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A man from Enga

PNG the Land of the Unexpected

Rev Bob Frisken AM

PNG -- During April and May Bob Frisken, Alison Bannister and Stephen Spies visited PNG to conduct the first of the Effective Teacher Training Seminars for the United Church in PNG at Rabaul. As part of the visit the team also visited The Foursquare Church schools at Wapenamanda led by Rosalie and Kevin Bell and Ray Bartell Education Director for the Baptist Union of PNG to discuss the possibility of undertaking training in 2008. The visit highlighted the importance of the training program and the opportunity that God has given Christian schools to make a significant contribution to education and development in PNG. As the country struggles with the problems encountered by most of the Pacific Islands developing nations many people there are seeing a return to Christian values through truly Christian schooling as the best hope for this emerging nation

Children in class at Wapenamanda Christian Primary School show the Maths Books donated through NHI

Four Square Church Visit
The team visited Rosalie and Kevin Bell at Wapenamanda and inspected the High School which Kevin leads and the Primary School (up to Form 8) which Rosalie leads. Both of them are doing a wonderful job under difficult conditions. Kevin has brought a very firm but kindly discipline to staff and students. He appears to be developing a well organised and efficient school which caters for boys and girls in Forms 9 and 10. The students we met gave evidence of a strong Christian commitment.
Rosalie is also doing a great job in the primary school. She has a couple of untrained teachers who she is training. They are probably getting a better training than they would receive in a PNG Training Institute. As part of her training she is instilling values of efficiency and responsibility. The untrained teachers have only reached Grade Ten Standard and both of them are currently enrolled in Grade 11 through correspondence. I promised to investigate the possibility of their doing the Bethlehem Diploma Course. They do not have matriculation but given their experience and their roles in the classroom they may qualify for Mature Age Matriculation status.
Rosalie is doing a great job in developing the school’s curriculum in line with the new PNG Reform Curriculum. She is making us of existing PNG Govt material as well as trying to incorporate some of the CCS material. To date, however, he has not found a way to incorporate Christian values in the Reform Curriculum. While we were there we discussed ways of doing this. Rosalie offered to make the work she is doing available to NHI. We in turn agreed to work on it and to give her access to all we do.
As we discussed this is occurred to us that we could use the third phase of our Effective Christian teaching training program to undertake training in developing outcomes based curriculum from a Christian perspective. As we discussed this there appeared to be value in arranging for Sarah Harrison to visit PNG to work with Rosalie in developing the outcomes based curriculum work. Alison and I agreed that we could ask Sarah to accept responsibility for this task as a major role in her work.
Kevin arranged for us to meet with the education Department Officers at Wabag, the provincial Capital of the Enga Province. Although the inspectors who originally requested the meeting could not be present because of an inservice meting in Lae, the meeting went ahead with other senior Departmental officers and a couple of Principals of Government Schools. I made a presentation of the program we were undertaking and there was a very positive response from all those attending the meeting, and they asked if is would be possible to us to offer the course in Government schools. Many stated that this was what their Province was waiting for and that this was the time to act. One expressed the wish that the Enga Province might serve as a pilot program for their nation. We made no promises or commitments but indicated a wiliness to consider any approaches once the national elections were over. Kevin will monitor the situation for us.

The team with Ray and Trish Bartell in their home at Mount Hagen

Baptist Union of PNG
Following our visit to the Enga Province we returned by road with Rosalie and Kevin to Mt Hagen in the Western Highlands Province. We had a warm and very encouraging meeting with Ray Bartell. We reached agreement about the need for the training next year but did not really finalise how this would be done. We are currently exploring the possibility of doing this around Easter either with a parallel training course in the Enga province or ideally a combined training at Mt Hagen or Wabag or at Wapenamanda.
Bob Frisken discussed with Ray the possibility of the Outcomes Based Curriculum development and we agreed that we could adjust the program to offer the curriculum training in the second phase of the program so that BUPNG could do it in 2009. We discussed the possibility of one of the Principals being seconded to NHI for a 6 month attachment to work with Sarah Harrison in the development of the Curriculum Course. Ray thought that this might be possible as they had one of their best principals available currently because of threats to his life. He is currently in hiding. Bob Frisken agreed to write a proposal and email it to Ray. NHI indicted it could provide accommodation for him for a 6 month period.

Rev Bob Frisken, President of NHI with the Moderator of the United Church in PNG who opened the Training Seminar

United Church in PNG
Following our visit to Enga and Western Highlands Province we returned to Port Moresby where we stayed at MAPANG. Patrick Guiyer the President of the Baptist Union of PNG and the Chair of the Education Board came to visit us and Ali and I spend a couple of hours explaining what our team was about. He seemed to be very supportive of what we wanted to do.
That evening we went with Simon Gawa and spoke at a meeting of the church in the settlement where he and Ken minister
On Saturday we travelled to Rabaul. We met Bishop Albert Burua the Bishop of Rabaul. He was interested in what we were doing but did not seem as committed to the idea as others.
There were aver 33 delegates at the conference and we were delighted with the warm hearted and enthusiastic response. People listened avidly and joined in discussion enthusiastically. The Assembly Education Secretary Abraham Lampulubu told me that he has invited people who were on fire. Those there included all the Education Secretaries and so it is likely that not all of these were equally committed. However there were no dissonant voices in the sessions the conference and we were delighted with the response. Some of the devotionals were quite inspiring and we had good times of prayer together. Mr Biango Buia Assembly Development Officer did not arrive until the Monday but he continued to give strong leadership and support.
We were due to sign the MOU on Monday night but there was a blackout due to failure to prepay for the electricity. Thus there was no opportunity to sign it. However the Moderator Rev Sampson decided to stay on an extra day in order to do so. In his address he strongly commended the program and encouraged delegates to enthusiastically embrace it as the best opportunity the church had to rebuild a generation of young Christians.
As the program was presented the team made a number of changes to the approach used. It soon became evident that in most cases that it would be better to spread the teaching over two sessions rather than to try to teach in the first and have practical exercises in the second. We quickly discovered that the Workshop Manual was more of a distraction than a help and we stopped using it.
There was clear evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit with many seesions ending in quiet periods and sometime with people in tears.
Over all the lectures were extremely well received and the delegate were committed to using the approach. The two practical sessions proved very helpful. The trainees were divided into four groups with Abraham taking one and the rest of the team the other three. Every person gave one lecture. Most of them were about 15 minutes in length. This is probably how long they will give their introductions when they give the presentations.
As we discuss the seminars with Abraham it seemed a very good idea for us to attempt to develop a training session in Australia where we could train Papuan New Guinean who could be trainers of trainers. Abraham believed that the United Church would send two or three trainers with perhaps one or two from Gaulim teachers college. Gaulim Teachers College would be an idea place to do start a permanent training course.
On the trip home from the Centre we were driven to the Airport by the Chaplin of Gaulim Teacher’s College who was delighted when he heard what we were doing and said that this was exactly in line with what they were trying to do at the College. This is a very encouraging development.