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This year's Mission Emphasis Weekend was quite imformative and moving. Bass brought in a missionary, Dale Goodson, that works for AFM (Adventist Frontier Missions). Mr. Goodson spoke about the life experience him and his wife gained while living in the jungle of New Guinea. They have been there for over eleven years as missionaries trying to help bring the people there to Christ and teach them how to have a genuine experience with Christ. He explained that the logic of western people and the logic of the people in New Guinea are so much different. According to him, it was difficult for him to understand anything that they were saying and the same when he would try to communicate with them. Therefore they could not understand his teachings of the bible, however, they made it appear and thought they did because they commited to getting baptized.

          Unfortunately though that was not the case because some women had put some charms on his porch to keep spirits away, he then realized that they had backslid. He became very frustrated at that point  and wanted to go home because he felt that he had failed and could not make up for what had been lost. Then one day as he was thinking, it really hit him that if he left the people, another missionary would come make a little bit of progress, and then the people would backslide all over again. Then that missionary would also go home and then the people there would be lost all over again.

 Because of the epiphany he had, he started praying that God would help him teach these people how to lay a foundation for their faith, then build on that foundation. That had been the problem all along. They simply did not know how to build on the foundation that had been laid. He then really started listening to how they told stories to one another so that he could learn to speak the message to them in a way that they would understand. He eventually became able to do just that.

            One particular story he told touched a lot of people. He was trying to explain to the people where they came from and the people did not understand because of what their ancestors had told them. At the end of the message it finally clicked with one men, when that happened the man started weeping and crying out, “They lied to us, they lied to us. All of them lied to us.” Mr. Goodson asked, “who did?” Then the man said, “the ancestors. They have all lied to us about where we came from. They were wrong, but you speak the truth.”

            After that the people there really started accepting everything that was being taught and started building on that foundation. One thing they started doing was to go around the village checking to see if there was anybody to whom they could be of service. Whether it may be marrying couples, or helping those who are sick.  One gentleman in particular was sick but hated the people of New Guinea and always talked bad about them. Therefore they did not want to help this man because they knew he had such a hatred for them. However, when Mr. Goodson found out about this he told the villages to go ask the man if they could help him. So they did, came back and said the man had told them yes. They were all so excited, so they gathered all the supplies they would need and started making their way to his place in the jungle. When they got up there, they started cleaning around his house. The men took the old man down to the river and gave him a bath. When they were finished, the started weeping, and he was amazed and touched by the love that  the people had showed him. He told them that there needed to be a training school there in the jungle for others to learn what they have learned so that they also could be of service to the people there.