MR. F. BEALE, is a Queenslander who graduated front the Federal College of the Bible, Glen Iris, in 1954. He proceeded to the New Hebrides early in 1955 and did teaching work at Pentecost and Aoba. On furlough in Australia Mr. Beale was chosen with Mr. Finger to be the advance party for the new work in New Guinea. Mr Beale possessed special qualifications for pioneer work, having completed a four-year course in Animal Husbandry, same study in Horticulture, and having seen service for several years in New Guinea during the war. He proceeded to New Guinea in May, 1958, and is presently located at Tung as the Superintendent of the New Guinea Field.

      This article is designed to help you know what is being done in New Guinea by our Churches, some of the problems that face us and what is involved for all of us in the future. It was a unanimous decision of Federal Conference that we enter New Guinea and it will need to be a unanimous effort by the Churches if we are to do our work effectively. This is our first major new missionary endeavour for fifty years.

      The area selected was along the north coast of the Australian Territory between Madang and Wewak known as the Bogia subdistrict. In this area are 26,000 people. Nominally they are almost all Roman Catholic but the Lutheran, have a small work in the south coast area and the Seventh Day Adventists have a few villages in the north coastal area. Basically the people live in much the same manner and with much the same beliefs that they had centuries ago. The Highlands have a relatively great density of population by New Guinea standards but also have many mission societies already working there. We needed to find a place where we would not be in competition with established evangelical missions.

      Let me give a brief summary of what has been done. Mr. Finger and Mr. Beale arrived in Port Moresby on the 20th May, 1951. There followed a brief round of Government Departments to get acquainted with the Government-mission relationship. Then there was a period of aerial survey to get acquainted with the country. Areas flown over were the Bogia subdistrict and parts of the Sepik district. Then on June 13th, the two men landed at Bogia to begin a more detailed examination. There followed a period of walking about looking at villages, then on July 2nd, the men from Tung came with an invitation to set up a mission. A visit that week found a suitable site and work began on July 23rd with clearing the bush. In September a carpenter arrived to speedup work and on November the 27th Mrs. Beale and children arrived to an incomplete house and primitive conditions. Having a woman and children about lifted the tone of the place. In December. Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain arrived with their baby to begin a school when their house and the school were finished. In April, 1959, we were invited to Pir to open another mission station and, while Tung was still not complete, work began at Pir in the next month. In September, Sister Hunting arrived to do full time nursing and Miss Draney arrived to take over Tung school so Chamberlains could go to Pir. In March. 1960, we were invited to open a mission further up the Ramu at Chungribu and work began in May with the people putting up a temporary house in which future builders could live. In July, Miss Howden arrived to help teach at Pir as there are many children there. At the moment building is taking place at Tung, Pir and Chungribu and we are hoping to begin clearing the bush for a hospital site on the Ramu to begin erection next year. That is the accomplishment in two years, at the cost of buckets of sweat, some blood, a lot of sacrificial giving of money and much prayer.

      Among all this activity the biggest single problem is communications. Most of New Guinea is mountainous. These mountains are steep and slippery and covered with either dense timber, and bamboo or tall kunai grass. Roads are few and usually don't go far.

      Apart from those in the towns the speed limit is from 5 to 20 miles per hour or less. This figure is set by the springs of the vehicle not by the authorities. Distances are measured not by miles but in time. We say Pir is three hours walk from Tung or Tung is two days walk from Bogia, or Chungribu is two and a half days in the launch from Tung. To give distances in miles is completely misleading. Along the coast launches can bring supplies reasonably frequently. Apart from that almost all other supplies travel by sir to an airstrip and from there into jeeps or more often onto the shoulders of native carriers. This picture is further complicated by the fact that this is the Tropics. Where we are located the temperature in the day is consistently 82 degrees to 92 degrees, with the night temperature never below 70 degrees and mostly above 78 degrees. Humidity varies between 70 per cent and 100 per cent. This is year round. We do not talk about winter or summer. We talk about wet or dry. In the Wet (which corresponds to summer) the temperatures in the day are a bit lower than in the dry, but higher at night and the humidity is very high. In what is optimistically called winter the temperature is higher as there is less cloud but we have cooler nights so that we sometimes even pull on a blanket in the early morning, while the humidity drops to about 70 degrees.

      This pattern of wet and dry makes communications even more of a problem. Roads that are open in the dry are impassable in the wet. Round Chungribu in the dry walking is easy as there are no hills; in the wet it is impossible as water covers the tracks up to 10 feet deep for a month at a time. Then all traffic is by canoe. Rainfall in this area varies from about 80 inches in a dry year to about 200 inches in the wet years. The wet is from December to May, during this period it takes twice as long to get up the Ramu River as it does in the dry time when the current is slower.

      Let me try to bring this down to practical problems. The nearest native village on the coast is about six hours walk from Tung. Small ships bring our supplies from Madang seventy or eighty miles away to this village called Nubia. The native people there are Seventh Day Adventists. They store the supplies until we can come and collect them. It may take a week before we know that the supplies have arrived at Nubia. At first the men from Tung would walk down one day, sleep over night and then walk back the next day with the goods. A man's load is about 30 to 40 pounds. Try carrying that for a day in the heat. All the supplies to make Tung station came in like that. When it came to the stove and refrigerator the whole village went down and slung it on a long pole then 4 to 6 men at a time would carry with frequent changes and all the men singing to give encouragement. Quite a lot of the supplies for Pir came like this. The extra journey to Pir involved an extra day on the road. Often the then arrived with sores on their shoulders or legs. During the wet weather the time taken was longer as it involved walking for miles through mud and water. Women also shared this work of carrying. They would put things in net baskets and sling them from their foreheads and plod back to Tung with a load sometimes exceeding 50 pounds. For this they were paid a few shillings according to the weight they carried. Even with this low pay the amount needed each year to pay for supplies runs into large figures.

      Often goods arrive wet from rain. In one case a log bridge collapsed while they were carrying the engine and generator to charge the batteries. Men and machine fell into the water and the

generator had to be carried out again, flown to Madang for repairs and then carried back to Tung. Sometimes goods ordered from Madang took two to three months to arrive at Tung as the people naturally did not like to do the long walk too often. We had no means of knowing if all our order had arrived before it was time to order again. It would have been impossible to develop the work and increase the number of missionaries under those conditions. Then God provided through the gift of a Christian couple. They donated a launch that enabled us to bring supplies up the Ramu to a place two hours' walk from Tung. The launch trip involves two days of travelling to get to Nubia and back and sometimes three or four days if there is bad weather. But it does mean that supplies in greater quantity can come in, as the carrying involved is now a half day instead of about two days.

      Our mail still has to come in from Awar airstrip which is 18 to 20 miles from Tung. Two men each week walk down with our outgoing mail and bring in the incoming mail. In the wet weather we find it hard to get volunteers due to the muddy road and the hordes of mosquitoes along the way. Getting our supplies from Madang to Tung takes considerably longer than getting supplies from Australia to Madang. It is still not possible to get bulky boxes of goods into Tung or Pir. We are hoping that the people will begin work on a road from the Ramu River to Tung and Pir and that the mission can then get a jeep that would make the supply position easier. The proposed road will still be hazardous in the wet. _l, road direct to the beach through the swamp is impossible without a major task of building. These difficulties mean that as much as possible we have to use whatever is available locally. This material is not always long lasting but it means that we can build and operate and over the years develop more permanent types of structures. All mission houses so far are built with round bush timber which isn't always straight. The floor of the first house was made of split palm logs. Note we have a light circular saw and have cut sawn timber for flooring which makes life more comfortable. We hope that as time goes by we can build with sawn timber. It is much easier. For those who do a bit of carpentry try to get everything straight and level when you just go into the bush and cut a young sapling, strip off the bark and nail it up. It gets very frustrating to anyone who tries to make a neat job.

      Communication between places is not the only difficulty. There is also the problem of communicating between people. It is estimated that about one quarter of all the world's languages are in New Guinea. There are 400 known language. In some areas up to 40,000 people speak basically one language with minor dialectal changes. In other areas as few a 400 people may speak a language. In the Bogia subdistrict there are 14 languages among 26,000 people. Within a radius of one day's walk from Tung there are seven different languages. Even within the group of people who consider themselves as one language among whom we work, there is distinct dialectal differences between Tung at one end and Pir at the other.

      This necessitates a medium of communication if the people are to become unified. In Papua a native language was learnt by early Europeans, changed a little and became a lingua-franca. In northern New Guinea the opposite happens, the natives changed English until it became Pidgin English or Neo-Melanesian as it is now known. This is widespread throughout the Pacific. Because of experience in

the New Hebrides Mr. Finger and Mr. Beale could understand and make themselves understood reasonably well when they arrived in New Guinea. Someone coming from Australia would not be able to do that. I quote a par from the South Pacific Post as an illustration. "A young patrol officer unschooled in Pidgin was sent out into the bush where he found it difficult to make talk with the indigines. First morning out he gave the cook an egg and an alarm clock and what he thought were explicit instructions. Ten minutes later he returned to find the clock boiling nicely."

      A few things ought to be said about this means of communication. It is a language and not childish or broken English. If an Australian heard two natives talking in Pidgin he would not even realise at first that it was Pidgin; he would think it was a native language. It takes a few months to learn to hear Pidgin and understand it. It takes longer to speak and usually a fair length of time to think in Pidgin. In fact some people never do master Pidgin. Pidgin consists basically of English words with a liberal sprinkling of native words. The words are given a native pronunciation and put together in a native style grammar. Certain sounds used in English are non-existent; instead a nearly related sound is used. There is no "ch" or "er" sounds in Pidgin so "church" becomes "soits", "Christ" becomes "Krais", "pidgeon" becomes "pisin" just to give a few examples. The language is phonetic. Children growing up in towns and where there are mixed linguistic groups usually speak only Pidgin and sometimes know neither the language of father or mother. When missionaries' children begin to talk it is often Pidgin that they learn first or at least simultaneously. Marilyn and Gwenyth Beale and Diane Chamberlain speak Pidgin as fluently as they speak English.

      The parents sometime repeat in Pidgin what has been said in English so they will understand better.

      There are features of Pidgin that create difficulties. Many of the words used are swear words in English. In Pidgin they are not. The meaning has changed. It is a judgment, however, on those from whom the natives first learnt to speak Pidgin that these words came into the language. They are there and have meaning and so you hear a missionary stand up to preach and begin swearing reasonably fluently and the congregation take it all as a matter of course.

      Some language must be used for Church worship. The question is what language? For a non-English speaker English is very difficult to learn and the majority of the natives would never be fluent in it. Universal education in English is the ideal in New Guinea but will take up to 20 years or more to even give the children a rudimentary knowledge. The adults would never master it. We could use a native language. The problem is to decide what language if work is conducted among different language groups. The missionary has to learn the language which even with modern linguistic methods takes the average missionary years to become fluent (note I said average) and there is all the work of translation; not just the Bible but hymns and prayers and auxiliary reading. This will have to be done for each language group and schools would have to be set up to teach them how to read in their own language. Then if a person comes from one language group to another, that one would not be able to join in worship but would have to remain an outsider as the language would not be understandable.

      So Pidgin becomes the means of men and women hearing the word of God. We use Pidgin to conduct services. We read from

the Bible in Pidgin. We sing in Pidgin. We pray in Pidgin and preach in Pidgin. A few aged people may not understand but relatively few. When we do have services which include outsiders then all can share. Even five year olds know Pidgin. It should be remembered that Pidgin is not foisted on to the people; it was adopted and made by them and almost all native people are bilingual after coming under Government control. When people object that Pidgin is crude and lacks the ability to express thoughts about spiritual things, they are partly correct. But it should be remembered that the native language is almost always just as crude and barren of spiritual thought. English has over the centuries adopted words from foreign languages because there was no means of expressing the meaning with any word existent. Baptism is one borrowed from Greek. We have to do the same and teach the people the meaning of the borrowed word so that spiritual perception may come. Sin is something that has to be taught. A man goes off to commit adultery and fornication; no harm to anyone from his viewpoint; he could honestly say he believed in Jesus. We have to teach and show him that fornication is sin and adultery is sin to teach him the meaning of the word sin. The same with prayer. We first have to teach a stereotyped prayer such as the "Lord's Prayer. ° It usually takes a lot of teaching before they realise that prayer is talking to God in the same way that speech is between persons. We suggest to them that they give thanks for their food before they eat, so they come to us and ask us what to say. At first they expect us to tell them every prayer.

      This highlights our biggest problem with communications. How to communicate with God. For us as missionaries it is essential, for it is God who works through us and we must listen to Him. For the people it is a major new step. In Australia when we speak of God, almost everyone would have a mental picture of a personality. Almost all have a background of knowledge because the Bible ann Christianity have been among us for centuries. The native has no Bible until we give him one and no background except his old belief. For him there was no God. The world existed first and later certain spirits came into being, all potentially malicious and these made certain features out of the already existing world.

      We preach Jesus as Son of God, as crucified for sin and risen again: the people say they believe and they do; but they, also carry into that belief all the things that they believed before. This means that their ideas of God are very inadequate and teaching is a major part of preaching. Because of this almost every mission body in New Guinea has a course of instruction before baptism. First some people signify willingness to be baptised then a course of instruction is commenced, it may be for six months or one year. In this course the basic tenets of Christianity and the great facts of our, belief are taught. If the person comes regularly and remains faithful then that one is baptised. Even those bodies who practise infant baptism still demand a course of instruction in the believer before admission to full church membership. Thus the beginning of a channel of communication between God and believer is opened.

Before a channel of communication can be set up contacts have to be made.

      When we first came to New Guinea to set up the mission we wondered just how we were to contact the people who needed us. We began by setting up a base in a native type house in a coastal tillage called Awar. From there

we began taking walks out into other villages and talking to the people as to who we were and what we hoped to do. In New Guinea no one can just settle down on a piece of ground as they please. The Government recognise the native ownership of land and permission of the native owners must first be obtained before the land can be used. Then the mission concerned cannot buy the land but the Government buys the land and then leases it to the mission. A mission cannot go into any area it chooses. If the Government consider an area unsafe they will restrain the mission until they consider it safe for Europeans to go there.

      A point needs to be made here. The New Guinea people are not rushing to hear the Gospel. Winning native people to Christ is no easier than winning people in Australia or elsewhere. What happens is that the native sees that the European has a much higher standard than he. He soon learns that it is connected with education and culture. The answer to him is then to get educated and adopt the culture of the European so that the same benefits will come to him. Missions to a large extent, are the ones who do the teaching and help the native. Alright, get a mission to sit down among you. That basically is the attitude of the majority of notices. They don't want Christ crucified, they want cash unlimited. They are not always concerned as to what mission, though some missions are recognised as doing more than others. If this sounds cynical it still remains basically true. But it does give the mission a point of contact. It gives an audience to whom preaching can be addressed. A village or group of villages would ask a mission to come; they would consider themselves as then belonging to the mission and the mission then really begins to convert the people.

      We soon found that many people wanted the mission to come and set up a school. Some wanted the prestige that a mission would bring, some wanted the money that would come with a European in their midst, some wanted a particular mission as they had seen its work elsewhere. We had to find a place where there were enough people to warrant a station being set up in their midst. Schools however, seemed to be what people wanted most.

      I think I will always remember one particular night as we sat in the rest house. We had made a trek into one particular area at the invitation of a few people. They wanted us to set up a mission but the actual number who really wanted us was uncertain. The bulk of the people remained aloof and various factors led us to think that it might be unwise to start there. We were a little downhearted as after quite a bit of trekking we had not found a suitable site. We sat in the house in the lamplight and planned to walk further afield and were wondering how to get carriers to help us with all the things we would need for several days' journey. Then a row of dark faces appeared in the doorway and a voice asked if we had found a place to settle yet. We told them "no", and we found that they had come from the area we had wanted to visit, and they had come expressly to ask us to set up a mission. This was our introduction to the people at Tung. Thus God works. So next day we set off with carriers to spare and arrived at Tung. Contact had been made, the work was to begin. What the people wanted was a school. They said to us, "The Catholics have been here a long time now. All of us men know nothing, our children know nothing, we are no better than primitive natives. We want our children to have a better opportunity than we have had."

      A mission school must still teach the Government curriculum but the mission has plenty of freedom to teach religion. The Government sets a minimum number of hours but time may be added and the extra may all be religious teaching if desired. From these schools will come an educated leadership. The idea of the Government is for universal primary education in English. No school can teach other than English, except schools that are teaching native pastors or catechists. The Government would prosecute and close down any other school. Pidgin or a native language can be used as a medium to English in the early classes. Some well meaning people say that education should be in the language of the people. The people however, do not want schools to teach their own language. They would not come to such a school. The people of New Guinea realise that if they are to stop being primitive and better themselves they will have to know a language that can be used for commerce. English is the most universal and the people want to learn that. The Government have not enough teachers to do the job and they are prepared to grant money to missions to help them provided they follow the Government curriculum. This is the opportunity for missions to come into contact with the people. The station at Pir was opened because some people there saw the school we opened at Tung and asked us to do the same for them. Only a few weeks ago a headman came from a backward area and asked for a teacher to be put in his village.

      We have also been able to reach the people because we conducted adult literacy classes. This was in Pidgin and we have been able to teach some to read the Bible in Pidgin. There are only a few hundred of all the 26,000 people in this area who can read or write.

      Our aim is to have a fully literate people that can read the Word of God for themselves.

      Another point, of contact is hospitals or Aid Posts. Sickness is all too common to these people. Malnutrition coupled with malaria and other diseases kills up to fifty per cent of the children before they are five years old in some areas of New Guinea. Life expectancy is about 30 years. T.B. is a scourge that has been added to the diseases the people had before Europeans arrived. Tropical ulcers grow quickly and cause horrible sores that eat into flesh and bone. Many New Guinea, people have lost at least one toe, some more, some a nose, because of sores that ate them away. From the moment that the first missionaries arrived people came to them with their cuts and sores to be dressed, and asked for injections for other ailments. The initial medical work grew rapidly. We first treated outpatients, then we built a couple of small wards. Just as we opened them word went round that a medical patrol was coming through the villages. The patients poured in for treatment rather than be sent to the Government hospital two days' walk away. The wards became full, we hastily built a third. That became full, they slept in the hospital kitchen, on the tables under the eaves, they overflowed to fill up the small houses that were used by the pioneer workers. Still they poured in till they were sleeping in the storeroom and under trees. It has never been so rushed since those two hectic weeks as we have treated a lot of the sicknesses that had lain hidden. But there are always people living in the wards. There are 35 T.B. patients getting regular treatment and twenty more waiting to come when we have accommodation.

      There is a great need for Infant Welfare work. In this area, only the mother of the woman about

to have a child or her mother-in-law can help her when it is time to have her baby. As not too many live to be grandmothers it means that a lot of babies are born in the bush, with the mother having no assistance until the baby is about ten days old. The people believe they will get very sick if they come in close contact with a newborn baby. The infant mortality rate is extremely high and often the mother dies too. There are so many taboos to overcome to help these people. We can only work and pray and gradually educate them till they know how to conduct themselves.

      The greatest single problem is malnutrition. The people eat vast quantities of food but it is very poor nutritionally. In this area the staple food is saksak. This is wild sago. When they cook it, it is mostly water. It looks like clag, tastes like clag and is probably less nutritious. The nutriment in it would be increased by the dirt and flies that drop in it while it is being cooked. Protein intake is very low and the result is thin undernourished children, with fat distended abdomens and thin legs. Children that look like two years old turn out to be four, and those that look like four years old turn out to be seven. There is no resistance to disease and in consequence they die quickly if some sickness comes to them. This is why we appealed for milk and we try to take a daily milk ration into the village for the children and also give the undernourished schoolchildren some to drink. To add to all this the spirits are blamed for many sicknesses and of course medicine is no good against spirits in the eyes of these people so that they sit in their villages and die when help is within reach.

      Our medical work is a great point of contact. People from other villages than our own come for treatment. Each day we have prayer and a talk before the treatment hours, in that way many are hearing some portion of the Gospel who would have remained in ignorance otherwise. It also builds up a store of goodwill towards us.

      A rather unusual point of contact is trading. Missions are often far from centres where trade stores exist so that the people ask them to open a store to buy the things they like. Don't let people tell you that primitive natives want to be left alone. They don't; they want to trade. People come from long distances with vegetables and fruit for us to buy. With the money they in turn want to buy clothing, tins of meat or fish and all the little nick-narks they love. All too often the native is exploited. Because he finds it hard to learn the value of money, in some trade stores no change is given. A native brings two two shilling pieces to buy a tin of fish for 3 shillings and will far too often not get any change. Like the rest of the world there is a great need for Christian Principles to be applied to business. Thus we can help the people materially and at the same time teach them some practical Christianity. Just lately some people from some far away villages came to trade, saw the things that we were doing and asked for a teacher to be put in their village.

      Even the necessary work of setting up a mission station can be the means of further expansion. Men hear that work is available and come in to earn some money so they can buy things, and pay their tax. The new mission site at Chungribu was a case like this. We had wondered how we would make contact with them. One day a man came to ask for work. He was from that area. So we hired him to help with the buildings. He was encouraged to come to services and was present each morning at the prayer time for the workmen. He contacted other men from his area and two more came to work. They saw what we were doing and sent

word to their headmen who asked us to set up a mission in their midst. They really wanted the prosperity that has come to Tung since we arrived, but it gave us a point of contact. Thus when we went up the Ramu River we found the way prepared before us. They had talked to surrounding villages and had looked out ground that would be suitable.

      These are all means of contacting the people so that we may do our prime task of evangelism. The people are fettered by their old beliefs and only a new vision of life with Christ can bring them release. We have to use every means within our power. Daily contacts and quiet talks in the ordinary course of our activities often do more than all our preaching.

      We are committed to this task.

      Christ committed the Gospel into the hands of men and women. Missionary work is not given to individuals but to every person who responds to Jesus' invitation. It is not the responsibility of individuals to come to hear the Gospel.

      It is the responsibility of all Christians to take the Gospel, in all its fullness. As a brotherhood we accepted that commitment and said, we are not doing enough mission work with our present work in India and the New Hebrides. We will accept Christ's commitment and go to New Guinea as well. That means that the work in India and the New Hebrides must continue to expand in the normal way and that the work in New Guinea is extra. This commitment involves every Christian in at least three things; prayer, and intelligent interest and giving.

      Prayer is the force that is going to make the difference in the lives of these people. They live in a world that to them is peopled by spirits all of whom are evil or capricious. Only a more powerful spiritual force can release that. That force is prayer. There are many different ways of praying. We can say, "God bless our missionaries." That prayer is sure to be answered because God blesses missionaries every day, but it does not apply any force at all to the task of relieving these people of evil. Missionaries came to do a specific task, and only specific prayer for that task will help. A missionary does not live by bread alone nor by adding a tin of corned beef but by the power of the Holy Spirit. We need people who rise each morning and begin by fervent effectual prayer that will sustain a missionary so that in that day he will be able to witness to the power of Christ. We need the day to begin in prayer that will lower the barriers that the people erect to bar Jesus from becoming first. We need the day to continue in prayer and to end in prayer. We need churches who remember missionaries and places and events by name. God remembers all the time, we don't have to remind Him but we need God to remind us.

      This presupposes an intelligent interest in mission work. If people don't know about mission work they can't pray as it is needed. Every Christian needs to read the newsletters that are sent out. If you don't get one ask for one. Read the "Australian Christian" and try to learn about conditions and where persons are located and what work they do. Missionaries have a lot of correspondence but welcome letters. Don't expect quick replies but if you have queries, ask the missionary to write about them in a newsletter. We on the field often find it hard to know what it is people in Australia want to hear about.

      Many people are interested but the interest lacks the intelligence that will make the interest profitable. We had a letter from one person asking for penfriends from among the people for his Sunday School class. This was only a few

months after we started and before the school opened. Here was interest which we welcomed, but a little attention to articles in the Christian and it would have been realised that Tung was 100 per cent illiterate in any language, and it would take years of teaching before one could correspond in English.

      Every Christian should endeavour to become acquainted with the facts of mission work. What is customary in one country may not necessarily be customary in another. Each nation has a different national personality and the Church will take on some of that national characteristic. Thus a mission church will not necessarily follow completely the pattern of the home base church. All should try to get to know and understand what is the pattern of development.

      We are all committed to giving. The amount of money that a church in Australia with 200 members, raises in one year, would keep up mission activity that would cater for up to 1,500 people or more. This includes education and medical help as well as spiritual. This doesn't mean that missions don't need money. It means we do things "on the cheap." We cut timber out of the bush, we use leaf thatch instead of iron, missionaries do without some comforts and new workers usually have a difficult time for the first few months learning to use makeshift things instead of all the equipment they have been used to in Australia. Why go short? Simply that the work is on such a large scale.

      These people have the same value in the eyes of God that we have. It cost Christ just as much to save a New Guinea native as it did to save each of us. However, too many Christians put a greater value on their own spiritual well being than on that of another. How much does your church spend on your spiritual welfare and how much on the spiritual welfare of others?

      We get many lovely gifts from people who want to help these poorer brethren but we also get the occasional mission box which contains things not fit for Australian use. So it is sent to a mission. We want the people to learn to take pride in themselves as sons of God. How can we if we give them ragged or dirty clothing to wear? If Christians could see how much it cost Christ then we would not begrudge things to help less fortunate people. We are committed to establishing a church of baptised believers in New Guinea. This means that they have to assume leadership and take responsibility for reaching out to their own people. The help that, we need to bring them is of two kinds. First, that which will help their with their immediate needs in the realm of material goods, medicine, education and spiritual well being. Secondly, to bring them to the place where they can support their own pastor, their own building programme and their own expansion. We have to keep these dual needs in view. The first is a more spectacular and immediately rewarding task. The second is harder, slower and takes more manpower and money. As we train local men and women to certain tasks that relieve a missionary it means that we have to spend more and raise the standard further. The released missionary does not cease from labour but takes on the task that so far has been neglected because there is neither money nor manpower enough. We are committed to continuous giving without counting. We are also committed to continually supplying the manpower needed. We need mere and women who firstly are filled with the desire to see that all men come to Christ, then they need to train themselves so that they have means of contacting people. Doctors, nurses, teachers, builders and

evangelists will all be needed. It is not enough to have a desire to evangelise, there must be the willingness to spend whatever years are necessary in training so that talents might be more usefully employed.

      In conclusion let me say, Federal Conference voted to enter New Guinea. There was no dissent. A meeting was held and two men set apart to begin the work. The people pledged themselves to support. Now two years later, two hundred children look to us for education, 12,000 people look to us for spiritual leadership, 2,500 look to us for medical help, many thousands wait yet to be helped. When you committed yourself to open up this work in New Guinea did you limit yourself? This is our responsibility now, the future demands that we take greater responsibility yet.