Pain behind the smiles for Christians in Vanuatu

Judy Adamson

How do you cope after your nation experiences two cyclones and an earthquake within a week? When you clear up the mess from one disaster just in time to face the next?

“It’s hard, because the next trauma’s not that far away,” says June Bock, Pacific consultant for the Anglican Relief and Development Fund Australia.

“Vanuatu is on the ‘Ring of Fire’ – it’s got 12 active volcanoes, including submarine volcanoes, which can bleach the coral and poison the fish – there are rising seas... cyclones, earthquakes and trauma,” she says.

“The people of Vanuatu are the most loving and most funloving people... and that’s how they cope with all the trauma. But I think of James 1, which says to consider it ‘pure joy’ whenever you face trials, [and right now] there’s something missing between going through trauma and finding joy in it –which they do, but it’s more head knowledge. It’s still not the heart knowledge of Jesus, which is what the people need.”

Mrs Bock (along with her husband Clyde) has been ministering to and with people from South Pacific nations since 1989, firstly through links made when she worked with Scripture Union NSW, and then after her “retirement” as an Anglicare chaplain in 2017.

While she has a number of links with Fiji and the Solomon Islands, it is Vanuatu where she has had the greatest involvement. This has included the pastoral supervision of Christians, a ministry over Facebook for those traumatised by years of volcanic eruptions and evacuations from Ambae, on-the-ground missions, care for seasonal workers in Australia and the provision of aid through her role with ARDFA.

More recently, she has been in regular pastoral contact by phone and online after cyclones Judy and Kevin wreaked havoc on the island nation at the end of February and beginning of March – and a magnitude 6.5 earthquake hit between the two.

Thankfully, the earthquake caused minimal damage, but the cyclones affected 80 per cent of Vanuatu’s population and made a quarter of its arterial road network inaccessible.

To give a snapshot of the impact for locals, Mrs Bock says that in the Port Vila suburb of Tagabe, “all the buildings and priest’s houses were affected... because there were two cyclones about 48 hours apart.

“So, at the Church of the Resurrection in Tagabe the doors blew in, all the church was flooded and the roof blew off. There were 200 people sitting in the church hall who had been evacuated there, and that roof blew off. A day later, one lady there had a baby! And that’s just one church in one place.”

She also had a Ni Vanuatu “uncle” ring her in Australia to check on the safety of his nephew, an assistant priest at Tagabe – who, thankfully, was not only safe but dry, despite the torrential rain.

A local Anglican woman, who is working on cyclone recovery for the government, shared with Mrs Bock how people are traumatised by these events but don’t show it “because they hide behind their smiles”. Many are now considering seasonal work overseas in order to pay for the cost of rebuilding their homes.

ARDFA’s appeal has already arranged for packages of food and personal items to be sent to partners in the Port Vila region, and Mrs Bock is keen to provide funds to resource the churches with essential items such as bibles.

In addition, she is hoping to buy sewing machines for a volcano-affected college on Ambae.

Amid all that she is involved with, however, is the overarching priority of growing people’s maturity in Christ and working in partnership with the church in Vanuatu to share the gospel.

“My heart is for evangelism and those who are searching to know Christ, because I want people to know Christ,” she says. “What joy it is to see what God is doing in someone’s life.” SC

To support the Vanuatu recovery, go to https://ardfa.org.au/globaldisaster-fund/ and scroll down to find the appeal.