Establishment of Deinzer Hill, Logaweng and Pola (Finschhafen)

Missionary Bamler had helped Tremel establish Tami in 1889.  He continued working there till 1899.  Whenever the Tami’s made trading voyages, he accompanied them and this made contact with then ever increasing number of people.  He found a colony of Tamis at Taemi on the mainland.   These Tamis asked for a missionary.

So in 1899 Bamler began work in the area, named the new station after Johannes Deinzer, the first Neuendettelsau inspector of New Guinea missions, and built a first house.  The Taemis helped.  Women carried boxes, boards and roofing iron up the hill so that the first house was completed in three days.  After the station was established Rev. Decker took over from Bamler Decker had arrived in New Guinea in 1895.  Both worked together however till 1906.

Later Decker had problems with establishing a boarding school.  The boys would not come.  (p.125 GNM).  Two years after the founding of the station a local sorcerer was killed.  There was much fear of sorcery among the people.  Also many men left the area for work on plantations.      

In 1902 Decker remarks that the people were very respective to the Gospel.  On Epiphany 1904 he baptized the first thirteen catechumens.  At the end of 1905, twenty-two were baptized, including one woman.

In 1906 Bamler enrolled the last of the Tami people, sixty in all, in instruction.  (p. 126 GNM) Decker recognized that the people had hopes for earthly blessings in connection with baptism.  In the same year (1906) Bamler was sent to begin Logaweng.  His wife couldn’t stand the coastal climate.  Raum was sent to take his place.  When Decker went on furlough in 1911, Raum was in charge.  Already in 1910 Raum announced a new catechumen class.  Almost all the remaining heathen in the area signed up.  The class numbered 150. (p. 127 GNM).

In 1912 Raum reported that 507 had already been baptized at Deinzer Hill.  From 1906 on, Tami people were at work as evangelists among the Kela people near Malalo.  Later two were sent to the Labu people.  And in 1912 two went to Morobe and one went to Lae.  Eighteen men from the Tais helped with building a house for ten weeks at Laewomba up the Markham.  Later Tamis sent evangelist to the Laewomba and Adzeras in the Markham valley.

Mean while at Finschhafen, the ship of the New Guinea Company had brought four whites, eighty workers, and good in 1901 to plant up the land into plantations and to establish the base.  One reason for the base was the hope of the whites to look for gold in the Markham.  Some early prospectors had found gold dust in the sand at the mouth of the Markham.  
(p. 128 GNM).

Thus, the mission felt it was necessary to establish a store and a bridge at Finschhafen.  In the past, supply ships used to anchor in Langemark Bay.  Pfalzer was chosen to begin the station.  So Pola was begun in 1903.  The people to the North of Simbang had not received the Gospel readily in the past.  The first baptism of twenty-three took place at Pola in 1905.  In 1912, of 350 people, only eighty had not been baptized.  (p.129 GNM)