Current Ministy

Imagine you live in the middle of the jungle or on a small island miles from anywhere and your pen runs out of ink or you notice your toilet paper roll is getting small. What do you do? You could hike out of the jungle or take a dug out canoe out to sea. It would only take 2 days by walking or paddling to get to a small town on the coast. A ship comes by every 4 to 6 weeks that you could jump on and go to a city and buy your supplies then wait for another ship to bring you back. Then you would have to find a way to get all your supplies back to your house. You've been gone from your ministry and family for almost 2 months now and both are suffering and in bad shape. How can it be done better?

One idea would be to have a guy live on the coast. Instead of you hiking, rowing and leaving your location, you could have someone do the work for you. This is where we come in. I say "we" because my family all works together at this. You give your supply order to us on the HF radio. This is very impersonal as everything you need is being broadcasted on the radio for all to hear and there are many radios out there. This is what you had to do for the past 15 years. Now, someone came up with a modem the size of your VCR that connects to your radio and you can send your order out by e-mail. It's slow, 2400 baud, but it works and your wife feels better about the privacy aspect.

We then compile the orders, and somehow get them to the town where the ship will be coming from. This alone is a challenge as the phones do not work half the time. Carrier pigeons have been considered. The stores in the town of Lae gets their supplies mostly from Australia and China.

Once the orders get to the stores, they are haphazardly put together. They attempt to get the needed supplies to the wharf before the ship sails. For the most part, they do a pretty good job. On a scale of 1 to 5, I'd have to grade them with a 3. Most everything we need comes on that ship. Food, fuel (comes in 44 gal. drums), building materials, hardware items, and personal items.

The barge takes 18 to 20 hours to get to us once it leaves Lae. When it arrives, my family picks up all the supplies. We bring them back to our house and sort everything for each family. We have a room under where we live that has bins for each location. When the team needs their supplies, we load up the truck with 3/4-ton of supplies and head off for a 1.5 to 3.5 hour truck ride into the jungle. We average 15 mph, so it's an all-day affair. In the old days when there were no roads into the areas, we would use 30 carriers--men, women and children--who would then carry all the supplies for a couple hours into the jungle where the missionaries lived. Timber companies have made roads into these areas but now that the timber companies are gone, their roads will soon be impassable. We are always alert for large holes in the road or bridges that have collapsed.

Another aspect of the work is the billing of all the supplies that come in to each respective family. We average about a quarter of a million dollars worth of supplies each year.

Three years ago, the LORD supplied funds for a boat and now we also supply a family living on an island filling the boat with a ton of supplies for each run.

Over the past 17 years we have supplied 18 families in 8 different tribal locations this way. We are looking for 2 more families to live up the coast in an area that has no gospel witness, and we will supply them as well.

Because of our coastal location, we had a guest house built where families can come take a break from the monotony of isolated living. Also, visitors heading into the jungle have a place to stay. Our family books and maintains these 2 guest house flats as well as maintaining the boat and trucks and keeping the grounds looking nice.

You can be a part of Mark and Joan's work. They can be helped by your prayers and interest and financial support if you are led to help in that way. It is a trying and stressful ministry at times and they would deeply appreciate your involvement in their lives.

Their e-mail address is mark_reichman@ntm.org