West Vanua Lava Mission 2011

Mission: Clear 2 Airstrips on the West Coast of Vanua Lava within 27days.
The Team:
Peter and Nichole Klan with Jennifer 9yrs, Emily 7yrs and Jack 5yrs
Darren and Naomi Vaotuua with Lily 8yrs and Bethany 4yrs
And Mr Wesley Mooi




This is my account of the mission to Vanua Lava, which is the largest island of the Banks group in the Northern Torba Province of Vanuatu. This was our third trip to Vanuatu in the past 18months and this turned out to be truly the most challenging - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

We were in Vanuatu from the 19th July to the 14th August a total of 27 days. Landing on Sola airport on the 21st July, which is a commercial airstrip, we then took a Landcruiser ute to the end of the road but from then on it was all by foot. We trekked over 2 hours through rain and mud along a rugged coastline with several river crossings with 5 children to the village of Crepeta, which was our halfway point. Bethany, my little four year old, was carried most of the way and was chilled in the rain. The next day we trekked the rest of the way to the west coast another 2 hours or more to the village of Singalav which is the only fully Adventist village in the Torba province. Singalav was a real blessing and we spent our first Sabbath with them. Pr Peter Vanva has his home here and is the pastor for the Torba province with some 500 members spread out over these northern remote islands. He travels from church to church in his outboard motor Banana Boat. It was so nice to sleep without hearing the sound of Kava being prepared or having pigs running around everywhere. The people truly were family and this little village was to be a home away from home.

The next day after enjoying a morning swim at the black sand beach of Vereas Bay with our Adventist Family it was another just over an hour hike to our destination at the South Western tip of the island, Wasaga. The people welcomed us warmly and we came to love them and made many friends there. ADRA had been here before and done a large water project for this village and so the people were not against having Adventists come (though the only Adventist family had to live some distance form the village!). Over the week the people worked hard with us as we cleared some 350m or more of airstrip except for 4 massive trees, which I say more about later.

You may be wondering why we are doing this? My friend Dr Mark Turnbull and his wife Naomi and daughter Kay at missionaries for the Adventist Church working under the umbrella of Laymen’s Ministries. With Mark providing acute medical care to these remote people with the help of a neat little airplane called a Maul he travels from Island to Island using the Medical Ministry as a means to 2 come close to the people who are  mostly Anglican or some other Christian but almost all are overcome with the old fears and superstitious beliefs of the past. Naomi is principle of an SDA school on Gaua and just last year they opened their second little school on the island of Merelava. With the use of firstly Medical Ministry followed by Adventist  education God is opening the people’s hearts to access the true gospel and no longer live in the fear of the spirits and bondage to sin and vice. These airstrips open up the way for this work to go forward in remote locations where Mark cannot yet access.

Now back to the massive Trees… They were 3 huge hardwood trees and one large wild Navel nut tree. We soon realised that our chainsaws were much to small for the job and not safe to even attempt it so with a prayer, a quick video clip Mark travelled to home base on Gaua to post an email asking for people to pray for our need and the next day donations had been made to buy the largest Chainsaw Vanuatu had on there shelf! A big Husky with a 3ft bar! We could have used bigger but 3ft it was and we were thankful. As it would take a few days to get the chainsaw to us we decided to leave the big trees and move on to our next project at Leon Bay. But before I go on…..Whilst we were making friends with the men and pikininis (kids) who worked with us on the airstrip the ladies and children of ours where doing a wonderful work back at the village. By mid week God had opened a way for a Women’s Prayer Meeting, which the local non adventist women had asked for! The women’s department leader for the village had shared her heart with my wife that every day they have sin and temptation and no freedom even though they worship in the Anglican Church faithfully every week and she wanted to know if SDA had the answers! My wife asked if they studied the Bible and she said they would love to if only someone could teach them. My wife and Nicky willingly said “Yes” so the next day they had a study and sing sing and God truly Blessed.

On Sabbath a wonderful turn out of mamas, pikininis, youth and papas had gathered to our hut by the seaside to worship with us. We could trace the larger proportion of the group to the invitation of a special young lady named Lisa who had become close friends with my wife Naomi. Lisa was hungry for the truth and everything she learned during our stay there she wholeheartedly applied to her life. That Sabbath was Independence Celebrations for them so our message for them was that true freedom was found only in Jesus and that for those who would put there trust in Him every Sabbath was “Independence Day!”. Through the influence of Lise her papa and mama also wanted to study more in the future about what the Bible has to say and our Advent hope!

With a prayer, a handshake for every villager and a “goodnight” we left Wasaga on our way trekking back to Singalav on our way to Leon Bay that is the North Western tip of the island. After and hour or so we find ourselves again on the Black sand beach of Vereas Bay. Most the kids sick, Wes and I sick and one of the kids with a sprained ankle and everyone very tired! It had been such a full on flat stick pace and it was all starting to take a toll on the group. Up until this point we had avoided doing any open sea travel in Pr Peter’s 3 boat because of the obvious risks though in God’s great mercy the sea that day was calm and glassy. As it turned out it would be the last clam day of the trip as it was the beginning of big wind season with some 4m waves at its peak later that week! With a prayer we had God’s peace on the decision and we decided to go on Pr Peter’s boat to the next village Vatrata where we would work on an airstrip at Leon Bay. After landing on the rocky coral shore it was a steep 15-20m slippery climb up to the plateau where the village was. Here we received a very formal welcome and given the community long house to stay in.

The people again were friendly but something was different…Here ADRA hadn’t been before us and there was a reservation and almost chilliness behind the smiles of the people. The children only spoke the local language and French (as the local school was run by French speaking teachers) and so our children found it harder to make friends here. The people were more than happy to peek in and watch you but not really to come close and get to know you. This one was a real frontier for Adventist Mission. But there were those who weren’t so reserved and cautious of us. There was John and Olive and kids who were Adventists and lived some distance and across a large river from the village – they looked after us and worshiped with us. There was the AOG Pr Wilton and his wife Rawlin and the newly converted to AOG Jeanette and her family. As it turned out it was those who were not born in Vatrata who came close to us during our stay… Only God knows why. It did seem that there many who would have come and “hung out” but would only smile and say a few nice greetings and move on. Then there was David John who became a real brother to us during our trip and worked hard only side us the whole time. It was David who would take us to the big river to swim and hang out after work every day. Wes in particular love to swim in the beautiful mountain river.

It was 45min hike down the steep mountainside then along the coastline to get to the site of the airstrip. The land was fairly smooth which is perfect for an airstrip, the trees workable. From our initial surveying this looked like an easy one and if the people here worked as hard as they boasted they could it would have been a “walk in the park”. But something wasn’t right… The people just had no heart for the work. They would work in very short bursts and it seemed would prefer to go fishing for the afternoon or dig for crabs or just simply sit and watch us whilst drinking a green coconut from the tree that we had fallen previously…What could have been fairly straightforward work was proving to be difficult and dangerous, as the preparation work that could be done with many hands on bush knives was not being done. Sick with flu like symptoms and disheartened I was becoming frustrated. Here we were putting everything for these people working in the rain and yet they struggled to do the simple things to help make it safer and achievable. I was dealing with some risky trees to be falling and cutting up with little help from them and yet they ask me to cut a nice path for them so they can do their work with little effort! Or worse they call me off the airstrip to cut a log to chase coconut crabs! It was a real battle of the heart for me and I prayed so much for the likeness of Jesus to be in my heart.

By Friday I knew the only place for me was to go find Jesus at Calvary. With some time in the word of God and a soul-stirring hymn called “Were you there” I found myself broken and contrite and placed my helpless self in the hands of Jesus. What we learnt later was that a strong fear of evil spirits was one key factor in their reluctance to work. Some decades earlier the site of the airstrip was where the original village was placed but after a disaster involving an earthquake, landslide, tsunami combo killing many people and destroying the village it was considered that the land was cursed.

That Friday was to be our last day on the Leon Bay airstrip and the pressure was on to safely and prayerfully do all we could before the day was out for we planned to hike out on Sunday to finish the work we had left in Wasaga.

Here my story turns to my friend Wesley Mooi. This was the second trip Wes had come on. He was a deacon from Beaudesert SDA and an Auto Sparky with a careful methodical mind Wes was invaluable to the work we were doing and not only that a true Christian brother who was a real encouragement to me this trip.

It was Wes that by his quite and calm example had helped me when I was battling my heart there working with the people at Leon Bay Airstrip. That Friday morning Wes had an extra long devotion time with the LORD. There we were singing song after song with the kids waiting for Wes to join us until finally we closed with prayer, as Breakfast was ready! From there it was off to the strip down the same steep mountainside as before. It was super windy that day as we began to work. The people had come out in force and for the first time they were really beginning to work! We had 2 main objectives for this day. First was to cut up all that we had fallen to clear the runway section. Second was there were some massive trees including several huge Nambunga Trees along the far side away from the sea that had large branches arching over the strip which had to be either doctored or fallen. I was left to complete the first object as Pete and Wes who each had a lot of experience went to tackle the massive trees. By lunch they had successfully fallen the smaller but still huge Nambunga Tree. A Nambunga tree is something like a Curtain fig also known as a Banyan. It’s a huge twisted mess of a tree with no real trunk and sometimes the host tree dead inside. With that done we stopped for lunch. After lunch I was again left on the airstrip whilst Pete and Wes now went to tackle the biggest of the trees. You may assume that after a tree has been fallen its pretty harmless but this was in no way the case. After lunch I was dealing with some real dangerous stuff. A tree had been fallen and it had a branch towering up into the sky which was the size of a large tree itself with the main trunk on the ground but instead of sitting
still the entire tree was teetering like a see-saw ready to roll with any wrong move. With a prayer and the help of the locals and some vine the tree was safely rolled and grounded so I could cut it up. So I continued cutting up when all of a sudden I heard a ugly roaring and cracking of a tree breaking up…I turned to see the canopy of a huge Nambunga Tree fall apart almost the full face of the tree that faced the airstrip. I knew something had happened that wasn’t to plan but never imagined what was to unfold. Within moments a young man ran up to me, “Darren yu mas cum, Peter e ded!”…

I ran from where I was some 100m down the strip over and around piles of fallen trees and debris all the while hoping that my understanding of his Bislama was wrong. I came to the tree only to find Peter searching amongst the fallen massive branches of the Nambunga Tree. My heart was overwhelmed. Where is Wes? Please LORD, please let him be OK…Within moments we found Wes…Words are hard to find to describe the events that followed. Our brother Wesley had died serving the LORD in the mission field to open the way to Adventist Health Work to reach a people that so needed the true gospel to set them free from sin and fear.

With tears running down my face it was a heavyhearted walk back to village with the locals carrying Wes on a stretcher they had made. After a phone call to Dr Mark a decision was made that he needed to be taken to Sola on the east coast that night to help preserve him for his family and get him back to Australia as soon as possible. Peter along with the local men hiked the journey and managed to do it in a record 4hours at top speed.

We had come back to the village with the message to our children and ladies that Uncle Wes had died and oh how it broke their heart… I can say truly that my children have really grown through this mission trip and have a sense of the blessing and need for the gospel work to go forward and not even death can keep us from Jesus.

I would have gone with the men to take Wes to Sola however a turn of events happened that prevented me. Back on the airstrip the very last tree I was cutting was a tree that they had told me to never let the sap get into my eyes. But with the heartbreak and tears that only comes with the grief of losing a loved one I cried the sap right into my eyes. By the time I had reached the village I had all but lost my sight and was in real pain but my heart was for my wife and children and so I looked for them. After sharing a long firm embrace together in an attempt to heal the heart, with tears for our brother and speaking hope to the children the focus then turned to what was wrong with my eyes. Was it possible that I had cried myself blind!?

One of the young men who was an Anglican and had spent time with us because he said he loved Adventist hymns came to me and I heard him say something about water so I said yes please. Before long he had returned with a cup of water and was performing a chant circling the cup over my head as I knelt on the ground with my children. Realising that this was no water to wash my eyes I immediately told him to stop…. This highlighted for me just how shallow and fake their Christian experience was with the same Spiritualistic ways still very much a part of them today. The Devil still thinks that Vatrata is his but I know God will use this simple work we were privileged to be a part of and the story of Wes to break down the walls of fear and set the people free with the gospel….

I spent the rest of that afternoon down by the river letting the water run freely over my eyes. With the help of some sugar cane juice that the AOG pastors mother in law gave me, plenty of washing in the river and a lot of prayer I was functional by dinner time and was restored by the morning. Even this turned out for good. The Lord had stopped me in my tracks and all I could do was pray and oh how I needed to pray. All the time that I spent by the river I searched the mind for promises that I had hidden away which proved to be an anchor in a time like this.

Sabbath was solemn and yet we were at peace in the LORD. Peter and the boys returned from Sola just before lunch. They had spent the night in Sola with Dr Mark before returning and made the trip in record speed of 2hr 20mins! That Sabbath we sang and shared promises all day with the Adventist family and our
AOG friends. They were a real comfort to us. The rest of the villagers out of respect kept a distance though we would have welcomed them to worship with us.

Our brother now asleep until Jesus comes, we had the question of where to from here? The Mobile tower was out so we couldn’t contact anyone to discuss what to do… Is it game over? Do we leave and get the kids out? OR… DO we finish the work that we had been given to do and return to Wasaga as planned? So we prayed. We knew that God wanted us to go forward and complete the work and we also know that our brother Wes would have wanted us to as well. So we hiked back to Singalav, the Adventist village with the family.

Leaving our family in the care of our Adventist friends Pete and I with the men of Singalav hiked the next day with the chainsaw gear to Wasaga to finish the work God had called us to do. Oh how we had to continue to pray. Often I would find myself shedding a tear but then girding myself in the strength of the LORD. That day the 4 large trees we left were successfully and safely felled and the next day we spent cutting up. That arvo we left with many tearful embraces… Our work done but the LORD’s work only just beginning…After hiking back to the east coast and returning to the mission base at Gaua where Mark and his family have there home we had time to reflect and learn from our journey. What we discovered was that if we had decided to go home after Wesley had died the fear of the people would have deepened and the work of completing an airstrip would have ceased. The decision to go forward said Our God is greater than any evil spirit and even if the devil should kill us the work of the LORD will go forward!

The Story of Wes and the work that was done in West Vanua Lava will travel through all the islands of Vanuatu and it is our prayer that God who makes all things work for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose will use this for victory.

Wesley Mooi -  who fought the good fight.

Take home lesson from the trip: ROMANS 8:35-38 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written: “ For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.


Live for Jesus. Love for Jesus. Love not just in word but also in deed. Trust Him in every way and rejoice always. Anchor your hope in Him. He is calling you. He has a mission for you to do to. Will you let Him work through your life today?

In brotherly love,

Darren Vaotuua
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In loving memory of our brother Wesley John Mooi who died serving the LORD
with his whole heart. His prayer was always Ps 51:10,11 and Wes cherished the
answer in Ez 36:26. Wes loved beautiful things and took time to appreciate them.

Heaven will be full of beautiful things

The day the trees were cleared

Capt. Faato calling the shots

It's the 6th of November, it's now 8.45pm and I'm as tired as a three-toed sloth after running a marathon. Today was a working bee, and our Deacon Leader Fatoaaga had made it quite clear and given us ample time to make today the date where the men would get together to clear the trees at the back of the church. He mentioned to e that it would begin at 8am, however I didn't arrive until closer to 9am, finding George, Callum on the whipper snipper, Fato mowing away, and Anthony weeding in the front garden. Fato said to tidy up around the grounds until the truck and chainsaws arrived so I joined Anthony and we discussed his 3 month leave trip while weeding away.

Soon more numbers turned up, Jake turned up with a chansaw, and both Fato and Jake gave us a run down on what and how to we were keep safety a priority.

Anthony pulling branches to the pile

The job started, and more numbers joined the ranks with Peter's truck that he kindly lended us, (with Peter and Darren inside) and bigger chainsaws. Once the chainsaws arrived, the falling of trees was rapid. Craig, and Peter were the main players in getting the trees down, then George, Fato, and Jake started cleaning up the branches.

The rest of us, ranging from the youngest boys Jeff and Callum to our eldest soldier Ross, dragged the branches and logs into a pile, and eventually the pile to the truck.

The dark horse for me today was the young buck Callum, this guy worked like a machine and after he left, the boys and I were discussing how intimidating it was to work with someone that works double-time. He gave me timely advice on how to use certain tools and how avoid double or triple handling, and he looked as if he was in his element.

It did cause me to think also that the men at our church needed something like this. Callum won't be quick to put his hand up when looking for someone to lead out in a service, but at doing what we were doing today, he rose above standard.

Callum and Sam moving the larger branches

Quite often we don't get this opportunity, as our evangelical efforts are based around seminars, small group discussions, talks etc. I don't mind this stuff, actually I'm more comfortable with it, but getting the hands dirty, working up a sweat, getting cuts, blisters etc brings a man back to his core creation of arduous work. It's rewarding and it's fun.

All the men enjoyed working, talking, and teaching each other as we carried out the work that needed to be done. The job was hard and we were volunteers working in the hot sun, but together. We had a laugh and socialised both on breaks and during work, and we lunched together.

We didn't finish up until around 5pm, the job is still not yet complete, but it sure is satisfying to see the huge difference of how it was before, and how it is now.

All us men that attended have left our mark on the back of the EL church. We can tell our kids and the future EL members that we were there the day that the trees were cut down so that driveway, gazebo, garden etc could be placed there. It's too bad this isn't as frequent as it was for men in past generations. But I'm sure glad  that we can recreate this environment. Maybe the men at EL should seriously start thinking on how we could continue and maintain this comradare......a possible mission overseas perhaps? Maybe even offering our services on community projects?

The money the EL donated will be going to assist Darrens pastor Friend in Vanuatu, so we're happy to do it for this reason, but surely we can find more.

God bless all the men today, thanks heaps to Fato for giving up a full Sunday to dedicate to the project (and yes I am fully aware you were at Haylees 21st the night before.....and I left before you too). I really enjoyed it. I hope we can do it again sometime.

Shalom,

Dave