How my hands, Don Richardson's hands, and the Sawi's hands reach for Faith...

Whenever I sat down to listen to the testimonies during chapel or watched my grandmother visit the Buddhist temple every other day, I was simply amazed how devoted and faithful people are towards their religions. Having come from a family where both of my parents come from different religions and nevertheless care little about faith, I never felt the necessity to commit myself to a certain religion. Although my grandparents from both sides of my family urged me to find my place within my culture and beckoned me towards procession with testimonies and stories about the greatness of the Christian God and Buddha, I felt that religion was something that was going to limit me from growing openminded and free spirited until recently. After I read Don Richardson's Peace Child, I began to question the reason for my tentativeness toward religion. Even though Richardson was as strongly devoted to Christianity as my friends in school and my grandmother are to their religion, he constantly tried to learn about the Sawi culture and endured the treacherous ways of the primitive tribes. This attitude and openness impressed me and shook me off my pedestal. At the present, I feel that my tentativeness has finally transformed into an outgoing desire. Religion and faith seem to be a comforting oak tree to sit under that doesn't cast a shadow on our perspectives and mindsets.


Don Richardson, on the other hand, relates to faith and his religion passionately. Although the task was most likely going to be deadly and disconcerting one,he confidently and willingly decided to serve the primitive tribes in New Guinea and took his wife and his infant son to the land of the unknown. Richardson's faith did not come from a well planned deal or an earthly contract, but branched solely from his religious passion and faith. I was shocked at how Richardson thought that his faith, something that cannot fully guarantee his family's and his safety and fortune, was a good enough reason to leave the modern society where he spent his whole life and step into a jungle full of head eaters and cannibals. The extent of Don Richardson's relation with his faith does not end at his reliance on Christianity, but extends out to the responsibility he feels he has to offer the Word of Christ to others who lack faith, like the Sawi people. Don Richardson connects to his faith in a much more profound and advanced level than does the majority of the world: he relates to Christianity as a passionate believer, an obedient child, a messenger, and a knowledgeable teacher.

As for the Sawi, the venomous and blood thirsty people who seek for brutal slaughter and treachery, it is quite difficult to point out any sort of upright custom in their culture. However, it is a bit closed minded to say that those people do not have any sort of faith. Although sometime very brutal and gruesome, the ways of their ancestors do indeed serve as the basic foundations of the Sawi faith. The Sawi's trust in their ancestors' powers are strong and unshakable beliefs that cannot be proven or justified as valid, which is just the given definition of faith. Examples of these are the way the Sawi raised their guard on Richardson for bathing in the water that their ashes of their ancestors lie, their belief in their ancestral ways of 'aumamay', the state when a person's body functions for while after his/her soul has departed, and the values of extolling their ancestors' mummy  as a monument of fortune are things that cannot be justified or proven, but practiced by the people. The Sawi's faith in their ancestors may seem to have deep, irremovable roots; however, their faith is one that cannot stand strong on its own. I believe that is why God sent Don Richardson and many other Christian missionaries to New Guinea. To redeem the primitive New Guinea tribes from a misleading faith.