“I Need to Buy Milk Powder for My Baby” 

“My ex–wife was from Rotuma”, said ‘Harry’.  “And I have a strong sense that the Lord is going to send you there”.  The only other place that had stood out was Nauru, 17 miles south of the equator in the Western Pacific Ocean. I saw  a documentary talking about its upcoming problems when it ran out of superphosphate deposits,  it had a prerecorded interview with a man by the name of Angimea who had explained the local political situation in detail.  He had stood out a lot to me at the time and I prayed for him. 

Just a few weeks later and the Lord had me ministering in Fiji again.  Based in Suva I was supposed to be revisiting the office of the Director of immigration one day, when the Holy Spirit gave me a very strong vision of a hibiscus flower painted on the side of a building in a completely different part of the city. 

It was very strong from the Lord that I was to go there and miss my appointment, which was a hard thing to do as I was expecting good news on my missionary permit.  Entering the country with a letter from the Fijian Embassy in Auckland telling me to pickup my visa from the Immigrating Service in Suva, I had been shocked to find out that the service was not issuing longer visas to foreign missionaries (which missionaries to somewhere else are by definition!), and were saying that  that the Fiji Foreign Affairs letter to me was rubbish! 

These were lawless days following the first military coups and the Director of Immigration did not like people who were not from his traditional denomination (good as told me so!) and there was no one to enforce the law as written. 

But I had been led to believe that my next interview would sort things out.  I found out later that the New Zealand Embassy had already been advised that the Director of Immigration was basically threatening me with imprisonment and deportation if I went about telling people about Jesus–plain and simple. And he might have intended to serve some sort of paper on me when I visited his office! 

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Following the revelation up to the Hibiscus flower building, took me to the Fiji Christian Bookshop, where I met a Fijian lady who encouraged me to meet some Christians who had an office in that building. 

Knocking on the door I was introduced to a David Angimea (the man or a relative?) from Nauru!   I kept all that was written above about Nauru to myself. 

Through the weeks that followed the Lord moved in marvellous ways with us holding lunchtime meetings in the office block.  People came in from all over Suva to hear the word of the Lord.  One of the brothers was being mightily used to minister the word of the Lord on the local university campus in evening meetings.  And we shared in flat blocks at night.  Through the contacts there, I ended up on a boat that ended up  making an unscheduled visit to Rotuma! 

Then David had to return to Nauru, I think his permit had run out.  He and others were very keen that I might join him there.  And as we prayed about it the Lord brought many confirmations over the weeks that followed.  Meanwhile there was a great out powering of the Holy Spirit and many people were being saved, baptised, and God was moving in wonderful deliverance and healings.  Other New Zealanders were astounded at what they saw the Lord Jesus doing. 

The time came for me to organise ticketing for the flight to Nauru, it was to be the very first public flight for many years between Fiji and Nauru.   I had a growing expectation that my next mail drop (the first for some months) from New Zealand would have funds in it.  And when I received notification that mail was available for me, I went in to town with very high hopes. 

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I opened the envelope and went through the mail and there was news from different ones that gladdened my heart with what God was doing with their lives, but no funding at all. 

Somewhat disorientated I left the mail lobby and walked out on the street. I bumped into some Christian leaders from well off churches and then almost immediately a woman with a baby came up to me and asked for milk formula–powder money for her baby saying that she could not breastfeed him. 

And there was no doubt it was a genuine case.
I did not even have twenty cents to my name!
I was staying with a well off Western  ‘Christian’ working in Suva, but all he was making available to me was literally a few cents for bus fares. 

I pointed her and her husband to the richer local Christians I had just seen walk past, and they rushed off to them, I don’t think they helped though.  I felt very very sad that I could do nothing, still believing that God was intending that I should have received money in the mail drop. I considered seriously having to head back to New Zealand. 

But God spoke to David and Marie in Nauru, and with some difficulty they arranged the air ticket from there. Again weeks later more mail found me in Nauru, and in it was a letter from a New Zealand brother we’ll call Simon. 

Simon ran his own business in New Zealand.  God, he said, had told him to forward a significant amount of money (for those days) to me in Fiji, and he had reasoned to himself that he needed what money he had, and didn’t send anything. 

Then shortly afterwards he had suddenly had people who had owed him money, some going back many years, seek him out and pay him out in full, and other amounts had come in and he was quite flush by the time he wrote the letter—much later than God had told him to.  But it missed me in Fiji, and had to be forwarded on to Nauru. 

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He said that he had  felt really guilty and had let God down.  The draft was made out in Fiji dollars and was on the face of it useless in Nauru which uses the Australian dollar.  David offered to try and see if the Government bank could clear it, but I was able to have it forwarded and  lodged into an “External Cheque Account” that I had in Fiji in those days, and I then sent cheques down to various Christians in Fiji who I knew already God wanted to bless and help. They of course also received their money later than God had intended, with all the related issues that entailed for them. 

Nineteen years later this situation is still producing repercussions.  

I had to challenge a ‘Christian’ Fijian, who unexpectedly contacted me from Brisbane recently. This guy had been associated with the Suva office we held our meetings in.  I had to ask him  about his use of money, in the intervening years, from Masonic Trusts (their top ‘orders’ teach that Lucifer – Satan is the true God of this world). 

He turned on me and brought up that I had been taking money from Fijians (they were actually Nauruan any way!) And started running me down to others involved in Pacific ministeries. 

You have no idea what God has planned with what He tells you to do, nor what use the Devil can make of you, if do your own thinking instead of trusting what God says, and lean to your own understanding, and you disobey God. 

Be faithful with what the Lord Jesus Christ gives to you, and follow His leading in your heart very carefully, do all that He says, nothing more or nothing less:  —  In essence that’s Christ’s Headship at work. 

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