As our plans unfolded and became known to our friends, the idea began to spread and very soon we were enjoying an unexpected approval and acceptance. We were not completely insane or even mildly foolish, after all! Encouragement came from many directions, especially from our own church of 1000 and other churches locally.
One, as yet unmentioned part of our plan, within the villages we’d visit, was to take videos and a large screen complete with sound system, into village squares to provide open air imagery and ministry, of life beyond those island shores. At first we wondered how we might facilitate such a forward thinking idea (back in the 1990s) and also what content we would show. It was a developing idea and came with many ‘What ifs’ .
Over the weeks, we tried to imagine every scenario in which certain things could always go wrong. In most cases, we were a boat anchored in whichever anchorage. We had a 12ft dinghy to ferry ourselves and equipment to the shore. Seawater and electronic equipment don’t like each other. Would the weather blow up just in time for our return, usually after midnight and having to reload our equipment back into Shekinah’s holds, in the dark, maybe in the rain! Most villages have no power or lights! BUT, everyone was friendly and they were willing helpers.
Each of these possibilities wafted through our thinking as we brainstormed the whole idea. Never once giving up, we analysed every scenario until each possible problem was resolved. Well, that’s what we thought!
What came first? The chicken or the egg?
A Canadian ministry called Reality Outreach had heard about us through an evangelist visiting our church at the time. They liked our proposal and offered assistance in the form of some equipment to show our proposed videos. Lee, the evangelist, relayed our serious intent back to Canada and amazing things started to happen. They had been down this road before and knew just what we needed. A collapsible, theatre quality screen that was 3.6 metres wide by 2.7 metres high and was light but really sturdy. A speaker system, small enough but loud enough for a small park. It came with special tripod stands, amplifier, and long cables. And a projector that was powerful enough for clear lifelike video presentation. It was way beyond perfect, highly expensive equipment, that we could never have bought without a lottery win!
Reality Outreach was then and still is responsible for an evangelistic play which seeks to show people how their life choices play out if a person should accidentally die prematurely. Whether Heaven or Hell was awaiting them dependant on those lifestyles behaviours!
The play aptly named Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames, has to this day been shown world wide in churches and open air venues and is responsible for millions of people turning to Christ.
I had seen the play a year or two before at our own church in Brisbane. I was aware of its powerful message.
Lee came to me a few days after our equipment arrived from Canada and told me that Reality Outreach, under Lee’s direction, was staging the play for four nights in a covered venue in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Lee knew of my experience in making videos and promptly asked if I would like to video the play and take it into the islands to show in the villages. Lee, who had visited Vanuatu many times in his career, and Reality Outreach, knew the potential of how their play could be taken into hundreds of small villages throughout Vanuatu.
Several days before the event, Heather and I flew into Port Vila, and made renewed contacts with some old friends.
We also met, for the first time and became very close friends with a local pastor and his family, who were living in Mele Village on the outskirts of Port Vila. Pastor Alex George and his wife Eva were a lovely couple with two young children named Robyn and Mark and an adopted girl named Rose. The two little girls were inseparable, always smiling and alway trying on Heather’s shoes at the front door. Wandering clip clopping around the yard with each of them, in turn, trying on the shoes. Several years later, on renewing our acquaintance with them, they introduced us to their latest child named Heather!
We met up with Lee’s wife and the organisers of the play, who were also close friends of Ps Alex and Eva, to chat about how we’d film the event. It was at that first meeting that I remarked that villagers in most of the islands knew Bislama, the national language, but not so many would understand English so well.
Hmmm, cat among the pigeons here as they said it was too close to the event to change its language now, Lee’s wife said, As if looking for a way out, “I’d at least need a laptop and we didn’t bring ours”
Heather said they could use her laptop and with some discussion amongst themselves, agreed it could be done at a pinch. Especially as it was a brilliant idea for the villages to hear the play in their own language.
Knowing that maybe one or two of the dozen or so scenes might go awry with the language change, I opted to video all four nights and splice in or out any bits where the actors might forget their lines or whatever.
I had set up my tripod and camera (Sony’s HXR-NX5U) on a mobile platform used for a tennis umpire in that small stadium, so I had a perfect view of the stage and all the scenes at about 3 metres off the ground. I had audio cables running from my camera back to the sound desk to ensure perfect recording of the sound.
The first two or three nights had a few mild stumbles in line delivery but the fourth and final night were all perfect and that last night became the best take.
On our return to Brisbane, my editing of the footage only consisted of removing a few overly long wait times between scenes, levelling the various sound bites so nothing was too loud or too quiet and then dropping the finished product down onto, in those days, a VHS video cassette. All went unusually well…I wasn’t surprised.
The camaraderie amongst the thirty odd cast members and crew of the play had been surprising but wonderful to see. The cast of the play was led by Ps Alex George who played the role of Jesus. All the cast members were Mele Villagers. An obvious mutual trust and friendship among people who spend a lot of time living and working together, became apparent from the outset.
Heather and I both noticed a young man who was always first to arrive at the venue and last to leave. A willing and agile worker for sure, Gerry Songalapa became a close friend and eventually would accompany us on many of our repeated trips into the islands. Gerry became like an adopted son to us and followed my every move on and around Shekinah and into every village as our translator. He was then and still remains a very special character in our lives and in this story!
Even now, seventeen years later, Gerry calls us Ma and Pa and his third child, my namesake, Thomas Whipp Songalapa, frequently texts Grandpa Poppy Tom (me) and practises his English on me. Just recently he invited me to call him Tommy which is how his father addresses him…when Gerry is not angry with him for some untold reason ha ha.
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