Hi, my name is Jean, and I would like to tell you about something exciting that happened to me one morning recently.

Like all good chickens, I was scratching around in the dirt under my mistress’s house in the wee hours of the morning looking for bits of leftover sago. As usual, Uncle Charlie hopped onto a pile of firewood and belted out, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” But something was different about this morning. My mistress didn’t get up early like she usually does to go fishing. In fact, she was humming a tune as she put on her best clothes. It was Sabbath. I must have looked too longingly at her when she came down the ladder because she walked right over, gently picked me up and carried me down to the canoe landing. Where are we going? I wondered.

Setting me in the bottom of her dugout canoe, she stepped in behind me and shoved off. Standing straight and tall, she dipped her paddle silently into the muddy water as we glided through swamp grass out to the creek. It was a glorious morning. The sun was shining, and the birds were singing. I noticed other people canoeing the same direction we were. All too quickly, our canoe slid to a stop on a muddy bank beneath some bamboo trees. In the distance, I heard some beautiful singing. My mistress scooped me up and placed me in her colorful bag next to her Bible. The singing got louder as we crested a grassy slope leading to a big white house. I strained my neck to look over the edge of the bag. My mistress took me out of the bag and left me on the grass while she disappeared through a door.

Unsure of my surroundings, I approached the building. Flapping my wings, I jumped up onto a fuel drum outside a window, and I peered through the wire window grille. The room was full of people, and I noticed some familiar faces. I even saw a white man and three white ladies! You don’t see that very often around here. People had Bibles open on their laps, and the white man read aloud from his. All the people looked so happy! I saw my neighbor Andrew, and there was his wife and baby, too! Only last week, I heard that his wife was so against churches of any kind that she blocked the creek with her canoe as Andrew and his friend were paddling to the mission house. Andrew meekly stepped into her canoe and went back home with her. How amazing that she is here in church with him now! Something is really going on here. People are changing.

I saw another neighbor, Carlyle, whom I had often seen carrying colorful Bible lessons past our house. His three kids were there, too, but I didn’t see his wife. Maybe he will persuade her to come with him next week. Then I saw my good friend, Edward. Edward is mentally handicapped, but he is so fun to play with and always has time for me. He can’t read, but he went to Bible classes at the missionaries’ house and got his lesson papers anyway. He didn’t waste them. No, he passed them on to his Uncle Andrew. Yes, Edward, a mentally handicapped boy, is the reason Andrew and now his wife are attending church. God works in amazing ways! If only I was a person! Then I could learn what it is in those Bibles that is changing people.

Perhaps Jean the chicken didn’t actually think all those thoughts, but she did in fact come to Sabbath School and church and poked her head through the window behind the preacher. She almost got stuck in the security wire trying to get in. The stories of Andrew, Carlyle and Edward are also true. We hope you are blessed by this snapshot of the work that God is doing in the lives of our Gogodala friends.

• Twitter