To Go in Peace*
Perfect love drives out fear. —John the Apostle
Nate Gordon—a JAARS-trained pilot who was serving with YAJASI, our mission aviation partner in Papua, Indonesia—had five passengers and two stops to make. He’d just landed at an airstrip in Fayu territory to drop off three of the passengers. The plan was then to take the other two, a young Elopi couple, on to their village 15 miles away. Nate swung out of the seat and down to the muddy airstrip. As he’d done perhaps a thousand times, his hand automatically reached back to the latch to open the rear door of the aircraft. Finding the familiar handle, he felt another hand clamp itself firmly on top of his. Someone didn’t want that door open.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I’m scared. I’m not getting out of the airplane,” came the response. The voice belonged to the Elopi man Nate was to drop at the next village. It dawned on him that historically the Elopi and the Fayu had done their level best to wipe each other out. A recent ambush had left three people dead. The fact that 30 Fayu men were standing along the edge of the airstrip, armed to the teeth with bows and arrows and spears, probably didn’t help much.
Nate assured his Elopi friend that these people weren’t party to the warfare; they were armed for self-defense … or hunting perhaps? These Fayu, Nate promised, were friendly and wouldn’t hurt him or his wife. Nate even gave him his personal guarantee of their safety. No dice. His hand remained firmly clamped on Nate’s, preventing him from opening the door.
“Okay,” Nate thought. “You can wait in the airplane and roast if you want.” Nate helped the other passengers out of the airplane—the two seated in the aft seats actually had to climb over the immovable couple. He then began to unload the cargo pod.
As usual, the people from the Fayu community began crowding around the airplane. Nate noticed several talking through the window to the Elopi man and his wife in the middle seats. Because the Fayu and Elopi languages are mutually unintelligible, they had to use Indonesian, which meant Nate could understand the conversation.
The Fayu were attempting to convince the man in the aircraft that they were friendly, trying to reach their arms around the firmly clenched door to shake his hand. Pulling cargo out of the pod, Nate kept a close eye on the proceedings. Despite the confident voice of his own assurances, he wasn’t 100 percent convinced of the Fayus’ peaceful intentions. The Fayus kept repeating a phrase. Nate had to listen closely to catch it.
“Don’t worry; we have Jesus now.”
The next thing Nate knew, the door was open and the male Elopi passenger was walking toward the jungle at the edge of the airstrip, hand-in-hand with his erstwhile enemy. This caused Nate no small degree of alarm. Treachery is a highly esteemed character trait in those parts—using friendliness to break down a victim’s guard before moving in for the kill.
Nate jumped in with a query as to what was going on. It turned out the Elopi passenger had a very real need to visit the Little Boys’ Room (which, in the Papuan context, is any part of the jungle not currently being used as a Little Girls’ Room). The Fayu man at the airplane’s door had guaranteed the Elopi passenger’s safety and would hold his hand for the entire time he was out of the airplane as a sign of that guarantee.
Greater love has no man … than to hold the hand of an enemy so that he can ‘go in peace.’
Building this airstrip by hand, in the middle of the jungle, was a five-year herculean feat. Everything about reaching the isolated peoples of Papua consumes an enormous amount of time, money and effort. Why bother?
“Don’t worry; we have Jesus now.”
That’s why.
Please pray that many more people in Papua, Indonesia, will experience firsthand the transforming power and peace of God’s Word.
*A version of this story was originally published here in the Centerline e-newsletter.
