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.

For many of the women present — mothers, teachers, church leaders, daughters — it was a message that met them exactly where they were. The retreat did not ask them to become something different. It asked them to respond to what God had already placed within them, with the same words Isaiah used, the same words Samuel used, the same two words that have always preceded a life of faithful service: “Henani. Here am I.”

SUNDAY MORNING: HEALTH CHECKS BEFORE BREAKING CAMP

On Sunday morning, before the group broke camp and returned to their home districts, health checks were conducted for all attendees — a practical expression of the church’s commitment to the whole person. The retreat closed as it had opened: with care, with purpose, and with a theme that lingered long after the camp was packed away.

VANIMO Town Seventh-day Adventist Church, affectionately known as Tawa Church, mobilised 109 of its members on Sunday, May 3, 2026, for a landmark outreach visit to the Vanimo Correctional Institution Services (CIS), one of the largest single-day church visitations to the facility in recent memory.

The initiative was originally driven by the church’s Youth Department, which had planned the CIS visit as part of its outreach program. When other departments realised they had similar activities on their calendars, the decision was made to combine efforts bringing together Adventurers, Pathfinders, Adventist Community Services and other ministries under one unified mission. The result was a visit of remarkable scale and impact.

Pastor Peter Tony expressed sincere appreciation on behalf of both recipients, acknowledging the church’s compassion and the significance of the gesture during a difficult time. Both pastors left the visit encouraged and reassured, a reflection of the spirit of unity and mutual care that the church community is called to embody.