The death wail reverberated through the Inapang village -- that hopeless sound that always gets your attention. It can't be ignored. It announces the people's greatest fear. All activity ceases as others come to see who the latest victim is.
The missionaries joined the group of mourners, grieving that their message would come too late for elderly Eguanangui. He would not be there to hear the Gospel. He came so close. Evangelistic Bible teaching would begin in three days.
Showing sensitivity to the situation, the missionaries asked Eguanangui's clan about delaying the teaching to allow the people time to mourn. The answer came back a unanimous and emphatic "No." The people said they would not be doing any other work and insisted that the teaching go ahead.
"We will be there," they said.
"The night before teaching [begins] I'm not going to be able to sleep," said one of the Inapang literacy teachers. "I'm just going to be laying there thinking, 'It starts tomorrow!'"
An excited group of Inapangs gathered on the first day of teaching, meeting in the U-shaped shelter they built for the occasion. A timeline representing biblical history stretched about 50 yards around the building.
"We are just this last mark in time, but God's Story goes all the way back to the beginning," said a man who spoke for all those who marveled at the new revelation. "Our ancestors didn't know about all that time back behind us. They didn't know and so they couldn't tell us. We didn't know either until now."
Their knowledge of God's story and how it would affect them was just beginning. Missionaries Bill and Kelley Housley and Daniel and Elisabeth Moore spent almost four years learning the culture and language of the Inapang people so they could pass on this knowledge. Matthias and Petra Mueller joined the team less than a year before the teaching started.
As the first meeting ended, some of the people received an audio taped version of the lesson and a short summary with questions. That night groups gathered in 13 hamlets, using light from kerosene lanterns or flashlights to read the material while listening to the lesson.
The Housleys visited one group and watched as an elderly man turned a hand-crank player. The man stopped at the end of a paragraph and sat quietly, waiting for someone to repeat the point that was made. Then the process continued.
"It was really so interesting to be there with them and see how they all listened," the Housleys said.
After the third day of teaching, Kaspar, considered to be a man of knowledge among the Inapangs, said, "We have been hearing pieces of this story for years in the national language, but today after only three lessons we are really hearing it in our stomachs [hearing it well] and we are wondering, 'What kind of person is this God? We don't know anything like this.'"
The Inapangs would discover a lot of new truth in the weeks ahead.
"Bill, we men are always looking around and saying this land is mine and this thing or that thing is mine," said on Inapang man. "Now we are hearing God's Talk and we are saying to each other, 'True God made those things. They are His."
"It has been just incredible to see people beginning to grasp these key foundational truths about who God is," wrote Daniel. "[It's] worth all those hours, months and years of study."
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