New church building

This was reiterated by the Western Highlands Area Supervisor of SDA Mission, Richard Jacob, who worked with MAF to overcome the distance and difficulty of reaching the area. Mamusi is a rural village located near the Yuat River, in a valley bordering Enga, East Sepik, and Madang provinces.

“We’ve been doing a mission trip there. When I started as the area supervisor, they gave me the mandate to put a church there, and so I said let’s go where the aeroplane can”, said Jacob.

The old and rundown semi-permanent structure was built decades ago by missionaries of the Evangelical Brotherhood Church (EBC), ministering at Bomai.

According to Mekpe, it takes people at least one and a half days to trek to the nearest road where they get on a PMV to get to the provincial capital. Otherwise, it takes three days on foot to Kundiawa. Getting all the building materials to Bomai without the assistance of the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) would not be possible.

Even after almost 50 years since PNG gained independence, certain remote and far-flung communities are still deprived of basic and vital government services.

Temnung village in ward 19 of the Giri area of Yawar LLG in Bogia district in Madang Province is no exception.

There is no road link to the far-distanced community. People walk for over 10km to reach an access road to travel to Bogia station, they then progress on to Madang town via PMVs. 

Construction started in May and is almost complete.

“We have a K351,000 worth of project that we are going to put here,” said the manager of Ahi Hope Foundation, Willard Bogan.

“This is one of the major projects that is delivered from the K2.5 million dividend that was paid out recently from the Ahi Group of companies to our wealth distribution group.

“And so we’ve done the Yanga project for K351,000; we’ve got another water project up at Yalu – the Yalu bore water project.

“We’ve got a land mobilisation program that’s going on for Kamkumung village.