Pair reveals finding God in prison

By FRANK SENGE KOLMA
DAVID Robert of Kagua, Southern Highlands, and Mamure Api of Kovori Kui on the border of Central and Gulf provinces have just left Bomana Prison outside Port Moresby.
Robert was remanded in jail for willful murder from Sept 21, 2018 to Sept 21, 2022. A judge finally released him when the State failed to prosecute him.
Api served time for a crime he committed as a single father trying to look after his three girls in the village. While he was in jail, one of his daughters got sent to Rabaul and he has not seen her. He was released on Feb 25 this year.
While in prison, the two men came into contact with Pastor Steven Wangewa of the Apostolic Pentecostal church Inmates Fellowship which runs a Prison Reformation Academy.
They got involved in the academy and, today Api, who had never seen the inside of a classroom, can communicate a little in written form and read.
But it is the transformation of the spirit that they wished to testify, which has the greatest potential to change a criminal who goes to jail.
Robert said: “The boys plan robberies while in jail. They have all the time and the experience.
“When police and warders gun-butt us or beat us up, we just want to carry on.
“When this church came to the prison, it changed me. Only God changed me. When they get God in Bomana, hardened people change.”
Api said: “Government service does not reach into the village. It only stops at the district level. Our needs are not met. Our needs are forgotten. Service does not come to us in the village and that’s when we create trouble.
“I caused trouble and I came to jail.
“Looking back, it is a good think I got caught. I learnt the Bible in prison and got saved.
“Bomana is not a good place, they say, and it is true but I met Christ in there.
“That was good.”