The work of the Baptist Churches in Indonesian Papua is regarded as part of a miraculous story, the history is currently being written so the story can be shared.
The current challenge is to maintain relevance in a swiftly changing scene. People who still live in the highland villages are still subsistence farmers. They have more agricultural options in terms of new vegetables and small animals (chickens and rabbits) than their grandparents, but they must work just as hard and their pigs are affected by a number of introduced diseases that reduces the amount of pork they can access.
However, many Dani people have moved to the towns for education and work. Some have become tradesmen, most in the building industry, and those who achieve educationally can become government clerks and officials or teachers. So while some are happily accessing the net, others are still living close to nature as their predecessors did.
Introduced disease, HIV/AIDS and malaria, produce many problems that the government health service does not seem to be coping with adequately. Dr Thelma Becroft was responsible for a state of the art primary health program before her death on the field in 1988, and she had paved the way for its inclusion in the Indonesian public system, but it deteriorated after that and Helen and Rod Bensley (GIA) are currently attempting to improve both their financial systems and their drug and equipment supplies.
The Dani (in common with most Melanesians) are anxious about the intentions of the government who they believe are attempting to wrest their land from them and force them to accept Islam. Not all of this is a real threat, but they cannot differentiate between the actions of individual Indonesians and government policies. For this reason they want their best students to be trained in law so that some of their number will be able to explain government intentions to them and protect them from the illegal activities of individuals.
Please be in prayer for the ongoingwork that is going on in Papua and praise God for the work that has already been done, seeing thousands of Dani people come to know Christ.