My Life, My Country, My Church

By ELLEN TIAMU
MANY leaders in PNG retire from the public service or from politics and the wealth of experience or knowledge that they accrued over their lifetime sadly are kept to themselves until they die.
For the immediate past Managing Director of the Investment Promotion Authority, Ivan Pomaleu it is different.
On Sunday 12 February 2017 at the 2017 at the Port Moresby National High School he will be launching a book he has written on his journey through life.
Pomaleu, who now performs the role of Papua New Guinea’s Ambassador to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) penned the book in the hope of aspiring those young ones who aspire to be different but also find some measure of success in their lives. .
Titled, My Life, My Country, My Church, Pomaleu retraces his family steps from Manus to East New Britain and Eastern Highlands before Independence and the immediate years after Independence, and talks about his upbringing and the challenges of growing up in rural Papua New Guinea.
The book is a personal tribute to his mum and dad. The book moves smoothly from the early years in Manus, and then to East New Britain.
It covers the simple life that was lived and the growth that takes place through the school years and on to adulthood. It also talks about his early career development and his movement to higher management in the public service of Papua New Guinea.
It also has some coverage of his career and some relevant details about his time with the Investment Promotion Authority.
There are three things that are prominent in this book. Firstly, he talks about the providential leading of God in saving his father from a war atrocity in a life changing night in 1943.
This ensured that five siblings had a hope of being born and of growing up, and one adopted sibling found a home to grow into.
Secondly, he talks about the church and his parents’ choice to serve as missionaries which provided an important dimension and start to each of their children’s lives. It gave them the start and basic exposure required to meet life head on, and succeed.
He advocates that faith played a huge part in his upbringing. It is his view that the church was an important dimension to his spiritual but mental development, and obviously some of the important progress that he later achieved in life.
Finally he talks about the leading hand of God in all his circumstances. “I stand in awe and give God the Almighty the honour and glory for who I was, what I have become and what He wants me to be in the future. Commencing with sparing my father’s life during the war years and leading him to meet my mother, and their decision to have five children and not four played a big part in my being. In providing for my family during the formative years of our lives and to bring each of us this far is a testimony to His goodness rather than ours.”
The Minister for Finance, James Marape, MP, a childhood friend of Pomaleu, wrote the foreword to the book.
Writes the Minister:
“Ivan was my first childhood role model. I first met him in 1981 at Omaura Bible Training School, near Kainantu. My parents were attending the training for their mission work. Ivan’s parents were working there as the school’s staff members. We were missionary children back then and we still called ourselves missionaries’ children today; a background that we cannot trade for any other because it shaped our lives.”
He continues:
“He was true to his calling as a missionary’s child. He stood firm to his early childhood Seventh Day Adventist leanings both at home and at school. He brought that character and ethic into his work life, and as I write today for his book, he currently holds the record as the longest ever served Managing Director of Papua New Guinea’s Investment Promotion Authority.
“Ivan has led me and many missionary children of our generation since childhood and today continues to lead by writing his story. May his story inspire all children. From a life of rural simplicity with next to nothing in terms of material wealth and affluence Ivan rose to the high hills of the earth. We too can rise to the heights of earth just like Ivan did. He did through the “God first approach”, and we can do it too, if we put God first.”
Among some of the more emotional parts of the book are his thoughts after losing his elder sister to cervical cancer in 2012. It also includes a ten page tribute, In Memoriam, for his late elder brother, Pastor Geoffrey Pomaleu, who died in office as the President of the SDA Church in Papua New Guinea on 04 July 2016, after the final manuscript of the book was handed over to the publisher.
The book should find resonance with kids who are growing up in rural Papua New Guinea and facing the rural challenges of a young nation. It is also for those who aspire to be different but also hope to find some measure of success in life.
The book is published by John & Barbra Rubeia of Creative Grafiks, a local publisher who have published two other books before. My Life, My Country, My Church, is their third published book.
The book will be launched this Sunday, 12 February 2017 at Diowai Conference Centre, Port Moresby National High School, from 1.00 to 4.00 PM.