Papua New Guinea: bringing the good news to the remotest places

LWF Council member from PNG shares stories of working in some of the most inaccessible places on earth

(LWI) - As an evangelist and coordinator for women in one of the 17 districts of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea, Agnes Gabee often walks for three or four days to bring the good news of the gospel to some of the remotest areas of the country. With hundreds of different ethnic groups, the island nation is one of the most rural and most linguistically diverse countries on earth.

Based in the rugged central highlands region, Gabee also travels by car and by plane to visit people in the 20 circuits and two mission fields in her care. A teacher by profession, she left her job when she felt God calling her into lay ministry and has been working with women in her church for the past twenty years.

A member of her church council, she was also elected to serve on the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Council at the Kraków Assembly in 2023 and would like to see a stronger presence of the global communion of churches in her country.

Can you start by telling us something about the church in Papua New Guinea?

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea has around 1.5 million members out of a population of 9 million, so we are a large presence. There are also many other churches, with the Catholics as the largest of those.

The church has 17 districts and I am the women’s coordinator for Simbu district in the central highlands near Mount Wilhelm, the highest mountain in the country. I was first elected to this role in 2005 and I report to our national director for women’s ministry.

Before that you worked as a teacher, didn’t you?

Yes, I trained as a teacher and taught in schools for 17 years, but then I knew in my heart that I had to resign to do this mission work. As a lay woman, there is no pay, but I talked to my husband and he said, “If it is God’s calling, I don’t want to stop you.” So I was elected to a first four-year term and have been serving in the church ever since.

My husband is also a lay evangelist, looking after a congregation that was set up for people who had leprosy and were given a piece of land to live on by the government. We live there and he started this work in 2004.

Is leprosy a big problem in that area?

It used to be, people were kept together in a ghetto and so many of them died. But then they discovered the medicines to cure people and now it is not so big a problem. The people came back to their homes and their children are not affected by the disease.

What sort of work do you do?

I do so many things! I travel to the 20 circuits and two mission fields that I look after to coordinate all the work with women in the church. During my visits I share the gospel, listen to the women, hold workshops and do trainings or counselling on things like domestic violence or drug addiction.

There are three types of places that I visit: some are in towns or villages which we can reach by car. For others, I have to cross big rivers or go up steep mountains, so if there is no road, then we start walking, sometimes for 3 or 4 days at a time, finding places to sleep with congregations along the way. Then there are places that are so far and so remote that we have to travel by plane to reach them. It is very difficult to bring the gospel to everybody, but God is our strength, so we are able to do this work.

What is life like for people in these very remote areas?

People live simple day-to-day village life, gardening, looking after animals, growing food. They have a bit of land, so they do not go hungry. But the roads are so poor that they don’t have access to markets, and they have to sell things they grow at the lowest price in their own areas.

There is also very poor access to education and health facilities in some of these areas, so if people get sick, they sometimes die because they cannot get a doctor or the medicines they need. They have water and food, but some of them also lack basic necessities like cooking oil and soap so we bring these things.

What is the situation for women in your country?

In the towns, there has been a lot of progress, so women are educated, they work in offices or run businesses. Others in villages work selling things in the market or working on farms and coffee gardens. For those living in the remotest places, life is more difficult and we try to support them.

And in the church – there are growing calls for women’s ordination, aren’t there?

We have come a long way towards women’s ordination in recent years and now our bishop and the majority of pastors are in favor. But there are still some who block these efforts. We try to tell them we are not competing with them, we just want to do our work and be able to serve people. We were very happy to see the recent decision in the Australian church.

At our recent National Women’s Conference that is held every 2 years, we made a resolution that the time has come for our church Council to accept this change too. I hope they will hear our voices. I think it will take some time for them to prepare for the change, but we have many trained women theologians who are waiting for this opportunity to serve in ordained ministry. Now, some of them work with us as bible study teachers or youth camp leaders.

What do you want to achieve during your time on the LWF Council?

I had heard of the LWF before my election, and I have started to learn a lot more about its work. We have the Australian Lutheran World Service in our country, but I would like to establish an LWF office too. I know that a lot of the work is focused on places that are struggling with wars or with immigration and refugees, but people in remote areas of our country need health services, they need education and I see a lot of goodwill from people around the world wanting to support these efforts.

I hope to show others how our church is bringing hope to people and sharing the good news with them, helping our congregations to grow. This is the way forward for us and I hope it can inspire others too.