There is another world that lies just beyond our northern shores. It is a vast green land populated by a multitude of tribes and language groups. We know it as Papua New Guinea. The gentleman sitting opposite me knew it as his home for seventeen years. He lived as a missionary in a village located in the eastern Highlands called Ukarumpa.
Craig was born in Canberra but moved to Brisbane as a child some time after his parents’ marriage ended. His mother was motivated by a strong desire to protect the natural environment. After their divorce Craig experienced the shared parenting arrangements familiar to many in this situation. In his case the family environment was for the most part peaceful as his parents maintained a quite amicable connection with each other. His mother could be quite inflexible and in his view a little bit eccentric while his father was more accepting of people and new ideas.
At the age of sixteen Craig came to faith which led him to a quite conservative church environment. He went from someone who may have stood before the bulldozers to protect the Franklin river in Tasmania to someone who stood in a Church on Sunday. Protecting the natural environment was still important to Craig but there are many ‘right ways’ to love this world and its people. Craig had started to discover his way – the things that were right for him.
In time he found that some churches had a weakness for believing that the way they did things was the right way and that other churches were wrong. They treated the Bible as a rigid instruction manual. I guess that’s just the way they were taught. Maybe there was also a tension in Craig between firmly knowing what you believe and being flexible enough to accommodate new people and ideas.
He met the lady who would become his wife in a Cornerstone church. Equipped with a chemistry degree and a teaching degree Craig came across the opportunity to teach in PNG when a school principal suggested that he would be good in the role. They took up the opportunity and moved to that vast green land that exists only in most Australian’s imagination. I have never been there so I am curious as to what life was like there.
I learn of a culture where men may have multiple wives. If someone dies at a young age then their death has to be for a reason so people often resort to superstitions to explain why this happened. Craig’s four children grew up in PNG. As a family they are fortunate to have seen how differently life can be done.
Leaving this life behind him and returning to Australia was a difficult transition for Craig. There are so many little things to relearn some of which may seem minor to us who have not been a missionary for seventeen years in another culture but never the less for Craig felt a bit weird. In PNG you don’t look women in the eye but this is expected in most interactions in Australia.
At his core Craig is a teacher, an educator who would love to bless, encourage and equip people to live the best life they can. He does not seem to be a man who seeks the limelight or revels in conflict. His life in Brisbane may be far removed from his time in PNG but lessons learnt have stayed with him making him a gentle gentleman with a kind heart.