Na: Kotalela Sakisaki Okotepa Elelowa. It means, “I have lived in Kotale for four weeks.” This is one of the many phrases we are learning to say in Gogodala. When we arrived in Kotale, it seemed as though we were out in the middle of nowhere. After four weeks of living here, it still seems very remote.

However, as remote as Kotale is, it still has not escaped the political arena. I wrote in an earlier article about the political campaigning I witnessed in Port Moresby. After arriving in Kotale, I was relieved to be far from the big, noisy city and have the peace and quiet of the country where there are no automobiles, generators, street lights or loud political campaigns. I was right about all of the above except for the last point.

One of our first nights in Kotale, as we were settling into bed with the sounds of crickets and frogs drifting through the windows, we suddenly heard a voice echoing through the village. A campaigner with a megaphone was broadcasting campaign promises and slogans. As he came down the path toward our house, he was shouting at the top of his lungs. We got up and ran to the living room window to see who was making such a racket. The cloudy, moonless night was so dark that as the man with the megaphone came walking past our house, we couldn’t even see his silhouette. There was no mistaking his presence, though. Back in the States, this man would be arrested for disturbing the peace. Here, I have not yet heard anyone complain about the disturbance, which would have been enough to wake even the most soundly sleeping baby.

The present governor of Western Province is a native of Kotale village, and he is up for reelection this year. Late one afternoon, I heard that the governor had made a campaign stop at the Kotale ECP Church (Evangelical Church of Papua New Guinea). Laurie and I decided to take an evening stroll there and experience a little of the political scene.

The sun was beginning to set, and darkness was falling. Many people were milling around outside the church. The PA system was broadcasting the speaker’s voice loud enough to be heard by the whole village. Some people were dressed in traditional grass skirts, beads and head feathers. Their bodies and faces were painted with mud and red clay. There had been a cultural dance prior to the speeches. A drummer sat near the church door holding drums he had made just that morning for the occasion.

Laurie pulled out our camera and started taking pictures. Soon, she was surrounded by a group of kids who wanted to see the pictures on the camera’s little screen. The kids laughed and hollered as they saw themselves and their friends in the pictures. We started to feel that we were getting more attention than the governor, so we put the camera back in its bag and slipped inside the church to listen respectfully to the governor’s speech.

People sat on the wooden floor, the women on the left and the men on the right as they normally do for church. There were no electric lights to illuminate the platform, so we had a hard time seeing the speaker. We soon learned that the provincial secretary was there also. When the speeches were done, someone escorted us up to the front to meet the governor. We introduced ourselves as new AFM missionaries here. He said, “Are you David?” I told him no, that David and Cindy White were on furlough in the States. The secretary leaned over and shook my hand. “I’m also a Seventh-day Adventist,” he said. Later, I found out that he is an elder in his church. Praise God for the people He puts in government positions for such a time as this.

Recently, I asked a friend when the voting would take place. He told me it would happen the following Thursday. When Thursday arrived, I asked my friend if he would be voting that day. “No,” he said. “The pollsters haven’t come, yet. Maybe tomorrow they will come.” They didn’t show up until late Friday afternoon in their motorized dinghy. I knew they would open the polls on Sabbath morning and then move to another village in the afternoon. This would create Sabbath issues for our church members in Kotale.

The turnout at church on Sabbath morning was lighter than usual. Some of our friends were missing. The next day, I saw one of them and commented that I’d missed him on Sabbath. He confessed that he had gone to the polling place to vote. When I asked him if he had voted, he said he had waited all day there, but his name had never been called.

I heard a different story from some other church members who faithfully kept the Sabbath and attended church. On Sunday, they’d paddled their canoe to where the pollsters were working and waited for their names to be called. Eventually, they were permitted to cast their ballots.

Many people here are disgruntled over the perceived unfairness of the polls, but we take comfort that “the powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1). Though we believe in being good citizens and exercising our right to vote, we also believe that God always comes first. It is our desire that the Gogodala people will make God’s kingdom a priority above the affairs of this world so they can experience the joy that God has promised. “If you cease to tread the Sabbath underfoot, and keep My holy day free from your own affairs, if you call the Sabbath a day of joy and the Lord’s holy day, a day to be honored . . . then you shall find your joy in the Lord” (Isa. 58:13, 14).

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