During September we’re focusing on responding to God’s call. Each of the posts published this month will be about the situations in which our authors have responded to His leading or have witnessed others respond to His leading. Please see the Prayer page to read our strategic prayer request for this month and pray with us that we would see the people of the Lower Ramu area respond to Him.

By Erin Duplechin

We sat around the fire with the black-skinned man we call “Papa.” He’s in his fifties, but it was less than a decade ago that he became a Christian. He told us stories of the days before he started following Christ, how he stole things, how he wasn’t a “good man.”

We don’t know that man; the man we know is kind, he laughs with his wife (and doesn’t hit her), he cares for his children. He wants to see his sons and daughter follow God. One of his most prized possessions is a Tok Pisin Bible dictionary we gave him.

We’d been living with them for a few weeks and were still in the throes of cultural adjustment. It’d been hard to feel so awkward and out of place. There had been a lot of tears, there was loneliness and shame. There were days I felt abandoned by God, left here alone in this jungle hut.

I remember the first time I woke up in the middle of the night and heard it, my Papa praying for me. In his house, only a few feet away from ours, he prayed out loud, he had his alone time with God. Village life starts very early in the day, so he sits with Jesus in the quiet of night.

It’s midnight, but he prays out loud for his wife, children, even us- his new white-skinned children. Tears stream down my face as I listen to his voice. He’s praying in Tok Pisin for our family, each of us by name, asking God to help us and strengthen us.

Jesus changed this man’s life a few years ago and now he’s here praying for me.

Saying “yes” to Jesus isn’t always a radical, tear-filled, knees-bowed-at-the-church-altar kind of vow. Most of the time it’s a mundane, every day choice; it’s the praying out loud for your kids at midnight, the laughing with your spouse. It’s that desire to find Him there with you, wherever you are.

It’s saying “no” to what your culture says is okay.

Revivals come in radical, every day, Spirit-filled moments, that choice to pick up your cross and follow Jesus, to leave the ways of the world behind. Revival transcends language and culture and skin color. You know it when you see it.

There is a man that is changing the world from a small jungle village in Papua New Guinea; I pray this revival spreads.

Erin is a wife and mother of two beautiful girls. She and her husband, Kevin, are on furlough in the U.S. where they are getting a chance to watch their girls enjoy time with family.