Mrs. Pastor Tomas

Written Friday-14-May-2010

Pastor Tomas introduced us to his wife, Esther, while we were in town yesterday afternoon (Thursday). Though Tanna is Tommy’s native island, he met Esther while attending university in Papua New Guinea. Esther’s mom is a PNG native, but her dad is from the Philippines. I am assuming that as a PNG native her mother is Melanesian. If so, the blood of her mother appears less in her features than the Filipino of her father’s, especially in the appearance of her eyes, hair, and nose. Educated and articulate in at least 3 languages, Esther is a joy to visit with. She is also an entrepreneur.

Having started a used clothing shop a year ago to help provide jobs, augment the ministry budget, and also occasionally supply clothing to the Dorcas Mothers, if they need additional resources in assisting with emergencies, she opened a second business two weeks ago. Located in the second story of the building across from her shop, she opened a computer school two weeks ago. They currently have 2 young expatriate women in the town with the Peace Corp, one is from England and the other from Australia. Esther has them volunteering at her school… quite a lady!

Story:

As evening came on, Pastor Tomas and Esther took us out to where the second One Day Church on Tanna is to be built. It has quite a story.

Their church had a very devout woman, a real “mother in Israel” type. She encouraged the leaders, encouraged and counseled the young people, lived a dedicated life. She prayed for there to be a church building for their group. Even though her husband no longer attended church, she was able to get things worked out to donate a piece of land for the church to be built on. Then on the way to Sabbath School one week, the truck in which she was riding turned over, crushing her beneath it. The husband honored some of her financial dealings with the church, but not the land. Now, they had to start again. Esther told us that this was a prayed for church, this lady had prayed long and hard for it and was a real prayer warrior, so they watched and continued to pray.

Just down the coast about 30 minutes is a large SDA school. This is the first site where they will be putting up a One Day Church actually, two put together to house a larger congregation. However, the principal and his extended family are a part of the congregation up the coast where the parents, et al. live. His mother is now donating a piece of the family land on which to build the church. There are two possible sites. Momma appears to favor one site, the son the other… mainly because the first site is currently being used as a garden. The second site is very uneven, with a variance of probably 5 feet between lowest spot and highest. Fortunately, the ground is all soil, not rock or coral. As Esther said, God’s been getting this timed just right. We arrived exactly when God needed us to arrive. This Sunday is the annual day of work for the church. Everyone has planned to dedicate this day to clean-up, repair, whatever. This year, it will be to level the land for their New Church!

Esther kept saying on the way back to our lodging, “God is so powerful. He has been working it out all along. Everything is at the right time. God has lead in everything.”