Discerning God’s Call - Wheelers in PNG
Scott and Nikki Wheeler and their three children Isaac, Abby and Levi have been living in Kapuna in remote Papua New Guinea for the last year and a half.
Kapuna is a community built around a teaching hospital and acts a neutral territory between several tribes. Papua New Guinea is made up of hundreds of different tribes, with over 820 languages (five of which are spoken in Kapuna) and is rife with violence, sorcery and witchcraft. Kapuna can only be accessed by boat, making it a bit safer than some areas.
Scott and Nikki joined us at Training Day in Karori, where we caught up with them.
How do you decide to uproot your life, and those of your children, and move to the middle of nowhere?
We are all called into his service. Some are called to overseas mission, some are called to serve in workplace. For us, it’s overseas mission.
We were high school sweethearts and in our early 20s we joined a trip to Myanmar. There was a sense of adventure, but I (Scott) had a feeling it would be bigger than that. When we stepped off the plane I felt at home and at peace. God was stirring my spirit for missions and he had started us on His journey. Looking back, the trip to Myanmar was preparation for our Papua New Guinea journey, just as being in Papua New Guinea is preparation for a journey we don’t yet know about.
After we got married we went to Tanzania on a three-month trip. God asked us to make a small step of faith; it wasn't a massive chasm, it was doable. To us, going to Tanzania for three months was doable, but when we got there God asked us to stick around for two years. Had he asked us to go for two years up front, we probably would not have gone! We were called to be obedient in the small stuff, and He led us into something bigger (the small stuff doesn’t always lead to bigger stuff though).
After Tanzania, we came back to New Zealand to have, and raise, our children, feeling that it was hard ask to take kids into an unknown mission field. However, God had different ideas. We felt very strongly called to go back out. God was making us feel unsettled about staying in New Zealand, and throughout our process of discerning where He wanted us, we had to fight to keep that feeling of unsettledness and drive to travel back overseas.
Whilst we strongly felt called back to overseas mission, we didn’t really know the destination. We connected with a number of mission agencies, including NZCMS who were really helpful in helping us discern what God was saying.
During our time of discernment we spoke with our community of Christians, asking them what they thought God was saying to us. It was really important for us to hear Christian voices; if we listened to our friends with a secular voice, going to Kapuna, being really isolated and in a violent country, did not make any sense.
We also sought out someone who could speak the truth to us and who wasn’t afraid to hurt our feelings. Having someone who could do that, to tell you things you may not want to hear, or what others were afraid to say, was invaluable.
It was eventually NZCMS who connected us with Kapuna, and we were commissioned at Training Day two years ago. Being back at a Training Day again, among our movement whānau, reminds us how tangibly supported we feel by the diocese, both financially and through prayer.
Stay tuned for the second part of this story – Life in Kapuna.
