by Joe Patrick
March 24, 2002
I'll try recount what took
place as I remember it.
We didn't get alerted to
Melanongi's situation until after he had axed Edmund Fabian to death as they
were translating 1 Cor. 13. At
that time we found out that Melanongi had been troubled with "voices"
in his head, which apparently is a normal phenomena amongst Nabak people. (In
ministry with him later on he told us that his father, a Lutheran elder, had
taken him to the shaman, or "Glass man" as they call them here, on
several occasions to buy healing from childhood ear infections etc.) The Fabians
had asked the Bible study group they went to what could be done about these
voices, but they drew a blank from all those there.
Melanongi had been a close family friend for about twelve years and was
loved by the whole family. He had been helping them with the translation work
for a long time. He was an educated man and had been the head teacher of the
primary school in that area.
On the fatal day Melanongi and
Edmund had started to translate l Corinthians Ch.13, but the voices were so loud
and incessant that Melanongi got up from the desk next to Edmund and walked
round the room trying to get rid of the voices.
(They normally try to grab the voices with their hands and throw them
away –nothing was working.) As he was walking round trying to get free he saw
an axe that someone had returned, and had been left there by mistake. The
thought came to him that he would be able to cut the voices off from himself
with the axe, but as soon as he took the axe in his hands his mind (he said)
blacked out and he didn't know where he was until he heard the crunch of the
blow as the axe sank into Edmund's head.
Then his eyes suddenly cleared
again and he saw what he had done. In
shock he ran crying to the Police Station saying over and over again "I've
just killed my best friend, I've just killed my best friend", and asked to
be locked up. Nobody in the Fabian family believed that he had done it, and
assumed it was a local criminal gang. However a Nabak pastor and friend of the
family, Pastor Zumbek, went to see him in Kainantu Jail and Melanongi
immediately asked him for a knife to kill himself.
A day or two later, Grace
Fabian asked Daniel Jesudason and me if we would go with her and minister to
Melanongi while he was in the local jail, and my wife Heather came along too.
When we arrived we went up to the jail and they lead Melanongi out. Grace went
up to him and hugged him, but he was totally unresponsive and stiff, like a
statue. A detective who wanted to learn about deliverance ministry lead us to
one of the rooms where we could have some privacy.
We all sensed a heavy
oppression on him which we took authority over and broke in Jesus' name - after
which Melanongi could start answering our questions.
I'm not completely sure what all we did in that deliverance session. I
think we covered the sins of the forefathers and various times of receiving
demonic healing etc., and forgiveness for himself, as the Holy Spirit led us. By
the end of it Melanongi asked for and received forgiveness from Grace Fabian,
and expressed his grief, sobbing at what he had done - it was lovely to see him
released from demonic oppression.
Before we could get back to him a second time he was moved to the Provincial Jail in Goroka, which was much harder to get to. Grace Fabian's sister arrived from the States, and she is very anti anything to do with the Holy Spirit, deliverance ministry etc. and as a result Grace now says that Melanongi was suffering from mental illness, but that was not the case when she was watching Melanongi soften, as the enemy's power over him was being broken.