John G. Paton and his wife Mary, who would soon give birth to their first child, landed at Port Resolution in 1858. They were not the first missionaries to serve in the Port Resolution area of Tanna and they were certainly not the last. Continue reading
Category Archives: Mission Fields
Compelled
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We’re excited to launch our mid-term mission program. https://talkingabouttanna.com/compelled/
Please be in prayer that this work will support local mission workers and their church planting work on Tanna as well as grow Christian ministry here and overseas.
Words of Eternal Life
‘A – a – ants,’ the class chants, diligently repeating after the teacher. Along with the photocopy of the alphabet and its corresponding sounds, the students each have a copy of John’s Gospel in front of them; a book they very much hope to be able to read one day after completing the three modules of their literacy course. ‘It will only be through reading it for themselves that they will really change,’ the mission worker explained to me. After watching for a while, I had the feeling that it will be a long process. But when they have come as far as they have, there must be hope. Continue reading
Circumventing Circumcision
Three students on field experience from Southern Islands Presbytery Bible College were practicing pastoral visitation, going from household to household praying for people’s needs. They entered one house where the upcoming circumcision of their son was weighing heavily on the people’s minds. The students brought the matter before the Lord and moved on. Later that day the family discovered that their son had been miraculously circumcised.
Six further ‘miracle circumcisions’ took place within about a month at that location, which is one of our mission fields. But these weren’t the first circumcisions of this kind to take place on Tanna. The first took place in 2000 when it was prophesied that miraculous circumcisions would take place across the island and radiate out from here around the world. Continue reading
Rain on the Righteous and on the Unrighteous
It has been an unusually wet couple of months. They tell us that this is the dry season and that there are sometimes even droughts in this part of Tanna, but this year it has been wet and windy. In fact it has been so wet that at times it has slowed my work in visiting mission fields.
I am not the only one whose work has been slowed. There are three trucks in this part of Tanna other than mine. Last week the drivers went together to see the ‘kastom man’ who ‘works’ the rain to accuse him of using the rain to spoil their businesses. You see, on Tanna, rain is thought to be controlled by people. Continue reading
Talking About Tanna 