ONE SOUL, ONE SABBATH, ONE COMMUNITY MEAL

The week’s spiritual highlight came on Sabbath, when one soul was baptised, a single decision that carried the full weight of everything the week had built toward. The Sabbath program continued with a community bung lunch, bringing church members and Wesdeco residents to the same table to share a meal together.

The program concluded that Sabbath evening with an official closing ceremony. The response from the Wesdeco community was warm and appreciative, with residents openly acknowledging what the church had done to support them through the week both in body and in spirit.

For Vanimo Town SDA Church, the week at Wesdeco Settlement was proof that sustaining a community for Jesus often begins long before the first sermon is preached sometimes with nothing more than a shovel, a truckload of gravel, and a willingness to work alongside the very people the gospel is meant to reach.

SOME villages sit at the centre of everything. Yibrew sits at the edge, tucked against the international border with Indonesia, in the remote reaches of Green River LLG, in a part of Papua New Guinea that most maps barely have room to label. It was here, between June 7 and 13, 2026, that a combined team of pastors and elders from Bewani Green River District chose to bring the gospel.

What the team found waiting for them was a community whose orderly lifestyle and friendly disposition already spoke of a quiet godliness, a people living far from the country’s centres of attention, but not far from its character.

JESUS OUR ONLY HOPE

Each night, Sumumini Church Pastor Stafford Opovi and Bewani Green River District Director Pastor Kembol Yawisaho delivered evangelistic presentations under the theme “Jesus Our Only Hope.” The messages drew crowds night after night, offering a sin-stricken world the one hope that does not waver and the village responded.