Baptists Enter Mission

Field

New Station In New Guinea Highlands

WITH singularly little beating of drums, the Australian Baptist Church has established itself in the New Guinea Mission field. A few months ago, a pioneer party from the newly organised Baptist New Guinea Mission went into the remote and isolated Baiyer Valley, 40 miles beyond Mount Hagen, in the newly-discovered Central Highlands region of New Guinea, and there estab lished a mission station.

The work has gone ahead quickly and there is now a white staff of eight on the station, including two nursing sisters, in charge of Reverends J. Green and A.

Kroenert. The Baptists report that the people are very primitive, but are of a good type, and react quickly and satis factorily to European instruction. The Baptists are giving special attention to technical training.

When Miss Wesley Smith and Mrs. A.

Kroenert proceeded to the Station re cently they were incorrectly described in the PIM as LMS missionaries. Sister Jean Lawes, who also accompanied Miss Wesley Smith to New Guinea, has gone to the Lutheran hospital at Finschhafen for two months’ training before going on to the new station.

The Baiyer Valley runs north and south.

It is about eighteen miles long, and 40 miles north-east of Mt. Hagen, five or six miles wide; 3,500 feet above sea level; and surrounded by mountains running up to six and seven thousand feet. Fast flow ing rivers cascade along the base of the mountains and tumble through gorges and rapids to join the Sepik River a hundred miles away.

The Baptist Mission station is on a plateau at the northern end of the Baiyer Valley and commands a view of the air strip (seven miles away) and, indeed, of the whole area. There are about 10,000 people of the Enga tribe—so far, un affected by Europeans—scattered in farms and small villages through Baiyer Valley, and countless thousands more in the surrounding areas.