When Nita Tobin, former Acting Executive Secretary of the Bible Society in Papua New Guinea, visited the UK earlier this year, she spent time with Dawn Elliott. For years Mrs Elliott’s late mother, Edna Potter, had been a notable supporter of Bible work in Papua New Guinea and had developed a fruitful working relationship with Miss Tobin. Here, Dawn Elliott, herself a lifelong missionary in Chad, who still spends time there every year, tells the inspiring story of her mother’s long and unerring commitment to young people in the tropical Melanesian state.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA — It all began with just one advertisement placed in a newspaper in Papua New Guinea. My parents lived in Australia and for many years they placed Christian advertisements in newspapers throughout the country as a way of spreading the Gospel.

They weren’t full-time missionaries: for many years my father was a builder, and at another time a French polisher. But he also wrote his own tracts; he had them printed at his own expense and distributed them locally wherever he could. They always had a challenging and eye-catching headline. ‘Follow the bright lights to eternal darkness’ was one that I remember – and the newspaper advertisements used the same technique.

Personal letter

As people replied to these, my mother, Edna Potter, wrote a personal letter ‘tailor made’ to the particular situation of the correspondent, explaining how one needed to know the Lord Jesus personally – to be born again – before their Christian life could begin. Being religious wasn’t enough, as she knew from personal experience.

Mother had been brought up in a little country town in New South Wales, south-eastern Australia. As a girl she had attended church three times every Sunday: one church in the morning, a different one in the afternoon and another in the evening. She played the organ and taught in the Sunday School, believing her good works and her holy life would take her to heaven.

Acceptable to God

When she was 19, an itinerant evangelist visited the town and she went along to hear him. To her astonishment, she realised that she herself was not a Christian. She had not yet begun her life and walk with Jesus Christ because she had not come to a personal decision to accept his atoning work on Calvary and his death on her behalf. She was depending on her own efforts to make herself acceptable to God.

At the end of the meeting she went home and sat by the fire until the rest of the family had gone to bed. Alone at last, she got down on her knees and asked the Lord Jesus to forgive her past, to come into her life and to be her Saviour.

“It wasn’t just a revelation, it was a revolution,” she used to say. And so began her long walk with the Lord.

Although most of the advertisements that she and my father devised appeared in Australian papers such as the Sydney Morning Herald or the Daily Telegraph, one day they wondered how an advertisement in a paper in Papua New Guinea would fare. This was in the early 1970s.

When the advertisement duly appeared, they received an avalanche of replies, many more than the Australian newspapers produced – and my mother diligently answered each one. They came mostly from young people. It appeared that most of them went to a mission of some kind, but few had any personal knowledge of Jesus or any assurance of salvation. In fact, they were in much the same situation as my mother had found herself to be when, at the age of 19, she heard the itinerant evangelist.

With some enquirers, letters went back and forth a dozen times or more, until the young people were well established in their faith. In some cases, the correspondence lasted many years.

From their letters, my mother learned that many of the young people desperately needed a Bible to study for themselves.

A pensioner by this time, she began to use whatever money she could to provide Bibles to these needy young people – with help from the Bible Society of Papua New Guinea. Although they only placed the one advertisement in the Papua New Guinea paper, no more were needed. Not only did hundreds of people reply in direct response, but once my mother began working in conjunction with the Bible Society, news about her ‘ministry’ spread and she began to receive more correspondence from people who heard about her by word of mouth.

The system was simple. She would write to the Bible Society giving a list of names and addresses and suggesting the kind of Bible that would be most suitable for each person: many needed a copy of the Scriptures in Pidgin English, others would find the NIV better and some – perhaps those who had more education – would prefer the Authorised Version. Meanwhile, she instructed her bank in Australia to forward enough funds directly to the Bible Society to cover the costs. This system continued satisfactorily for many years with many hundreds in Papua coming to a personal faith in the Lord. And over the years mother developed a delightful working relationship with Nita Tobin, who worked for the Bible Society from the mid-1980s and was the Society’s Acting Executive Secretary for 10 years until she retired in November 2003.

Younger generations

Then in 1989 both my mother and I were widowed. My father died at the age of 93 and my husband John at the age of 61. By then my daughters had both married Englishmen and they and their families were living in the UK. So my mother agreed to come to live with me in England where we would be closer to the younger generations of our family. As my father had been English-born, this presented no problem.

Although by then she was past 80, mother had no hesitation in beginning a new life in the UK. Nor did the upheaval in her life stop her from continuing to write to the young people in Papua New Guinea, or from maintaining her fellowship with the Bible Society there. In fact, now that I was caring for her, she spent literally every waking hour writing to explain the Gospel truths to those who were so eager to hear.

Minor surgery

On the whole she remained in excellent health. Then one morning the doctor called to see her at home and suggested some minor surgery. She readily agreed. As we left for hospital she was – of course! – half way through a letter to Papua New Guinea and she intended to complete it on her return home. But it was not to be. Things did not go as expected and two days later Edna Potter went to be with the Lord whom she loved and had served over so many years. When she left for the hospital she had taken a tract with her to give to the surgeon. Afterwards I sent this to him with a covering letter. In his reply he said, “I am so sorry we couldn’t do more for such a wonderful lady.”

Postscript: A legacy that Mrs Potter left to the Bible Society of Papua New Guinea has been used to establish a fund in her name to provide Bibles for people there who cannot afford them. And Mrs Elliott has endeavoured to continue her mother’s work of supplying Bibles in Papua New Guinea – albeit on a lesser scale. Although her mother died – aged 91 – in 1997, Mrs Elliott continues to receive letters sent to her mother from people there. “It gave me great pleasure to meet Nita Tobin after corresponding with her for so many years,” she adds, “both during my mother’s lifetime and since.” (WR 408/16 - 01/02.07)