Help Us Host the LIGHT PNG Team in Kerowagi: a short word from me first. My name is Paul Mondo, and I’m the founder of LIGHT PNG, Light the Way for the Gospel.
Before this, I spent years serving as a missionary in Thailand, training teachers in Bible-based literacy. After returning to my home region of Simbu, in the Papua New Guinea Highlands, I watched pastors, evangelists, and church workers in my own community carrying on their ministry under conditions most of us would find hard to imagine. They preach, teach, and pray with their congregations by kerosene lamp, torchlight, or no light at all, long after the sun goes down.
Why LIGHT PNG exists
LIGHT PNG began with a simple aim: to place solar lanterns directly into the hands of the pastors and church workers serving our rural highlands, so their ministry doesn’t have to stop when the light fades. You can read how the lantern distribution works on this site.
The lanterns are one part of the work. The other part is the people (donors) who come to help us deliver them.
The team that travels to Kerowagi
Each year, from November to December, a team of mission partners travels from overseas to join us on the ground in Kerowagi. They help distribute solar lanterns, and they run short-term impact projects alongside us: first-aid and CPR training, medical outreach, eyesightsight testing and distribution of reading glasses, and support for local schools and aid post. These are people who give their own time, and often their own money, to fly across the world for this work.
The upcoming visit to Ambuna Primary School shows what a single day with the team can hold. Students receive spiritual teaching. Teachers and others take part in CPR and first-aid training and receive certificates and kits. An eyesight clinic hands out reading glasses. All of it is free, and all of it happens in one afternoon.
The cost nobody sees
Our partners can’t always cover the cost of being here: a place to sleep, food each day, fuel and transport to reach the villages we serve, and the everyday necessities of hosting a team safely in a rural setting. This is the part of the mission that rarely gets mentioned, and the rest of the work depends on it.
That is why I’m asking for your help.
What I’m raising, and where it goes
I’m raising AU$5,000 annually to cover the practical cost of hosting the LIGHT PNG team each time they come to Kerowagi. Your gift will go toward:
- Food and hospitality for the visiting team during their time on the ground
- Lodging for the duration of each outreach
- Local transport and fuel to reach rural villages and churches across the Highlands
- Other basic necessities needed to keep the team healthy, safe, and able to do their work
This is an annual cost because the team returns every year. If we can cover it reliably, our partners can keep coming back, and we can keep widening the number of churches and communities we reach, rather than seeing one trip that never continues.
I also want every supporter to be able to see what their gift did. Our work is open to that kind of accounting, and you can find more answers on the FAQs page.
How you can stand with us
Whatever you’re able to give, whether AU$20, AU$50, or more, brings us closer to saying yes to our partners every year, without wondering if we can afford to host them again.
If you can’t give right now, sharing this page with someone who can is real help. If you would rather support the lanterns themselves, you can sponsor a solar lamp for a pastor. And if you’re the praying kind, I’d ask you to pray for our team, for safe travel, and for every pastor and village we have the privilege of reaching together.
Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). The pastors and church workers of the Highlands are already living that out. We are grateful for the chance to stand beside them.
Thank you for considering standing with us. This work belongs to all of us who believe no one should be left preaching in the dark.
With gratitude,
Paul Mondo
Founder, LIGHT PNG