When Ek Muntha was 18 years old, she rose from the grave. For three days she had lain there among the hollow-eyed dead, stripped bare, awaiting burial, while the pit was dug. On the third day she opened her eyes, struggled to her feet and wobbled shakily from the tangled mound of corpses.
An Introduction to Pastoral Care Nursing course has been hosted by the Golden Grove Lutheran Church specially for six nurses from Goroka in the Papua New Guinea highlands. The course also attracted two Australians, both of whom had a connection with PNG. Christiaan Hersevelt of Golden Grove had recently returned from Goroka after a short […]
When Marlene Pluckenhahn was a little girl, she wanted to be a missionary in Africa.
Nicole Graham from Biloela, North East Queensland, has had a desire to serve God as a missionary overseas for as long as she can remember. Having been exposed to this life by her parents, who have been involved in mission work, she felt that God had amply prepared her for this purpose. ‘I want to […]
On the busy Cambodian New Year weekend in April 2012, we travelled 2 hours via bus to the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church (‘Life Centre’) in Krus village, Kampong Chhnang province. The journey led us to a small village surrounded by rice paddies, and inhabited by farmers and basket weavers, cows and chickens. The Life Centre […]
‘Christian missions began with an explosion of joy. Christian mission in its most basic form is communicating this joy. Mission is a task marked by tremendous joy as we seek to proclaim God’s message.’ With these words, Bishop Philip Lok of the Lutheran Church in Malaysia opened the first day of the Mekong Mission Forum, […]
Death of a parent, breakdown of marriage, the experience of being abandon, poverty…these are some of the harsh realities of life in our world. For vulnerable children, these experiences can mean isolation, homelessness, a deeper experience of poverty, a loss of identity and dignity, and loss of their family or a place to call home. […]
‘Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing’ – 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NIV) Visit the Lutheran Churches in Singapore, Malaysia (the mainland Peninsula and Sabah), Thailand, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea and you will see the encouraging influences of the LCA scholarship program. Scholarship recipients are nominated by […]
For those of us living in Australia, education is taken as a right for children. To be able to have the minimum of primary and secondary education is not even questioned. For some the opportunity even exists to have an education based in a private school. And following this grounding in the formative years our […]
Hanna’s call translates to 20 years away from home At the commissioning service for a Bible translator, what could be more appropriate than hearing the Scriptures read in languages other than English? On Sunday, 18 March, Hanna Schulz was commissioned as a lay worker, called by the LCA to serve as a Bible translator with […]