Missions Alive
I was 26 when I left my work as a country parson to take up the prestigious position as the Minister of Cheltenham Church of Christ Victoria. This Church had the reputation of being a very large and alive Church. But that was a mirage. The reality was quite different as this young country parson was soon to discover. The life of a suburban Minister has some real surprises.
All Churches are interested in the work of overseas missions and at the Cheltenham Church of Christ we made the usual emphasis. We had visiting missionaries come and speak at special services. They were usually older women on furlough from India who wore saris and looked very strange. Women missionaries who came from other parts of the world seemed to be wearing clothes that were about ten years out of fashion. We had slide nights with ten thousand slides all of Papuans outside grass huts. We distributed literature with pictures of starving people in India or jungle hospitals in Africa. We circulated biographies and people read of Hudson Taylor and David Livingstone.
And in our Church at Cheltenham we concentrated mainly on the mission fields we supported in India, China, Papua New Guinea, the New Hebrides and Africa. Regardless of the field we had the stories of building schools, running hospitals, village evangelism and outreach programs. On our notice board we had some missionaries for whom we prayed, wrote letters, regularly sent birthday cards and church mail and all in all tried to keep our people interested in the Overseas Missionary task of the Church.
At various times we had people from interdenominational Missions such as bible translators from the Summer Institute for Linguistics, missionaries from the Regions Beyond Missionary Union and the Leprosy Mission, and speakers from the Overseas Missionary Fellowship who bamboozled our minds with statistics from Asia and missionaries from the Sudan United Mission and the South American Missions who told us of exotic cultures and unusual behaviour patterns in some of the most remote parts of the world. And of course we took missionary offerings to support the work, wrapped bandages by the mile for leprosy patients in India and created kits for children in Vietnam.
But the work of overseas missions was all very exotic and very far away. In fact, our visiting missionary speakers seemed to make the mission field even more remote from what was happening in Cheltenham. The problem that puzzled some of us who believed in the missionary task of the Church was how to get people more involved?
Someone said that we would not become really involved until we adopted a project of our own. I don’t know now who suggested that, but the suggestion was to lead to a remarkable series of events.
I remember ringing the Churches of Christ Overseas Mission office and saying to the Chief Administrator “Have you got a project our church can undertake, a big project, something that will involve people with hands on activities and one that would really excite the imagination and one that wouldn’t get done if we didn’t decide to do it.” The Administrator thought for a moment and then shot back the answer “Why don’t you build a hospital for a remote group of villages on top of one of the highest mountains in Papua New Guinea.”
I stopped for a moment in silence at the audacity of the question. “Why shouldn’t someone else build a hospital in Papua New Guinea?” I asked. “Because no one can get near the place where it has to be built” came the reply. “What do you mean?” I asked. He replied “This is one of the most remote, unexplored parts of Papua New Guinea. It is right up in the highest part of the Owen Stanley Ranges. It is dangerous, with precipitous mountain sides and very heavy rainfall. Yet the people we have surveyed in that area have huge needs for medical attention. There are women with goitres the size of a football on their necks. There are people with tropical ulcers all over their legs, and feet that have gangrene. There are men who have hernias where they carry around the distended hernia in a string bag tied to their waist. Three out of every five babies that are born die within four weeks. The medical needs are just horrendous and the Government either hasn’t the will or the ability to get there. It’s a three day walk through the jungle to get up into the mountains. The mountain sides are precipitous and the rivers that run in every valley are deep and dangerous and mud is everywhere. You cannot fly in, there are no airstrips and the people say to our investigators that the need is urgent and are begging us to come but we haven’t the money nor the manpower nor the ability to get there. Now is that a big enough project for you?”
I thought for a moment and answered “We’ll undertake it”.
That simple statement began a most incredible journey in the life of our Church. We had to do three things. The first was to build an airstrip in an impossible location. The second was to fly in materials and build a hospital from recruited labour and thirdly we needed to find the staff who could run the hospital.
Broken down into its three constituent pieces, it didn’t seem to be that difficult. I spoke about it in a Church meeting and many people got excited. Some had started praying for it. When people start praying things begin happening. To my amazement some of the older ladies started knitting and making goods for sale for our hospital in Papua New Guinea. They were doing their bit. It was up to us now to solve the problems of how to build an airstrip and fly in the materials and build a hospital and get trained nurses.
The last part of the program was fulfilled almost immediately. Annie Bancroft came to see me. She was an attractive twenty one year old senior nursing sister with three certificates including midwifery. She was to be married at the end of the year and she came with a simple request “Can I go? I’ve felt God calling me to use my skills for years on the mission field and I feel that I must answer the call now before I get married. Ian and I are prepared to put off our wedding for a year. Ian has no sense of calling to work in Papua New Guinea but I have this irresistible call to serve and use my skills. Could I go and start the work?”
I looked at Annie. What a wonderfully committed and talented Christian girl she was. But one thing troubled me.
I really expected her to be so excited about her anticipated marriage that putting it off for a year might reveal some deeper problem, a problem between her and Ian. So I gently probed her with questions like “Annie, are you afraid of getting married? Is there a problem between you and Ian?” The answer came back straight as you could expect. “No, Ian and I are very much in love and can’t wait to be married but we both believe that this is God’s call to me to serve on the mission field and if I go soon I could give eighteen months of service in Papua New Guinea and feel I have fulfilled God’s call upon my life. Both Ian and I are prepared to put off the wedding for twelve months and I am quite sure I will come back a much more mature woman and a committed Christian and Ian is prepared to work on our house while I am away.”
I must say I had a heart full of admiration and love for this fine young Christian woman as she stood before me answering God’s call to serve in a hospital that had not yet been built.
But that suddenly took a turn towards becoming possible. Matt stood at the door, still in his building gear of big boots and socks and short shorts and builders nail bag still around his waist. He had come straight from his Holden ute where he had been working a job not far away. Matt said to me one sentence “I’m your man!” I knew exactly what he meant. This young builder, having finished his apprenticeship, wanted to go on and get on with the job of building a hospital. He looked at me and with the most amazing grin on his face he said “You think that I’m going to offer to go to Papua New Guinea to build you a hospital, don’t you?” I nodded. “Well you’re wrong. I’m here to tell you that I’m going to be the head of a team of six of us who are going to go from this Church and build the hospital!”
I was amazed. Matt had been talking with other young fellows around the Church and they decided it would be the most incredible experience if a whole team went and worked. Matt had worked out that it would only take three months. “I just about got me tools packed already. My work has given me three months off on half pay. They reckon the experience will pay off when I return. Most of the others can organise their own fares and all we need do now is just order the building materials and up she goes!” I was amazed at the confidence of this young man who stood before us.
I was wondering what those older members had been up to with all of their prayers. We had suddenly created an interest storm in building a hospital in Papua New Guinea. But one thing troubled me. The Overseas Mission Director had said that they had to build an airstrip in order to fly in the materials and there was no way they could get a bulldozer anywhere near the mountain ridge what with the rivers and impossibly steep sided mountains where no four wheel drive could ever go. How on earth could a bulldozer cut an airstrip?
I took my problem to the Missionary Aviation Fellowship. They had an office in Box Hill and their aircraft maintenance depot in Ballarat. A trip to Ballarat and a meeting with Albert Graham and Vic Myers who was the veteran pilot from Papua New Guinea soon put my mind at rest. “Okay, we can do it. We know that area quite well. It’s an area of very high rainfall and you will need a bulldozer to put in the airstrip, alright. There’s no way you could carve in the side of the mountain with manpower. All you need to do is fly in a bulldozer!” I looked at them puzzled. “How could you fly in a bulldozer when there isn’t a landing strip?”
He must have been reading my mind. “Oh we don’t mean fly in a bulldozer, we really mean a tractor with a blade on the front, that will do the job.” I still looked at them rather blankly, “How can you fly in a tractor with a blade on it when you don’t have a landing strip?”
“Haven’t you heard about the Missionary Aviation Fellowship express delivery? We told you that the ground around there was pretty soft from the constant rain. What we do is load up one of those Cessnas out there with the big belly in it with a tractor and blade – we don’t put the tractor in in one piece, you understand. We need to break down the tractor into about twenty bits and we stack all the bits in and then fly low over the site where you blokes will be waiting and then at almost stall speed just tip out the engine block, wheels, chassis and other components down into the mud. They’ll land quite safely and then your fellows can put it all together again. We’ll drop them a couple of forty four gallon drums of diesel fuel and Bob’s your uncle!”
And that’s exactly what happened. Our team of fellows felt highly significent with a great send off. We prayed for them, laid hands on them, gave them excellent tools that could work in primitive conditions and without electricity. The guys trekked for three days leaving all of their tools and equipment to be flown in later by the Missionary Aviation Fellowship express delivery service. Then the Missionary Aviation Fellowship planes with their big extended bellies flew in dropped off all the tools and then in several drops all the pieces of a tractor with a bulldozer blade.
Our fellows collected them out of the mud, put them together with scores of delighted Papuan natives around them and eventually reconstructed a tractor with a blade. Within weeks we had heard that the strip had been cut into the side of the mountain and had now been grassed and was ready for landing.
Then the Missionary Aviation Fellowship planes again came back, only this time they were carrying timber, petrol-driven saws for cutting the timber and sheets of roofing iron. The Hospital was under way. Meanwhile Annie Bancroft had arrived and set up a nursing clinic and started to treat people. Her first letters home were horrendous, she was called upon in emergencies to do all kinds of things that a suburban general practitioner or a young surgeon would never undertake, yet somehow by the grace of God and with the aid of good medicines her patients were thriving and the modern era of health had arrived in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
Back in the Church fundraising was a breeze. A whole heap of families had either a daughter or son up in Papua New Guinea and everybody from the congregation knew the seven young people who were serving there. Suddenly missions became alive. The dropping of the tractor in pieces caught the imagination of the Moorabbin Standard News and soon the whole community was hearing that this white Church on top of the hill with a high white tower was building a hospital in the highlands.
Radio stations took up the message and we had offers from Drug companies to give us equipment and large amounts of pharmaceuticals which were approaching their end of store life but were still viable for use in Papua New Guinea. I was offered equipment such as forty eight steel framed beds that came from the old Mordialloc Hospital. We were laughing to ourselves at the thought of Missionary Aviation Fellowship dropping steel framed beds out of low flying aircraft.
The equipment, pharmaceuticals, money and personal interest rolled in. It was a wonderful time in the life of the Church with a great deal of prayer and giving and interest in this ministry of extending the Gospel.
After three months the fellows came home, the hospital had been erected and opened and many of the young Papuan natives had been trained in elementary carpentry as they worked alongside our fellows. The stories of the good times seemed endless and our Church was excited.
A year later Annie came home at the end of her year of service. Another nurse was now going out and the Church of Christ had the promise of a doctor from New South Wales who would shortly be going to Papua New Guinea. It seemed as though the hospital was in for a good future.
Now was the time for Annie to think about herself. She was in my office one day collecting some papers that needed to be filled in for her forthcoming marriage. As we sat and talked about her experience in Papua New Guinea she commented in passing about how well she had kept during all of that time. The only thing was that she felt her foot numb. She had been to the local doctor and the doctor had said it would probably just right itself.
However, I didn’t like the sound of that. I asked her what she meant by it being just numb and she indicated that she could pinch her foot or stick it with a pin and the top of her foot registered no pain. It suddenly sounded awesome. I had listened to some of those missionaries who had visited us and I had heard of certain symptoms before. I looked at her seriously “Annie do you have any white spots on your back or anywhere else on your body?” She looked back at me with a very severe look. “As a matter of fact I have. I have a couple of spots just under where my bra strap goes and I thought it must have been rubbing from the bra strap. Why, what are you thinking of?”
I took a long time before I answered. “Annie, did you deal with any patients up there in the highlands who were suffering from -” I paused before I said the word – “Hansen’s disease?” “You mean leprosy. As a matter of fact I did. There were quite a number of people who had leprosy. Do you think I might have leprosy?” “Well I am quite sure your local doctor has never seen leprosy in his life. I have no medical knowledge but I remember the people from the Leprosy Mission saying that white spots where you could feel no pain and a lack of feeling or numbness in your feet were often the signs of the onset of leprosy. I think you had better go back to your doctor and ask him to check you out again.”
I heard nothing more until the next day when Annie rang me back. I was absolutely horrified with what she had to say. “I’m in the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital. My doctor confirmed as far as he could judge that it was leprosy. Apparently it’s a very contagious stage at this time and it’s a notifiable disease. They’re sent me off to the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital, I guess I’ll just have to call the wedding off.”
“That’s outrageous! There are ways of treating leprosy today that you don’t have to cut yourself off from society.” I decided that we ought to support Annie in her struggle with having to be confined in the Infectious Diseases Hospital. I drove straight to the Hospital and introduced myself to the Medical Superintendent Dr Evian Staffati. He explained to me the situation. “It’s the regulations. They haven’t been updated for decades. Annie’s no real danger to the rest of the community but the regulations say that she must be confined in a Leprosarium. I know this is the 1970s but still that’s the regulation. We can give her Dapsone tablets and injections which can bring this under control in a very short time and in fact completely cure her, but the regulations say that she must stay in a Leprosarium. The treatment is simple enough. As a matter of fact it only costs about seventy cents for a hundred tablets and we can have her in first class shape in no time, but the regulations state that if she is suffering from Hansen’s Disease she must be isolated in a Leprosarium and this is the only Leprosarium in Victoria”.
I was allowed to talk to Annie but before I could go into her ward I had to be fully gowned and masked. She was laughing widely. “Imagine becoming a missionary and bringing leprosy home. The Government probably thinks I’ll infect the rest of Victoria. I don’t mind the treatment, it’s absolutely painless and I’ll be right within a few months with no further signs but the only problem is the wedding. Mum and Dad have gone to so much trouble I’m really disappointed that we’ll have to put it off.”
And then she looked at me with a flash of inspiration. “But do I have to put it off? Just because I am in a Leprosarium? Couldn’t I get married here?”
It was her spirit and joy that was infectious and it soon caught me. I went back to Dr Evian Staffati and asked if it would be possible to conduct a wedding in the centre of an Infectious Disease Hospital. He too got caught up by the infection called `joy’. And so it was that about six weeks later in Melbourne’s only Leprosarium in the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital, I married Ian and Annie in one of the most delightful Services you could imagine. Everybody was there – bridesmaids, groomsmen, parents and close relatives. All the rest of the guests were waiting at a reception place for the main party to return. The wedding was an all white affair. That is, everyone of us was clothed in white from head to foot. For example, I had to wear big white linen pillow cases over my shoes tied to my ankles, white Hospital trousers, white Hospital gown on backwards and done up securely, mask covering my entire face from underneath my eyes, cap and head bandage covering from my eyebrows over my ears, gloves so that no piece of skin apart from my eyes was visible.
My wedding book with its notes were sealed in a plastic bag with enough room for me to turn over the page under the plastic. The wedding ring was sterilised and put into a sterile bag. All the bridesmaids, groomsmen and parents were likewise gowned. The bride and groom were gowned in white from head to toe. I married them. The groom passed over the ring in a sterile plastic bag for her to place on her finger later. When they kissed upon receiving the rings they kissed with two quite solid gauze masks between them!
It was a delightfully happy, unbelievably mad wedding. God blessed those two in a most remarkable way and then the rest of us went off to the wedding reception leaving the bride back in the Leprosarium. Ian promised that he would make it up to her and believe me three months or so later there was another wonderful Bancroft wedding party, this time with the bride present.
But all of this brought home to us the reality of missions. Jesus touched the lepers and so did Annie and it effected us back in Cheltenham in a most remarkable way. The Missionary Aviation Fellowship pilots dropping the tractor in pieces from slowly circling Cessnas, the young men hauling themselves by vines up steeply sloping mountainsides to build a hospital was just the stuff that vintage missionary yarns are made of. The Church was never to be the same. Overseas Missions had come alive. The night I married Annie and Ian I wrote this account in my journal.
That night in my study I spent some time writing up my journal and looking out of the window at the never ending stream of cars stopping at the traffic lights at the corner of Nepean Highway and Chesterville Road, that wide intersection that was dominated by the lovely white Church with the high white tower noting down the events of another day as a suburban minister.
GORDON MOYES