The Pineapple Story

Image courtesy of thechangetrend.com

Tonight I heard about "The Pineapple" story in our GLC 3 class. This is true to life story about a missionary named Otto Koning who lived in New Guinea, now part of Indonesia.

Otto grew pineapples on the island and loved it. However whenever the pineapples began to ripen, the natives would steal them from his garden. He became frustrated and was angry on the natives to the point of getting a German Shepherd dog to protect his pineapple garden. This spanned for seven years while Otto preached the Gospel to the natives and in this whole time not one got converted.

After sometime Otto flew to United States to attend a conference. It is in this conference, that God spoke to him realising he was frustrated over his situation because he thinks he owns the pineapple garden and everything it produce. After much thinking, he gave his garden to God. Although natives stoles his pineapples, he no longer got angry because he now realise that God owns evert fruit that grows in his garden. Soon the natives started having problems among their tribe and thought that Otto was the reason for their problems because he gave his garden to his God. Natives thought that the calamities their facing was the result of what they did to Otto's garden. As a result the natives started bringing back the fruit from the garden because they didn’t want any more calamities.

One native said to Otto, “You must have become a Christian, Otto. You don’t get angry anymore. We always wondered if we would ever meet a Christian.” 

After surrendering his garden to God, he witnessed his first conversion and many began coming to Christ.

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. – Matthew 10:39