Stories

In the August holidays in 1981 I was scheduled to go a Geography Conference in Wellington but began to question the wisdom of it if as I suspected I would not be teaching Geography much longer. But as Head of the Geography Dept I was expected to go. A week prior to the time I would leave I got the flu and became progressively worse with each passing day. Until a day before departure I wondered whether this sickness was from the LORD to prevent me from going to the Conference. I rang the associate pastor and asked Weston and the guys at the Friday night prayer meeting to pray for me especially for guidance to know whether I should be going or not and for healing. That night at 8.15pm I was healed in an instant of time as I lay on the sofa. Later Weston rang to ask me how I was and to let me know that the group had just finished praying for me at 8.15. Weston added that he felt the LORD had a 'word' for me to the effect that "I was to go to Wellington and there the LORD would show me the next step really clearly and help me to see all things in perspective." My response was to laugh 'the laugh of unbelief' and tell Weston not to be too spiritual, and to remind him that I was only going to a Geography Conference. Weston's response was to repeat the prophetic word!

In Wellington, it was like the LORD led me by the hand. I arrived at the university late Saturday afternoon and checked into my room. Sunday morning I prepared to head off to church. On the way I came across a young women who had a flat tyre; she was obviously heading to church too. So I stopped to fix her tyre. We were both late for church, so she invited me to have a cup of coffee and talk and she would go to church that evening. While talking she told me that David Metcalfe, our ex pastor, was speaking at her church that night. So I went to night service and met David and told him how God had been leading us into missions. He was excited and asked me if I was down in Wellington for Move Out, a Missions Conference he was involved in, due to start in Wellington the next day. So I ended up going to the Move Out Conference on the Monday but felt that those things did not relate to me anymore. As I walked in the door the main speaker was saying, "Have you felt a call of God on your life? " I thought "That's me!" To which the speaker added, "Before you Move Out you must prepare to move out". After he finished speaking I went up to the stage to talk with David Metcalfe again. David told me how timely it was because in the building at that moment were the Pacific Area Director as well as David Foris whom I met in Matamata. I then talked with them for an hour or more after which it was clear that to follow the possibility of joining WBT would mean Bible College Training. They then spelt out all that would be involved in joining WBT after going to Bible College until we arrived on the field, laid out step by step. As I was not registered for the Conference I was not allowed to join the small groups. It was clear there was no more I could do there and it was time to go. As I left the Conference venue I noticed a brochure by the door with the title "Before you Move Out you must Prepare to Move Out"

Walking back to the University and the Geography Conference I remembered the words of Weston Finlay who had said I was to go to Wellington and there the LORD would show me the next step really clearly and help me to see all things in perspective. Well that had certainly happened. Now what? I joined the Geography Conference I was supposed to have been at. That night I was sitting on my bed in the student accommodation at the university and praying, somewhat in dilemma as to what I was to do, when I was to go home. It felt like the Geography Conference was not my focus anymore and yet I should stay to get the most out of it for the school I represented. I was asking God to show me what I should do and when I should go home. The next morning I picked up my Bible to read from the passage where I was reading currently and the first word I read on the page was “Tomorrow”. I put my Bible down and was struggling with the way that happened. That was not right. You are not supposed to do that with your Bible. It is not a lucky dip to open and find a verse. But I didn't do that. I didn't treat it that way. It just happened with me turning to place where my marker was. I spent a while hassling about it and then asked the Lord again, “When I was to go home.” I picked up my Bible again and knowing there was a “tomorrow” on the right hand page from 15 minutes before, I turned to next page where the first word I saw was again “tomorrow” but not the same “tomorrow” I had seen before.

I then spent some twenty minutes more grappling with the Lord over this matter. I decided to let it sit and go back to the Geography Conference. Apart from other issues I was also struggling with the fact that I had already planned to catch up with Bruce and Val on the way back home from Wellington after the Geography Conference on the Friday. The pieces were just not coming together as they ought to have. Thus I ended up asking God again when I was to go home. Going home "tomorrow" just didn't seem right for a number of reasons. I should really stay on at the Geography Conference despite feeling like this didn't apply to me anymore. I also should wait until Friday so I could catch up with Bruce and Val. It didn't make sense to go home to Matamata on Wednesday. But in my room at the University on the Tuesday night I picked up my Bible again I already knew the location of two “tomorrows” on the pages, so again I avoided those pages and turned the page again to Chapter 9. The first words I saw were “The Lord set a definite time saying, “Tomorrow . . .” I was reading in my NASB Bible. I was shocked and said out loud, “OK Lord I give up, I will go home tomorrow as you have said.” Yet all the while at the back of my mind I felt it didn't make sense. Not only that but I had been taught that you don't do this with God’s Word. You don't just pick random verses. That is not a good way to get guidance.

I had resolved that I should leave for Matamata in the morning and now my mind was at peace. The next morning I got up early to read the Bible and I continued to read in Exodus Chapter 10. I had some more time and just kept reading. When I read the words of Exodus 13:17 - "Then it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt.” I was struck by the words “God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines although it was near . . . lest the people change their minds.” The thought that crossed my mind on reading those words was that I was not to stop in to stay with Bruce and Val that night lest I change my mind about all of this mission leading I had received. But then I thought, no that doesn't apply, Bruce and Val aren’t Philistines. I met them a week after I had become a Christian in August 1973. They were solid Christians but I still couldn't shake off the thought about not seeing them because I would change my mind. Despite all those spontaneous thoughts I dismissed the verse as connected to Bruce and Val and continued with my plan to leave that morning to go back to Matamata but to stop in at Bruce and Val’s home in the hill country close to Palmerston North. I had tried calling them on the phone but got no answer so planned to get to their place around midday and stop at the house as Val should be home. I tried calling again when I was there to see if I could stay Wednesday night and not Friday night. What still bugged me was the thought that "the Philistines would make me change my mind". Nonetheless I set it aside and continued with my plan to stop at their house and / or call Bruce at work. No one was at home at their house out in the country and try as I might I couldn’t get hold of Bruce on his work number. After trying for a while I decided that I should go straight to Matamata and call them when I got home.

I arrived at home to Tania’s surprise a few days early and told her that God had sent me home early. I told her also that I had tried to catch up with Bruce and Val to see if I could stay Wednesday night with them. I tried calling them a number of times on Wednesday after I arrived home but no one answered. It wasn’t until late Friday afternoon that I finally managed to get hold of Bruce to tell him that I wouldn’t be staying Friday night with them as planned because I was already in Matamata. I told him that the Lord had sent me home early and a brief summary of all that had been happened in terms of leading us into mission. I said nothing about the Philistine reference. Bruce then said to me, “No problem buddy. We were looking forward to seeing you but understand that it didn't work out. Maybe it was good that you didn't stay with us. I have become a bit of a Philistine and I may have put a damper on your sense of the Lord leading you into mission.” I was dumbfounded. I'd said nothing about the verse that had struck me and me thinking that somehow it related to Bruce and Val but thinking “they weren’t Philistines” yet he was saying he had become a bit of a Philistine. I didn't know what to say. I can’t remember what I said and Bruce doesn't remember the detail. To him it was just a passing phone conversation. To me it was all highly significant because I had the sense that God was leading me very specifically. It was very real at the time and my sense that Ex 13:17 was connected to it was strong yet my reason told me it couldn’t be. Now Bruce was telling me in fact my inkling in all this was indeed correct and that if I had spent the night with Bruce and Val it would have influenced me negatively. God had been protecting me all along.

One of the worst things I have ever seen are photos of human heads stuck on every second paling of a long picket fence in Indonesia, after an atrocity committed by a tribal group in response to massacre from a Muslim group who attacked one of their villages and slaughtered the people in a frenzied unprovoked attack. I had never seen anything like that in my life. It shocked me to the core on opening an attachment to an email at the end of 1999, and seeing that I told some people about what I had seen. The response was, "Well, sometimes you have to resort to the sword to defend yourself." Really, is that true? Well, the act committed by the Christians did end the inter-tribal violence between them. There was no more killing after the converted Christian tribesmen committed that final atrocity and put the heads of their tormentors on the fence palings as a warning.

One night around midnight, while living in an Indonesia village, I was woken and asked if I would accompany a large party of men to a neighbouring village and asked to bring my camera. The headman's brother-in-law had been murdered in a machete attack. The police were not going to come up from the coast, but they wanted crime scene photos and I was the only one with a camera, so I was the photographer. So we headed off along the trail through the forest by the light of the moon. I was asked to turn my torch off. My companions were carrying hurricane lamps not as yet lit, in order that everyone could see without ruining their eyes by lighting the lamps. It was a nightmare journey for me, stumbling along in the often obscured moonlight.

When we arrived at the village about 7 kms away, the victim was lying prone on his back with blood all over the front porch of a house on stilts. I was then asked to take photos of the body surrounded by lit hurricane pressure lamps. It was an eerie scene but everything was well lit up. Focusing the camera in the bright light in the midst of darkness I was seeing the crime scene in vivid detail. They insisted I take lots of photos. After taking the first series of the corpse and the surrounding verandah, they turned the body over and the head flopped forward. It was only attached by the voice box and the front section of trachea; the back of the neck had been chopped in a V formation like a tree trunk. I felt faint looking at the scene before me and then trying to refocus the camera. I stood for a moment to regain composure but still felt faint [pingsan]. I asked one of the young guys from our village to take the camera and gave him instructions on how to take a good photo. He took the first one and I checked, it was good. I then descended into the chocolate garden to regain my composure. After quite a while my companions made a bier out of bamboo and vines to carry the deceased back to our village.

When we arrived back to the village just before dawn, I was aware they were all storying about what had happened. As I listened to the story I kept hearing the words "ambe'na marissa this" and "ambe'na marissa that". I came to realise the major thing they were storying about in the midst of this dramatic event was what happened to "Marissa's dad", me. They were incredulous that a minor bloody scene like that could make me faint to the point where I had to go down into the chocolate plantation by the house to regain my balance.

"Can you believe it? He was pingsan. Pingsan after just looking at a dead man. Amazing."
"Surely he has seen a dead man before." Surely he has seen killing and murder before, even decapitation."
"We see it all time. It's common place. Every kid in the village has seen this stuff."
"What's wrong with him? What kind of a man is he? Aduh!" [An expression of exasperation and incredulity].

I know what Omawusi would say. Allow me to introduce you to her. She is a nurse in Ward 31 of the Middlemore Hospital - the Cardiac Ward. I met her during my stay in the Ward after my stroke in 2023. The change of shift for the new nurses had come to relieve the ones who had been looking after me overnight. The charge nurse was introducing all of the ladies to me and she mentioned Omawusi's name as she went down the line of nurses. She was clearly African and had an intriguing name. I heard it clearly and when I talked with her a short time later I used her name. She was surprised and said, "Oh my God, you got my name right. No one here pronounces my name correctly. But you heard it minutes ago and said it perfectly. How did you do that?"

I asked Omawusi where she came from and she said, "Yoruba."

My next question was "Did you live in Lagos, Nigeria?"

Again she was shocked and asked, "How did you know that?"

I replied, "I know the Yoruba are the predominant tribe in the South of Nigeria along the coast. The Hausa are in the central area and the Igbo are in the North Eastern corner and the Fulani are the nomadic pastoralists in the North."

She asked, "How did you know all of that about my country? Most people here know nothing about my country."

I told her, "I was a Geography teacher in High School here in New Zealand and taught the senior school Nigerian physical geography and the influence on settlement patterns. Now I work with Wycliffe Bible Translators and am aware of the distribution of the tribes and languages in a number of countries of Africa and elsewhere."

Omawusi didn't regard herself as Nigerian. She didn't classify herself after the name of her country. Rather, of highest importance to her, she was from the Yoruba tribe.

I shoot cats (domestic ones around our property). Before you react to that comment, allow me to explain. We are surrounded by stray and domestic cats and all their kittens. If I let them, they have taken to poohing on our section. So I bought two large-pump-action-water-pistols to dissuade them from doing that. One morning after I had been musing on the above and its application to the Four Living Beings of Revelation, I saw a cat up at the bird bath outside on the deck. I moved slowly to the ranchslider to open it and squirt the cat. I opened it as slow and silently as I could, all the time watching the cat. I was succeeding to the point where I began to slide the door open a crack. The cat's ears pricked up and moved upon which the cat turned in the direction of the [faint] noise. No sooner did it lay eyes on me but it leapt down and was running. It left me thinking, "Yes, cats' ears are fine-tuned to noises to alert them to danger or prey, domestic or wild. Is there one point of comparison here or two? Hearing and running?

I have had the privilege of knowing Des Oatridge, a New Zealand plumber who was challenged to become a Bible Translator with Wycliffe. Des & Jenny's story has been captured in the book Hidden People. Des was a plumber in Taranaki who attended a meeting one week night to hear a translator sharing his work as a Bible translator. During the course of the evening Des was taken with the thought that he should become involved. Des discovered that he had a hidden gift for this work. He had an incredible ear for sound and language. Des became one of Wycliffe Bible Translators most gifted phoneticians. The task of Bible translation is complicated. Each language in the world has complexity in some feature of the language. It may be hidden in the phonetics or the sounds of the language. It may be hidden in the complicated grammar governing how the language is structured. In order to communicate fullness of meaning, languages need to be complex. 

At the beginning of their work with the Binumarien people in Papua New Guinea Des found that God had gifted him for this work by giving him a phonetician's ear to pick up the subtle differences in speech. I remember sitting listening to Des pick up and put together the complexity of an unwritten language in a demonstration of how to go about his work. I was impressed and amazed. God's call came with God's enablement to do the work.  Des and Jenny's story is recorded by Lynette Oates  in the book “Hidden People: How a Remote New Guinea Culture Was Brought Back from the Brink of Extinction” by a New Zealand plumber. How can it be? Anything is possible when God is in the equation. The Oatridges' story is remarkable. Not only how a people group were saved from extinction, but also how God used the genealogy in Matthew 1 to capture the attention of this people group. Fisherman, plumber; it matters not when God is calling. 

I have shared our story of how we joined Wycliffe because of God's intervention on June 8th 1981. You can read various aspects of our story amidst the Ian Stories. But I will share now a part of the story I have not yet shared. I was put into the academic stream in high school and expected to learn Latin and French. However the way those languages were taught were so boring. We had to learn the grammar and were expected to memorise vocabulary lists. The thought didn't grab me at all, yet that was the expectation. I 'learned' Latin until the end of Fourth Form when I had no interest in learning it anymore. I continued French until 7th Form because I was told you needed a language unit in your degree. But never once did we have a French conversation among ourselves or better yet with real French speaking people. No, we just learned the grammar, the syntax of French sentences and endless word lists. At the end of 7th Form (Upper Sixth actually) our French teacher took us to a French play at Auckland University. None of us understood anything beyond the odd word here and there. I did not think that I was in any way cut out for languages or linguistics.

At Uni I took Indonesian as my required language unit. But half way through the year the requirement of taking a language paper in your degree was abolished. So I didn't bother with the lectures for the rest of the year. They just did not capture my attention. Needless to say my results in Latin, French and Indonesian were not good. The motivation was not there. But when God touched my button and I stepped out into the world of Linguistics after His Call I was turned on. I find it all so ironic now given the path I have travelled. 

Another branch to the story of Ian and languages is that I realised I really do have a gift for learning languages which has been proved again and again. However when we went to Indonesia and I learned my Indonesian in the East in Ujung Pandang (Makassar), Sulawesi. I learned the Eastern dialect of Indonesian in order to teach at the University. When we went to Jakarta a number of years later I was told I spoke funny Indonesian. I was delighted a number of years later when I took a group of colleagues from Kartidaya to Palu to teach Deeper Bible where I had trained the Jakarta based team to teach the course. But the attendees in Sulawesi, pastors and linguists and others complained they couldn't understand those teaching. "We can't understand you; we want Ian to teach us. Him we understand."  

All that to say, I think I understand John as result of my life experience. Yes it may be that John's Greek was not the educated, high-brow Greek of Athens. Yes he was a Hebrew speaker at heart, but had mastered the Greek language which was in fact the language of wider communication. God also had a purpose in the way John had been trained in order to communicate the message God wanted broadcast far and wide.    

I started thinking about about a time when I was in Sokcho as director of WBTNZ for a conference in this northern city in the mountains of South Korea. It was suggested that we might like to climb up to the Geumganggul Prayer Cave which was at the end of short walk amid the beauty of the forest in the area. It was indeed delightful. Then we arrive below the climb looking up; there were 800⁺ steps to negotiate to the cave. I was nearing 50 (years not steps) and was not as fit as what I had been as a tournament tennis player. But I wasn't going to be defeated. Sometimes you just have to dig your toes in and go for it which a group of us did. I guts it out to make it up there and finally reached the cave. Oh we took a break of a few minutes now and then but we got there. We took in the view, spent  a short time praying and then embarked on the homeward descent. I am sorry I don't have any photos of that time because back then I didn't have a cell phone in my pocket, but I am sure you can Google it. Besides, I am not wanting to impress with the grandeur of the scene, I am focused as was the writer of Hebrews on the homeward stretch to the goal.

The downward journey was in some ways worse than the climb up. It was without the burning sense in the lungs of sucking in a breath at altitude as we climbed, but on the descent it was the feeling in my fingers, knees and toes as I went down the same number of steps in reverse. I had a suspect knee due to an old tennis injury and I distinctly remember those three parts of my anatomy hurting in the quest to get down again: my fingers, knees and toes.  My knees were indeed getting shaky on the descent. I was tired after the climb and my knees began to shake more with each step downward. I found myself summoning fingers on the railing, as well as knees and toes into action to get my body down again without toppling forward on the steep stairs.

My parents owned a Milk Bar Dairy, a local shop open 7 days a week and long hours, so they didn't come to school events or sports days. In primary school on one of the school sports day, I was running and came first in my race. I was disappointed that my parents weren’t there to see me win but a neighbour was there.  Years later in a meeting at church for inner healing, the speaker prayed at the end that God would bring to mind something He wanted to heal. I was immediately back running my race on that sports day. It was as clear as being back there at the time. Months went by and one night when I couldn’t sleep, I decided to ask the Lord about that memory.  There I was running and I was out front and winning but I needed to see if my neighbour was watching and seeing me coming first. So while I was nearing the finish line I turned to look for my neighbour. But there on the stands was JESUS and HE was cheering me on! Suddenly it didn’t matter that my parents weren’t there. Jesus, the creator of the universe was there watching ME. I mattered to Him!  That was such an amazing revelation and put me on cloud 9 for months.

In June 1984 we produce a Vail Vagaries newsletter with an amusing account of something that had happened. Well we thought it was amusing at the time but others didn't. We had had a delay in our visa's coming through and wondered why. I had taken two books up to some Wycliffe folk who had been in Kalimantan for nine years. We were going to loan them one of the books on Islam in Indonesia and get them to read some selected portions of the New Testament in Indonesian so we could listen to the sentence patterns of the Indonesian language. On showing them both books they said, "You can't take those books into Indonesia with you." I said, "Why not? What's wrong with either book?" Nothing, the problem was my name stamp in the front of the book.

'Matamata' reduplicated like that was the problem. 'Mata' is the Indonesia word for 'eye', the reduplication turns the word into the plural 'eyes' or 'spy'. Putting that image along with my name stamp in our newsletter at a sensitive time was also a problem. Especially with the inference that perhaps we were spies. You can see how names and place names can become a problem in an unexpected way.

I have taken some spare moments I have had to work on this Gem despite all my light and momentary afflictions during this week. I have told you about the significance of Jesus sitting in the last Gem but now allow me to contrast it with Jesus standing. Read Gem 1482 to gain a new perspective on the difference between Jesus sitting and Jesus standing. I have been awake in the early hours of today and pondering this Gem and what I had written yesterday after getting my temporary office set up. I suddenly recalled what I had written on the significance of Jesus standing in Acts 7:56. I felt God was reminding me of what I had written in that past Gem. Of course, there is a little hidden gem of Scripture there. Prof Brown frequently reminded us that no word in Scripture is a throw-away. Every word is there for a purpose. This morning I felt Holy Spirit telling me "maintain your peace and poise in the midst of afflictions". When recalling the verse in Acts I thought of the significance of Jesus standing. Was He indeed giving Stephen a standing ovation for his faithfulness at his death? Then I thought of this verse:-

Dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honourable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Phil 4:8

I am beginning to think that Jesus stands and applauds you when you set aside your natural inclination to get upset, frustrated and even angry over your light and momentary afflictions. "Our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!" This morning when I opened up my computer I saw a response from Susan, from the DB 301 Seattle class. She had sent a devotional reading called Kita Harus Tenang Dan Sabar (We Have to be Calm and Patient). I marvel at the chain God used to send that prompt to me in addition to what He had prompted me to think on in the wee small hours. Using a American woman in the midst of an Indonesian church in Seattle to send me that message in the Indonesian language. That message came to Susan completely in Indonesian; she had to Google translate it in order to understand it. She then passed it on to me and her class mates.