Here is another story told to me by Aaron in Uiaku village when Tania and I were with them.
During the severe droughts in PNG in 1997 a Christian businessman named Samuel in Oro province decided that he would buy 300 bales of rice: 200 bales to sell in his trade store and 100 bales to give away to the needy in the area in the name of the Lord. When he went to the Chinese supplier he conceived that he could pay for 200 bales but get the last 100 on credit (he had traded with the man for years) and pay him when the other bales were sold. But the Chinese man would not extend him credit.
Samuel paid for his 200 bales and watched them being loaded, counting them as they put them in the ships hold. He sat there thinking to himself “I know what I will do. I’ll sell 100 bales and then give away 100 bales. The Lord will look after me, I know He will.”
Samuel then left the port by plane when the ship sailed and he head back to Oro province to get there several days before the ship docked. When the ship came in he went down to supervise the unloading again counting the bales as they came ashore. When there were 200 bales on the dock he said to the Captain that he would go now and sell his 100 bales and give away the other hundred. The captain asked him what he wanted done with the remaining 100 bales of rice. Samuel said to him “What remaining rice; all of my rice is unloaded.”
The captain said, “The other 100 bales on the ship are yours.”
“No,” said Samuel “That must belong to someone else, all mine is on the dock. I only purchased 200 bales in total.”
“No” reiterated the captain, “All of the shipment is yours! We are not delivering to anyone else. It was on your load on deck when we left port. It is all yours.”
Samuel doesn’t know how it happened but he effectively had the extra 100 bales to give away as he had purposed but doesn’t know how they came to be attached to his shipment to this day.
“I think God multiplied the bales on the boat because Samuel said he counted the bales as they were loading them. But if that didn’t happen the Lord had some other way to make Samuel’s generosity increase.,” said Aaron with another smile on his face. (He was always smiling.) He kept telling me stories of how God was meeting the needs of Papua New Guineans out in the rural areas of PNG.
I had told him I tell stories on Radio Rhema and was always on the lookout for a good story as long as it was true. He then spent a good deal of time obliging me. I promised him I would tell some of his stories on Radio Rhema when I got back.
Source: Aaron, Uiaku, Oro Province, PNG
[God’s Provision, generosity, giving, PNG, God’s blessings, 100 bales of rice to give away]