening to one of their local townsfolk (most criminals are not local townspeople, but drifters from other provinces), the mob and the market became enraged. They bashed up the four criminals right there on the spot. Two of the criminals died from the beating; one was hospitalised, and another jailed. Fortunately for our doctor, the wound to his neck was not life-threatening, but very nearly was.

The coincidence is striking: four men (one with a gun), looking at how to break in to our property, and the very next day, four men (one with a gun), apprehended at the market. I have no hard evidence that the "four men with a gun" looking at how to break in to our house are the same "four men with a gun" who got apprehended at the market are the same group of men, but something tells me that they were. The scarey part is that, I walked down the very same way to the market with Bros Pai & Nathan just half an hour before the incident happened. Those criminals were probably in the crowd as we walked by!

It's amazing how God looks after us. He protected our doctor from a near-fatal knife wound to the neck, which ended up only a minor cut. And God stopped the gun from working in the hands of the criminals. And He took care of a problem which we in ourselves had no power to solve!

A trip down memory lane... the road to Gogl Village

A Trip Down "Memory Lane":

I don't know if "Lane" is the right word... but while we were in Kundiawa for the Chimbu seminar with Bro Pai, I pointed out a small track across the valley. It was the road which led to Gogl, the village where Mum & Dad first started their mission work in 1973. Back at that time, it was a trecherous journey over 15 miles of mud road cut into the side of high mountains.

Bro Pai was keen to see it more closely, and so we did something crazy: we took a drive. A bunch of excited ministers went ahead of us in a rural ambulance, the driver of which is a church member. I had not been along that road since I was four years old, so it was all new to me as well, and a very nostaglic journey. The road started deceptively smooth, but soon got bad, almost more than our Mazda B2500 could handle. Fortunately the weather had been dry, as there was no way that we could have travelled it if it had been wet.

Bro Pai was amazed at the dangerous driving conditions. There was one time I actually asked him to get out of the car and walk across a landslide, because I didn't want it to be said that I had killed a Guest Speaker. By this time I was regretting having embarked on the journey and looking for a way to turn around, with none to be found. My mind turned back 36 years to when I was a baby, and my mother and father drove this same road on a weekly basis when they needed supplies from town, in much worse conditions. Mum had told me that she used to weep for fear when it was time for them to make the journey along that road in to Kundiawa town. It created in me a great respect and admiration for my parents - true apostles and pioneers - that can only be understood by a first-hand look at what they have done for God.

Standing for a photo with Bro Pai at the top of the Chimbu Gorge, with the river 1000 feet below.

We only travelled a short way along the road - just to the corner where you could look up the valley, and then posed for a photo with Bro Pai. But it was enough to know that our car was not up to the journey. I tried to turn the car around on the edge of the cliff - but all of a sudden the car was not able to go into reverse. What's more, the engine was making a terrible racket. I discovered later that the engine mount had broken, and the engine had fallen sideways (one mount had already been broken, obviously for a few years we discovered later, and the other mount broke right at that inopportune time).

Because reverse no longer worked, the ministers pushed the car around by hand, and we inched back to town. As soon as we got to town, the engine stopped altogether. It had fallen against the metal body, and shorted out the main 80A fuse. There's no place in Kundiawa to find car parts, so fortunately for us, one of the church members was a mechanic. He squeezed the fuse back together with pliars, insulated the engine from the body with a rubber thong (flip-flop), and we were on the road again. I knew that if anything happened on our way home we would be in a real bind (and possibly a dangerous situation) if we were stuck halfway between towns. I drove over the bumpy Highlands Highway very carefully, and we all asked God to bring us all the way home without incident.

We arrived back in Goroka with a sigh of relief - and the next morning we realised how much God had heard our prayers... because when I went to start the car, it wouldn't start! God had brought us all the way home, and once we were inside the gate, He let the car die again - mission accomplished. And after a new set of Engine Mounts, the car is running like brand new.

• Read more about Bro Pais visit
• See more photos of the trip along "Memory Lane" and other photos of our tour around PNG

Armed police guard a supermarket from looters

Nation-wide Riots:

While we were in Mt. Hagen, Andrea called me on Sunday to let me know that our home town of Goroka was closed down by the police because of racial riots. There are a vast number of Asian businessmen in New Guinea, and there is ill-feeling toward them for various reasons. A container-load of illegal Chinese workers were discovered on the wharf; they were hiding in the back of a shipping container trying to smuggle themselves into the country to work in the mines. This sparked a nation-wide riot around the main towns of PNG. Lae and Madang where vandalised, and all the Asian-owned stores broken into and emptied of stock. The rest of the country was on high alert, because lawlessness abounds, and the opportunity for free food and goods was not going to be passed up by the majority of the population!

Andrea told me that there were gunshots and teargas being used in Goroka by the police to control the looters. Once again, Andrea was on her own with major drama happening around her!

The next day was Monday, and we (myself, Bro Pai & Bro Nathan) were due to go back to Goroka from Mt. Hagen. First, Bro Pai wanted to visit the Christian Bookstore in Mt. Hagen, so we drove in to town around 8:00am, unaware of any problems. We got there, and the tension was palpable. On one side of the main street was a crowd of people, loitering aimlessly on the side of the road (actually, waiting for an opportunity); and on the shop-front side, an army of security guards with machetes and batons, and police with shotguns, M16s and teargas launchers.

We ignorantly parked in the middle of this, and after 5 minutes of waiting, we decided that the stores were barred and shuttered, not because they were not open yet, but because there was a security threat. We decided that we didn't want to be in the middle of it, so we got out of there.

Looters emptied this store in Goroka

We went back to the hostel and quickly loaded our goods into the car. The gunshots we heard coming from the town area were an extra stimulus to move quickly. We got out of there before the situation deteriorated further. About six hours later we were safe back home in Goroka in the Mission House.

Bro Pai was as cool as a cucumber through it all (probably used to it because he's experienced many military coups in Fiji); but I could tell that Bro Nathan from Australia was experiencing something totally "wow", and depending on my judgment to keep his life safe!

It seems like all the drama happens while visiting guests are in the country... at other times, things are not quite so dramatic, and I'm sure that some people reading these reports must think that everything is overplayed! Life is not like this every day in Papua New Guinea, but it can happen at any time. I guess that's why they call PNG "The Land of the Unexpected"!

God bless you all. We will keep you informed about the baby!

- Richard & Andrea Carver, Laura & Timothy (and one more to come)...

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