"The king shall have joy in Your strength, O Lord; and in your salvation how greatly shall he rejoice! You have given him his heart's desire, and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah."
We kept asking ourselves this question as Tom suffered from a bad case of malaria starting on Thursday night. Friday he was miserable. Saturday he was still feeling rotten and Sunday at 11:00a.m,. he had a 100.7 fever. I wanted to write and ask you to be praying, but truthfully, I was too busy with the family and taking care of Tom to write an update. We were trusting that the Great Physician and Master Church Builder knew exactly what was happening. There was an unseen battle raging and the enemy did not want more of God’s children to declare their faith publicly.
Thankfully the Siawi believers had decided to have the baptism around 3:00 in the afternoon which gave Tom some more time to recover from his fever. Trusting that God would give him the strength he needed, Tom decided to proceed with the baptism. At 2:30 we began slowly making our way to the spot in the river where the baptism was to take place. I will pause here to say that the Swanson family has been experiencing a lot of sickness lately as well. Shannon is recovering from a terrible foot infection which made hiking to the baptism a bit difficult.
The other issue that was causing some concern in the minds of the Siawi leaders was the low water in the river. We had not had rain in over a week. The low water did not hinder the baptism, however, as some of the men built a small dam causing the water to be deeper in one spot.
59 people are baptized!
Praise God. It is all of Him and none of us. As one after another of the believers gave testimony of their salvation before being baptized, we were rejoicing. In truth we were amazed at some of the young men who participated in the believer’s baptism; young men like Noa, Ekebauele, and Sek, who have each caused a lot of trouble for the church. Some of you have probably prayed for these young men as we specifically asked prayer for them a few months ago. Before Tom and Jason would agree to baptize the people, since baptism is a public declaration of faith, we agreed that each of the baptism candidates needed to come and talk to Tom, Jason, Shannon or I in order to be sure that they truly understood that their salvation was through Christ’s blood alone and that the baptism was only a picture to publicly declare their belief. When these young men came to talk, Tom and Jason asked them some rather intense questions.
I am going to borrow a portion of Jason’s update to tell about Ekebauele’s testimony.
"You all may or may not recall who Ekebauele is but he is the young married man who disrupted the teaching of Acts in January by throwing stones at the building. Apparently his wife hadn’t made his breakfast and he was upset. Well, later, when I talked with him he told me he wasn’t a believer and didn’t care about God’s ways or his talk. Since then, he has come to the teaching quite frequently.
"Anyways, a couple of days ago he came to Tom and I saying that he too wanted to be baptized! Tom was floored; I was beside myself. I thought what angle is he trying to work here? So we continued talking with Ekei (I’ll shorten his name for your sake and mine) and he informed us. 'Oh yes, before I wasn’t a believer in Christ. I didn’t care about God’s road. But as I listened to the teaching on Acts, my thinking became clear. I understand that Christ’s death made the way for me to go to heaven. His blood was shed for me and there is no other way for my sins to be paid for. I want to be baptized because it is what Jesus said should happen to those who believe in Him. I want to follow Jesus talk.'
"We explained to him that what he said was right, baptism doesn’t save him and the water has no power. It is truly only water. However, baptism is a big thing. When you get baptized you’re letting everyone of us, who believe in Jesus and belong to him, know that you have believed as well. Now when you don’t come to the teaching or do some bad thing to your wife, all of us believers are going to come and put your sin in the clear. We’re going to come to you and remind you what you did and that you need to follow God’s road. You can’t keep stomping on Jesus name. Will that be alright with you? Are you going to get mad at the believers who come to you and try to pull you down God’s road? Ekei then said, 'No that is fine for those in Christ’s group to come and strengthen me. I don’t have any talk about that (meaning he would have nothing to say about that).'"
Because Tom was still feeling weak, he and Jason had asked two of our stronger believers if they would be willing to take Tom’s place during the baptism when he got tired. Kwaelom and Someliae each very willingly agreed to participate in the baptism. It was such a joy to see each of these men baptize their own children (who by the way are also some of our stronger believers.) What a testimony to the faithfulness of Kwaelom and Mese and Someliae and Aiwau. They have been faithful to teach their children and to be an example to them.
One of my favorite aspects of the baptism was watching the smiles. Kanoweau is a man in his 40’s. He is a very simple man with a very simple faith. He shook my hand after the baptism, and his face beamed as he told of his experience. As Kwaelom assisted Tom in raising his daughter Kofele up out of the water, his face lit up in joy. Sek, Kofele’s husband, and one of the previous trouble makers also smiled and I have very rarely seen him smile.
My beaming moment was watching as Levi, Jacob and Luke declared their faith by being baptized. Kwaelom and Tom baptized Levi; then Jason and Tom baptized Jacob and Luke. What a thrill for Tom to baptize his own sons!!
Pray for the unity of the Spirit and bond of peace.
At the close of the baptism we had all of the believers who had been baptized stand up together.
This was not the first baptism for the Siawi people. Shortly after the original missionaries presented the Gospel, there was a baptism of believers.
We had the original group of baptized believers stand up with the new believers. There are now around 100 Siawi believers who have been baptized. Our desire is for them to begin to see that they are one body in Christ.
There have been many divisions in the church here and they probably need to be taught from 1 Corinthians as much as Romans. Pray with us that they would have the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There are 10 – 20 more Siawi people desiring to be baptized. Lord willing in the next month or so we will have another baptism.
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