God's Guidance Through the Unforeseen
The days, weeks and months are flying by. I can't believe how we're already in June?! For the past seven weeks I've been mostly in the "bush" without internet access, so it's taken a while for this post to be published. We've eaten turtles, grilled chicken hearts and chicken intestines. We've witnessed God heal, the Holy Spirit lead us and seen lives transformed! I hope to be able to give you a little insight into the great thing we've been allowed to be a part of.
Rollercoaster
On April 12, 2025, I drove to the airport here in Port Vila to pick up new DTS students who were coming to Vanuatu for their outreach. Initially, I wasn't supposed to have much to do with them since I had my hands full leading our "Keep Safe" program. But if there's one thing you quickly learn in this country, it's that things rarely go according to plan. It didn't take long before I had said "yes" to four DTS students joining me and my Keep Safe team to tour different schools and teach. Together we would travel to six different islands to visit different schools, live in the "bush", bring the gospel and follow God's leading.
However, it didn't take long before our plans had to change again. A few days before departure, while we were still getting to know the students who would be accompanying us on the trip, I received an email from the government. In short, they refused me the chance to tour the schools for the next few weeks. The main reason was that it was almost a two-week school holiday, and the time before the holiday was hectic for both students and teachers. In order to minimize disruption and ensure that the students had the best possible focus to complete all the tests before the holiday, the government did not want us to disrupt them with our program.
When I got that email, I was stressed to say the least. Not because our plans changed, I've gotten pretty used to that by now, but because I had four expectant students who were super excited to do "Keep Safe" with us. When that suddenly was no longer an option, I had to seek God's face once again. What do I do now God? We can't go into the schools, so how can we use this time to your glory?
It was truly a roller coaster ride, but God never fails. Now that I look back on the last few weeks with the students, I am so grateful for how God led us day after day. Even when things didn't go according to our plan, God led us on such exciting journeys with Him.
The Testimony of Tom
One of the people God led us to was Tom. If things had gone according to my original plan with "Keep Safe", we would never have met Tom, but God had other plans. God has a tremendous care for individuals, and we got to witness that. I took my team with me to a village where I already have contacts. We got to help at their school. We played with the children, told Bible stories, prayed, and provided medical care to those in need. When we sat down with the children and teachers at the school and asked for prayer requests, we learned that there was one of the students who had not come to school for the past two weeks because he was sick. They knew it had something to do with his foot, but not much more than that. We prayed for him and left it in God's hands, but before we were to go back home, I felt such unease about Tom. I talked to various locals and finally found out where he lived. One of the DTS students has a good medical background, so we went to his house to see what the real problem was.
When we arrived at the village where he lived, we saw a very sick boy. We took a look at his foot, his general condition and quickly found out that the situation was critical. The boy was at great risk of blood poisoning, which is life-threatening if not detected and treated in time. So we explained how important it was that the boy receive medical help at the hospital. The boy's parents had never been to a hospital before and were generally skeptical. But after some prayer and more talk about the fact that their boy's life was in danger, they agreed to let us drive them to the hospital. When we arrived, we made sure that he got the help he needed, and prayed together before we left. We left the matter in God's hands.
A few weeks later we visited Tom again to see how he was doing. This time we saw a relatively healthy boy who came to meet us. We talked a little about their experience of being in the hospital, and conveyed to Tom that it is God who deserves thanks that he is alive today. We explained how God led us to him when he was sick and lying at home in his house. How God has such enormous care for him and sent us to him in the right time to take him to the hospital. We prayed together and taught the parents the importance of keeping the wounds in his foot clean and covered, so that the flies cannot get in and cause more infection.
Tom's testimony is such a clear story of how God sees individuals, and leads us with his Holy Spirit. If my plans with "Keep Safe" had gone the way I wanted, we would never have met Tom. The villagers did not believe that the hospital could help them, and had just left him inside their house until he probably had blood poisoning and his body's organs had stopped working. So all glory to Jesus for seeing Tom and for having the right expertise on our team to see the seriousness of the situation and help.
Healing from Black Magic
Another testimony that I would like to share is from Tongariki Island. We came here as a result of God's leading. One morning when we were having a prayer time, we asked Jesus to show us where to go. We had a list of the names of different islands and sat in silence to listen to God. One by one we wrote a name on a piece of paper, and when we opened the paper together, we saw that everyone had written "Tongariki." Wonderful, we thought. It was clear and distinct. So we packed our things and got on a small boat that took us to Tongariki Island. The boat trip itself was not particularly luxurious. We jumped up and down on the waves and got soaked as the waves splashed over us. After bouncing up and down on the wooden bench we were sitting on in the boat for 1.5 hours, it was finally time to get ashore. But to get ashore, he had to jump out of the boat and swim ashore. It was quite a journey to get there, but when we finally arrived we were greeted by lovely locals who took great care of us.
We stayed on this island for a little over two weeks. Here we got to live with the locals and eat what they ate. For example, we were served turtle soup on several evenings. We also ate both the heart and intestines of chickens. The intestines actually tasted a bit like bacon, and were quite good. The chicken heart, however, was not as good. We played with the children in the village, had church services, went on house visits, prayed for the sick and helped with various practical tasks in the village. For example, we helped in their gardens to plant, care for and grow different varieties of potatoes, vegetables, bananas and papaya. We went out in the dark to catch crabs and cooked them for breakfast and lunch the next day. The boys got to fish with the men in the local community and practiced climbing coconut palms to get coconuts for us. The toilet was a hole in the ground and to shower you had a bucket of water that you splashed over yourself. But after several months of training to get the dirt and shampoo out of my hair, I'm starting to get really good at that too.
The highlight of these weeks was seeing how Jesus transformed people's lives. We saw more testimonies of his power and sovereignty over evil. Like many other villages in Vanuatu, there are many who play with black magic and curses. One Sunday after we had held a church service for the locals, a lady came up to me. She asked me if I could help her. She had a severe infection in her finger and was convinced that someone had cursed her with black magic. So we pray together and I took her to our house so we could treat the infection and clean the wound. Our team member, who has a medical background, had never seen such a severe infection before and had little hope that the little we did would change anything in her finger. We cleaned the wound and covered it with a small bandage. We prayed over her and let her go.
The next day she came back and to everyone's amazement the infection had gone down considerably. She explained how she had been feeling a heaviness in her hand and finger for the past few weeks, but when we prayed for her, she felt the heaviness go away and her finger felt light. My team member who has medical expertise said that he had never seen an infection go away so quickly. We cleaned the wound again and changed her bandage and prayed that God would complete the healing He had started. This was the beginning of a good friendship between me and her. Over the next few weeks I gained a good insight into her life and the struggles she was facing. One of them was a challenging husband. She herself wanted to go to church to learn more about Jesus, but her husband usually refused to let her go. He thought church was a waste of time and would rather she stay home. We were allowed to continue to encourage her in her faith, inspire her to pray, read the Bible, and use digital means to bring church services to her home. Please remember her in your prayers!
God Works in the Lives of the Children
At the beginning of our time at Tongariki, God made it clear to us that He wanted us to spend time seeing the children in the village, spreading God's love to them and showing them how much they are loved by their heavenly father. So we ran a lot of kids ministry. Played together, shared Bible stories, had dramas of David and Goliath, the good Samaritan and the prodigal son. We sang with them, braided their hair and shared everyday tasks such as washing clothes and cooking together.
The day before we left the village they held a farewell party for us. Here one of the mothers in the village told us how grateful she was that we came to visit them and spend time with their children. She told us how her son had never had any interest in the Bible before. But after we had been there she has seen a transformation in her son's life. Every night when she goes to say good night, she finds him reading his Bible. In the morning when she wakes him up, he is already awake and reading his Bible. In the middle of the day when she goes to find him for lunch, she sees him sitting under a tree with an open Bible. She was overjoyed and so grateful for the influence we had on her son's life.
After we had been in the village for a few weeks, we understood why God had said we had to focus on the children. It turned out that only a few of the children in the village lived with their parents. The rest of the children lived with an uncle, grandmother or a family member further down the line. Generally speaking, it is a rough upbringing with a lot of physical punishment and little love. But we were allowed to be Jesus' hands and feet in that village and love the children with God's love! What an honor.
There is a lot I could tell you about everything we have experienced and witnessed in the last few weeks. These are just some of my testimonies, my team members have their own experiences with God. I'm so grateful that God took us on a little detour and that things didn't go exactly according to plan. Because His plan is so much better. All glory to Him.
The Road Ahead
I said goodbye to the DTS students and drove them to the airport on Thursday last week. They will now have a few weeks of debreif before they have their graduation party and go back to their home countries. I had not originally planned to go to New Zealand to join the DTS students' graduation, but like many things, it didn't go according to my plan. I prayed about it, and told God that if He wanted me to go to New Zealand, He would have to give me the money to do it. I prayed this in the evening and then went to sleep. The next morning, one of the DTS leaders came up to me and said out of the blue: "Marte, if you want to come to the graduation in New Zealand, we will pay for it". I had never talked to her about the possibility of going, but saw it as God's guidance. So now I am going to New Zealand in two days to meet the DTS students before they go home, help with evaluations and spend time with old and new friends.
When I am in New Zealand, I also get the opportunity to work on other parts of "Keep Safe". Working on securing sponsors, gaining a little more knowledge when it comes to pioneering and development work and trying to recruit more people to come to Vanuatu. While I am away, the rest of my Keep Safe team gets a well-deserved break after several hectic months without much time to rest, either physically or spiritually. Then we start again with full batteries and new school visits at the end of June.