New wine at Bario

I just came back from a wonderful trip to Bario from 2/10 to 6/10 having attended the 40th anniversary of the Bario Revival.

Bario experienced a great revival in 1973 and each year since then revival meetings have been held to commemorate it.

Outside the beautiful house on a hill where we stayed in Bario

Bario Team with our hosts

Supang, Aran Raja, Sina Ngubur Tuan and Sina Inan Paran

Lighting candles to commemorate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit

Ngubur Tuan, Inan Paran, Sina Inan Paran, Supang, Sina Ngubur Tuan, Aran Raja, Madah Ulun, Nelson & Linda

Dancing and waving the flags of Sarawak and Malaysia

Singing songs of joy unto the Lord 

Dancing with joy on the last night of the Kebangkitan Kerohanian

Supang, Nekson Balang (a hero of faith and evangelist to the suku wana tribe in the Sulawesi), Sina Ngubur Tuan & Nelson Maren

Note: By the way, our new Kelabit names have special meaning. You have to ask us to find out what they mean!

Here is my report written for the church magazine:

New wine in Bario

What is so special about this place called Bario in Sarawak?

Is it the cool weather, the scenic mountains, the laid-back lifestyle or the paddy fields?

Is it the quaint longhouses (many of them converted to homestays) or is it the fact that it is a place away from the maddening crowd? 

In Bario, there is no TV, no internet connection (except for a small part of the town), no hospital and no handphone connection!

One journalist who came with a group to write about Bario called the place "authentic" and "original"!

Two things about Bario really fascinate me:

1.  The morning watches that start from 5:30 am till 7 am daily from Monday till Sunday.

2.  Warm and genuine people with humble, simple and childlike faith.

Although I had no opportunity to go for the morning watches (most of them were put on hold in view of the Revival Conference held on 2^nd to 4^th October each year to commemorate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit), I can imagine the impact of the morning watches on the people of Bario.

There can be no revival without sustained and persevering prayers like the morning watches in Bario neither can there be spiritual barrenness if there is ongoing prayer in the churches of Bario on a daily basis.

I believe this is also a truth that will come to pass for HGC as we persevere and sustain the morning watches from 6 am to 8 am from Monday to Saturday.

In fact I saw something like shafts of light shining from these small churches piercing the morning darkness going to all the nations of the world where the Kelabits are based. The shaft of piercing light seem to come from the mouth of the prayer warriors in Bario even as they pray for their loved ones, family members and relatives scattered around the globe.

Little wonder that the Kelabits are people who are successful in their respective vocations. As many of the young people leave Bario to study and work in the bigger cities, the older folks who remain are like the Anna (s) and Simeon (s) who uphold their younger ones in prayer daily during the morning watches.

In fact I was amazed when they actually prayed for their Kelabit members by name during the Conference especially those who had submitted their requests to pray for healing!

The other fascinating thing about Bario are the people whose hearts are humble, simple and child-like.

They readily approach us (the team from HGC) to ask us for forgiveness even though they did know us! 

In fact, Datin Mariam (Linda’s sister who had opened her house to us to stay) told me that during the Bario revival, little children would come crying to adults, hugging them asking forgiveness.

In fact this also happened during the Revival Conference as absolute strangers came up to me to shake my hands and to ask me to forgive them!

It was this kind of openness and humility that prepared the ‘wine-skins’ of the heart to receive the ‘new wine’ of the Holy Spirit.

I realized that if there was no child-likeness, humility or openness, such an act of asking each other for forgiveness openly would appear to be ‘weird’ to those not accustomed to it!

Datin also told me that many were so filled with the Holy Spirit that they danced and rejoiced all night.

In fact she told me that her beautiful glass-windowed verandah facing the Bario mountains sank a few inches lower due to many people stamping and dancing on it all night during the Bario revival!

During those days many did not go to work but was so filled with the Holy Spirit that they travelled to all the surrounding villages to share the Gospel when the Holy Spirit fell upon them 40 years ago in 1973!

Many villages came to JESUS due to the work of the traveling evangelists from Bario (Ba Kelalan being one of them).

However there were also those with the old ‘wineskins’ who came to her husband (now deceased) being a prominent Kelabit leader and a minister of the Sarawak government then asking him to stop the revival!

Datuk (who had attended Bible school) told them not to stop the work of the Holy Spirit!

God’s work cannot be stopped and it is still evident today in the Kelabit heartlands of Bario as can be seen from the churches holding morning watches daily.

Also I noticed that Bario folks have a sense of community and spiritual one-ness just like the days of Acts.

While staying with Datin, I saw her neighbors bringing food for her. I also saw how they shared their food with each other from house to house. No wonder God chose this community to pour out His Holy Spirit upon them 40 years ago in a very powerful and tangible way!

Apart from my observation of the Kelabit community I was most blessed to attend the Revival Conference during this significant time. Ps Raymond Mooi was the main speaker while Datuk Chua shared his testimony.

The best ‘wine’ was kept for the last night when Ps Raymond Mooi moved us to tears with the sharing of his powerful testimony. He shared that he was an orphan, adopted by a temple nun, abused, scolded, rejected and hated by the other nuns in the temple; he became a rascal and a real bad-hat. Until today he does not know who his real parents are.

When his adopted mother died, he had to crawl on his knees to his new adopted mother, begging her to take him in. Every night he cried alone in his room until one night, he had a personal encounter with God as his Father that brought a deep change into his life!

It was not so much the miracles (although we saw deaf ears opened, poor eyesight healed, sinuses and asthma healed) but the living testimony of a transformed life that moved us to tears. Here was a man whom God was using mightily all over the world who was a school drop-out, who did not have any academic qualification to his name!

The new wine is also the revelation that what was most important to God was our relationship with Him rather than what we can do for Him.

If we take care of our relationship with God (especially knowing Him as our Heavenly Father) God will take care of the things that He will do through us! 

I also tasted the sweetness of the new wine when I heard the testimony of Nekson Balang.

The new wine that I tasted from the life of this young man is a life on fire for God, a life so sold-out for God that personal comfort take second place! That the advancement of God's kingdom take the utmost priority!

Here was a man so consumed by the love of God for the lost that he was willing to risk his life to bring the Gospel to one of the lost tribes of the Sulawesi, the Suku Wana.

Like the modern day Sadhu Sundar Singh, he traversed the interior of the Sulawesi to bring the Gospel to tribes who lived on trees, who go about naked and who practiced all kinds of lawless acts like child marriages.

He suffered much, survived attempts to kill him by the Wana tribe whom he eventually won for the Lord, went hungry for months eating only banana trunks, barks of trees as he walked through the jungles from village to village to bring the Gospel to the unreached tribes of the Sulawesi. We wept (and he wept) when he shared his testimony with us.

Like the men of faith in Heb 11, I realized that in our midst was one of the unknown heroes whose names may not be known by many in this lifetime but his rewards are great and eternal in the heavens!

Indeed it is men like Nekson Balang who is hastening the return of the Lord as they lay down their lives to reach the most unreached people groups for JESUS even unto the ends of the earth.

My heart has been warmed by the ‘new wine’ of the Holy Spirit, touched by the sincere and child-like faith of the saints of Bario, blessed by the testimonies of men of faith like Raymond Mooi and Nekson Balang.

COME, LORD JESUS, COME!