Mission 193 – Vanuatu
Our trip to the Pacific nation of Vanuatu was a flying visit – we arrived on Friday at 14:00 and were due to check in for our return flight at 13:00 two days later, giving us less than 48 hours to complete our mission. We arrived in the capital Port Vila, having left Canberra at 06:20 that morning and changing planes in Brisbane. We then wandered around looking for a place to stay, ending up in a lovely French guesthouse. (Vanuatu was jointly administered by Britain and France up until 1980, hence the French influences). In the evening we went to a restaurant where Tim tucked into fruit bat!
The next day was Sunday and we went along to a church service with a group of young people who we had bumped into walking down the street with Bibles. We wandered around Port Vila, but didn’t feel led to anyone in particular that day to give the Bibles to, and torrential rain forced us to head back to the guesthouse.
On Monday, with only about 4 hours left before we had to head to the airport, we went off in search of the Prime Minister’s office, as we had both independently felt on our way over to Vanuatu that we should present the Bibles to someone in government. We looked around for someone to point us in the right direction and saw a man walking in our direction on the other side of the road. He happened to be a security guard for the Lord Mayor of Port Vila and took us straight to the Prime Minister’s office. When we asked to speak to the Prime Minister we were asked if we had an appointment and saw quite a queue of people. However, the man who had shown us the way told the Prime Minister’s secretary that we were “with him” and we only wanted to speak to him for 3 minutes, and we were therefore granted an audience with the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister read the letter we presented and received the Bibles, before saying how important he felt it was that all nations strive for peace and expressed his gratitude that we had gone to Vanuatu and were praying for their nation.
After leaving the Prime Minister’s office we then prayed some prophetic scriptures over Vanuatu and hopped in a taxi to the airport.
