My wife had three sisters living in Adelaide, South Australia so we decided that we would visit them en route to taking up our assignment in PNG. During the course of our visit, a business acquaintance of the sister we were staying with at the time dropped in. He was taking his mother on a round trip of Australia. They stayed for less than half an hour but in that time, we discovered that he and his wife, who was not present, were brand new Christians and since we had a few hours layover in Sydney on our way to PNG he offered to pick us up at the airport and stay the night with them. Seems the Lord had previously ‘spoken’ to them about hosting missionaries in transit!
While travelling from Sydney airport our new friends decided to stop and take us to have a look at the opera house. He parked the car in a very busy street and despite the fact we were only away for a short time it was broken into. All our luggage was ‘safely’ locked away in the boot including a bag which contained all our documents, airline tickets, passports and cash support for the next three months. It was this bag which the thief managed to extract from the boot through the rear seat armrest of the car. Needless to say, this was a bitter blow and raised the question in our minds as to whether we were indeed travelling in the Lord’s will or our own. These thoughts were quickly dispensed with, and our friends really stepped up to the plate. After reporting the matter to the police, we were driven to our friend’s house and spent the rest of the following week getting replacement passports, visa’s, airline tickets including new reading spectacles for my wife, all, embarrassingly for us, at their expense. We were unable to get a visa for Australia, just a letter, ‘To Whom It May Concern’, stating in effect that we had entered Australia and that our exit should not be hindered!
For me, this twist in our circumstances, was yet another lesson in dependency upon the Lord.
It may not be common knowledge, but ‘missionaries’ were allowed to carry baggage in excess of normal, free of charge, on some major airlines and upon presentation of a pre-authorised letter. We had the excess baggage, but the letter had gone the way of the rest of our documentation which meant that upon checking in for our flight to PNG the check-in clerk demanded excess baggage charges amounting to several hundred Australian dollars which we just did not have. Our friend, who was standing quite a distance away, sensed a problem and was prompted to speak to a supervisor in the main hall saying something like, “See those people over there, well they seem to be having problems checking in and they are going to PNG on the Lord’s business”! The next thing we knew was a rather flustered supervisor suddenly appearing and telling the check-in clerk to clear us immediately and waive all excess baggage charges. Why the creator and upholder of the entire universe should concern Himself with such small matters, large though they may be to us, is still beyond me, but all credit goes to Him.
Our arrival in Papua New Guinea was interesting in that neither of us had experienced an airport quite like that of Jacksons International Airport, Port Moresby, the capital of PNG. It has since been rebuilt and today would compete with most International Airports. Transfer from International to Domestic for our onward flight to Madang, via the national airline, Air Niugini, was a relatively simple procedure. The check-in hall was milling with Papua New Guineans, and I felt that we stood out like a sore thumb. With our excess of ‘smart’ looking baggage we must have appeared to be very important people. It was then I realised we had no cash or means of obtaining same in the event of our baggage being deemed to be overweight. In the event our baggage was heaped, by many willing and unsolicited hands, onto a couple of platform scale balances which would not have been out of place weighing scrap metal in a junk yard back home. The fact that our ‘cargo’ was well overweight didn’t seem to matter in the least, so we proceeded to the ‘Departure Lounge’ which, in itself, left something to be desired at the very least.
Upon arrival at Madang airport, we were met by the Director of the Pacific Orientation Course (POC), bundled into a four-wheel drive truck, our luggage piled high in the open back and driven to what was to be our ‘home’ for the next six weeks. During the journey I fully expected to see a squad of Japanese solders jump out of the bush, rifles pointing towards us, then lead us away never to be seen again! Such was the scenery we were passing through.