Dedicating Ankem’s New Church
With our Dutch neighbours and our dear friend, Joyce, from Ankem. The MAF staff and families were all given flower necklaces and Bilums (String bags) as we were special guests.
Our Christmas Eve was spent in Ankem village, a 30 min walk from our house in Telefomin. The community there have been building a new Church for the past 8 years and today they had the dedication in time to have their first Sunday service tomorrow, on Christmas Day!
Over the past 6 years, Ryan has been flying in building materials and other supplies to help Ankem Village with the building project. Construction of a large building like this Church takes time for several reasons; the wood needs to be found, milled and walked in from the surrounding forest, along with gravel walked in from the local river. Funding needs to be raised to afford Charter flights to bring in materials such as roofing iron, glass for the windows, concrete, nails and the new plastic chairs, which only arrived yesterday! The Church has had support from the local member of parliament and others to help in raising funds. Then the build itself, there are no building companies in Telefomin, or working diggers, the community have built the whole thing themselves, by hand, with just a handful of power tools. We were told the carpentry work for the whole building (which seats around 200) was done by 4 local men, none of whom have had formal carpentry training, God just blessed their hands for the work, and it’s a lovely building!
All the MAF staff were invited to take part in the dedication and we were even given Bilums (Locally made String bags) to mark the occasion. The local Member of Parliament flew in for the dedication and the community killed 13 pigs so they could have a feast for everyone! There were speeches, music, flowers, decorations and so much joy over the completion of this new house of God.
