Endless summer days with friends. Swimming in the lagoons and rivers. Playing marbles on the village paths. Racing canoes with friends. Soccer and rugby games. Climbing coconut palms. Hunting for birds and small animals with bows and sling shots. Gleefully skidding on muddy paths with bare feet or sliding down grassy hillsides after a rainstorm. From the outside, a Gogodala child’s life appears idealistic and carefree.

But, in reality, the life of a Gogodala child can be very difficult. There is an inconsistent supply of food—feast or famine. There is a lot of domestic violence in Gogodala culture, and children often become the innocent focus for anger. Almost as soon as they begin to walk, children must carry heavy water containers and help with the washing and other chores. To feed their families, mothers must spend days at a time away in the jungle making sago. While they are gone, their children are often left alone to fend for themselves. It seems like babies are taking care of babies.

Because there is little clean water for bathing, children often develop skin conditions like scabies, ring worm and tropical ulcers. Smoky cooking fires in the houses drive mosquitoes away at night, but many children suffer from asthma. Knives are important tools here, and even toddlers play with them.

The children here are rays of sunshine to us. They enjoy any attention we give and readily return our smiles and waves. When we return to the village with supplies, children flock to help carry boxes from our dinghy up to the house. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is heavier—the box or the child eagerly struggling along under it. How precious they are!

Having our own children with us in the mission field has also proven to be an enormous blessing. Adults smile and comment approvingly when they see Karin and Johanna walking through the village. They tell our girls to call them Auntie, Auwa (Grandmother) or Aba (Grandfather). Our girls help us overcome barriers that would otherwise be hard to break down. People often come to our house with gifts of fruit, vegetables or flowers. “This is for the girls,” they say. Our girls are missionaries in every sense of the word. Their life witness to adults and children alike is a least as great as ours.

Children have been the first focus of our ministry here. We are still studying Gogodala language and culture, so we don’t yet feel entirely prepared to do culturally appropriate evangelism for adults. But the needs of the children were evident early on and were easier to meet.

Since before we arrived here, children from babies to teenagers had been meeting for Sabbath School with a young mother. There were songs and little plays appropriate for the very young, but the older children were bored. The routine didn’t change from week to week.

I had spent many years playing piano for cradle roll in our home church in the States, and I knew a number of Sabbath-School programs. A good friend emailed me some of the programs that were culturally appropriate and easy to adapt for use here. After adjusting the scripts, I was able to help the young mother learn them along with the songs and then present the programs in Gogodala to the children. The children love the programs and now look forward to Sabbath School each week. An average attendance is 25 children, but it can swell to as many as 50. It has been a blessing to watch them learn and to see their love for Jesus grow.

While I was revamping the program for small children, Karin and Johanna decided on their own to start a class for the older children. Stephen and I were very proud of them as they took the initiative to plan a spiritually nurturing program each week. Their class usually has about 10 children. As they learn more of the Gogodala language, they hope to see their class grow.

Our lives are enriched by the abundance of children in our village. The training they are receiving in Sabbath School will have far-reaching effects as they share the songs and things they’ve learned with their parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. I believe God is using us to help fashion them to become useful tools for His kingdom.

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