Yesterday was one of those memories I'm never likely to forget.
There are three "crisis" happening around here at the moment. But the most urgent one is that a bridge between our center and the rest of the world is sinking due to the river eroding the bank. The water has been high during this rainy season and the bridge has been there for 30-40 years I've heard tell.
The administration has been urging the department of public works to repair the bridge, meanwhile the surrounding communities have been upset at us for not doing more to repair the bridge.
We had men in bulldozers and dump trucks trying to save the bridge, we were asking people not to drive over it, etc. It is important to know that the surrounding communities view us as an organization as a respected group, but also a rich people. Our entity has always put community outreach and relations at a very high priority, so as a result, we have a good name, well respected, but also we are depended on, and looked to when things get rough. It can be an awesome responsibility and burden at times. But enough of that.
One end of the bridge has broken and dropped about two feet into the weak corner. So only 4x4's can cross, but armed guards are not allowing vehicles across now. So the public vehicles stop on one side drop off all their passengers who walk across the bridge to the other vehicle waiting to pick them up.
In an effort of good faith, to show we were in fact trying to do something, the call went out for all able bodied men to show with shovels and start filling sandbags.
And we showed in a major way.
I'd like to set the scene for you, but honestly, this is something that'll stick in my mind alone I think.
We arrived in a pick up truck, short shovels in hand. The bridge was sunken down, the blacktop cracked. Three hundred papua new guineans were standing around the line of vehicles, under them, wherever they could get protection from the rain.
Another fifty PNG men were standing on a hill of gravel, along with 50 or so from our center. People were standing, talking laughing, smiling, waiting. Crowds and crowds of people, watching this spectacle, and people walking across the bridge, being dropped off, walking. I met several people I knew heading back and forth.
Then a dirt bike pulls up and drops off 300 sandbags, leaves and goes for more.
We get to work.
Dozens of us shovelling, bagging, dragging, dropping bags over the hill to the men below in the river packing them under the weak corner of the bridge.
It isn't long before the 300 bags run out.
I'm shovelling shoulder to shoulder with men from here I haven't yet met, and men from PNG whom I may never see again. But it was good, hard work, honest work, and work shoulder to shoulder with the community.
I felt like I was really doing some good. I'm not sure if the bridge will hold, but working along side the men of the area was a very satisfying event.
And who doesn't like working on a bridge?!
Soon another 50 bags came, rocks flew into bags. Someone brought by a few cases of coke which was fun, the png men dove into them!
Waiting for more bags we talked about the bridge, got to know some folks, I played and joked with some of the kids. Almost everything we did was better than television for them. When I walked on the scene they seemed to murmur and whisper in awe. It felt like a challenge, "can he work twice as hard since he is twice as big" is what it felt like. I worked harder than I had in a very long time because of the extra urging.
Ironic to me that only two weeks before I had been shoveling gravel for my own driveway. Today I am not even sore. Perhaps it was conditioning and God's timing!
The bags filled up and went away. Some people arrived across the bridge who had been out of town. The call was put out that day "come home now, or you wont' be getting home" so we lugged their luggage across the bridge into new vehicles and got them home.
The river was rising, and we covered the sandbags with chain link fence, and drove it in with spikes. Under the sandbags was special protective fibre cloth to hold back erosion.
None of us were sure all the work did any good for the bridge, but we were all pretty sure the work did good for the community relationships as well as our own personal relationships with each other.
I was glad we went, I am still glad we served, I don't think I shall ever forget that day. I hope that I do, I hope that there are so many more alike events that this one will become blurred into all the other times when I'm working side by side the nationals here to accomplish an important task.
But for now, this one is burned into my mind's eye, and I am very encouraged and blessed by God to have been in that situation.
How you can pray:
emergency #1 - the bridge - without this bridge we can not get groceries trucked in, fuel for the airplanes, or any other such supplies. We can not leave except by plane. The plane schedules will take another drastic hit as they decrease passenger weight for fuel weight.
emergency #2 - our water supply is out. Someone in the night (we think) dismantled the water pump system. We are now completely on rain water, but it is raining a lot!
emergency #3 - this one is all but over soon, but work permits and visa renewals are still in progress, meaning no one can leave or enter until this paper work is approved by the government.
PRAISE GOD that we have planes to get out, we have rain to give us water, and that recently the Work Permits were approved and they began on the Visas.
Things may sound tough right now, but if you look at it a different way, God is providing!
