“Everyone wants you to stay here.”

“Don’t worry if you hear shouting, fighting, gunshots or bombs. You are safe.”

“No one from either side will hurt you.”

These snippets of conversation between a villager and Orion were not really producing the calm and peace that the people had intended.

There has been an ongoing fight between these villages for generations. An outsider traveling by along the river would have no idea that they just passed through two villages because there isn’t a very defined boundary between them. The people are intermarried, work together, worship together, have a market together, and mostly get along quite well, except when these old jealousies and feelings are allowed to take free rein.

After hearing these words of comfort, Orion sent a message to our supervisors and prayer team before taking his Bible and walking down to our fuel shed, where he unlocked the door and carried a chair to the small cement area in front. There, sitting in the shade of the awning, Orion prayed, read his Bible, and observed a very heated discussion erupting diagonally across the river and downstream from him. The young men of the downriver village were trying to convince their community leaders, including some church members, to allow them to start fighting the upriver villagers.

Five years ago, the upriver village fought with the downriver village. One person from the upriver village died, and 27 houses were burned in the downriver village.1

Now, the downriver villagers were feeling jealous as the upriver villagers were able to use their money for improvements like a solar panel, a piece or two of roofing tin, and some guttering to make a water-collection area. The downriver people were still struggling to recover from losing everything except their lives and the clothes on their backs when they ran from their burning houses before daybreak.

Though we had given the downriver villagers almost everything of ours that we could replace and that would be of use to the affected families, and though AFM also sent care packages, the upriver village had never tried to give any real recompense. Some downriver villagers were now thinking about taking it by force, returning some of their own medicine to the upriver village.

As Orion prayed, he recognized a spiritual attack. Five years ago, the fighting occurred right after he began meeting with the church elders twice weekly for some very deep Bible studies using stories to cover challenging topics relevant to their lives. This time, the fighting started Saturday night, right after distributing a set of Bible lessons to the baptismal preparation Sabbath school class. The lessons, written in the Tok Pisin language, covered some of the 28 fundamental beliefs.

Orion kept praying, reading, watching and sitting.

Meanwhile, I stayed in contact with our supervisor, confirmed our “safe place to go,” packed our emergency travel supplies, and prayed steadily.

Three or four hours later, when the shade of the awning was no longer protecting Orion from the sun, he put the chair inside and came up to the house.

The angry discussion from across the river had dissipated some, but we did not see any real change.

We lived in tension for the next few days, waiting. Then a mediator from another village was enlisted to help, and Orion prayed with leaders from the two contentious villages. During this time, church attendance was sparse, yet nothing else happened.

Soon the church attendance picked back up, and we took it as a sign that things were not so tense.

Someone came to talk to Orion. “You blocked the fight,” they explained. “Your fuel shed is on the point of land that defines the border between the two villages. You represent the Adventist Mission, the Church and the government. By sitting there, at the point of land that defines the change from one village to another, you gave the clear message that ‘you cannot cross this line to do harm without first coming through me.’”

God used Orion to stop this most recent outbreak of fighting . . . by his sitting in a chair, reading his Bible, praying and watching.

Psalms 46:10 (NIV) says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

It has now been a full month. The upriver village has not sent any recompense. No fighting has occurred. We have heard no explosions. We never needed to use our evacuation plans.

God is so good!

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