Life Outreach Ministry at Morata 2 in Port Moresby witnessed the 5th Graduation of nine students from Life Bible College.
The college, directed by principal David Odd, held a small ceremony that brought together a family of believers to celebrate the occasion.
Life Outreach Ministry headed by Charles Lapan, which is home to Port Moresby’s Halfway House, is also the host of Life Bible College. It has been in operation since 2012.
While the courses are theologically-based, the curriculum also allows students to learn basic life skills such as welding, carpentry, sewing, baking, cement mixing, including basic health hygiene. The college’s mission is for trainees to be integrative and holistic in their approaches.
From these skills, students, including those from the Halfway house centre, have built their own school mass, classroom buildings, a basketball court, including the footpaths and the drainage systems of the whole school.
One of the graduating students was John Marme, an inmate from Bomana Prison who has earned the trust of his warders to travel down each day for his classes.
John joined the college through the prison’s spiritual rehabilitation program.
Jenny Watt, one of the five females who graduated, is a mother and teacher by profession. She stated that the school helped her to be a holistic person from a spiritual, social, physical and mental perspective.
“I would encourage everybody; mothers, anybody unschooled, to take this course and you don’t need to know English to learn this. Because the whole teaching is in Tok Pisin so anybody in Papua New Guinea can join and it will help them with a holistic human development.”
Jenny also stated that from the school she has learned how to be a leader. She had expressed her views on helping others in her community by setting up a similar college for her small New Ireland community when she returns.
Nancy Watt, a young single mother who also graduated said the college helped her to be free of mental and psychological stress.
In most societies including that of Papua New Guinea, many young women who fall pregnant and become single mothers are usually either abandoned by their parents and families; or are shunned by their communities because of their situation.
For Nancy it was a huge breakthrough, receiving teachings from Life Bible College. She has childhood trauma of being molested and is now a single mother as a result.
Nancy expressed in tears how she would hide from the world with the overwhelming feeling of intimidation; after graduating, a proud Nancy stood with confidence as she shared her experience about some of the many things she learned that will help herself, and those in her communities.
