Travel in Papua New Guinea

Scott recently needed to travel to Madang, to assist another mission organization with security. He planned to travel by car, a 5-6 hour trip depending on the road, but several bridges had washed out, making the road impassable. Road conditions here are poor in general, with no traffic enforcement, higher likelihoods of accidents with animals or pedestrians, frequent road blocks to extract “tolls” and occasional armed robberies. It is no wonder that air travel is often the only way for translation teams to get to remote village locations. We are so blessed and thankful to have some of the best pilots in the world serving here in PNG, and thank you to Gavin Jones for getting Scott safely to Madang that day! 

Trying to “run the race” well...

Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” This is the verse printed on the new UISSC sport shirts, which I saw demonstrated in a powerful way during Sports Days this year. Sports Days are mandatory track and field days where the entire middle and high school participates, and the community comes to cheer them on. The students are split into Teams Alpha and Beta, so there is good-natured competition, as well as students striving to break school records in events like discus, shotput, javelin, hurdles, relay, high jump, and running events. Teachers help to officiate, measure  and record results; I placed markers for shotput for 4 hours and could barely walk the next day, so I could empathize with those who actually ran in the events! The most inspiring to me, though, were the students who were not naturally gifted in sport, but who ran their races with perseverance, like Hebrews 12 described. This is true in all of our lives- there is a race marked out for us, and some parts will be very difficult for us, but we must persevere. I am aspiring to this as I endeavor to finish my first year at UISSC well, even though I am feeling tired and worn out. What is our key to success? That is revealed in verse 2: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith”- without Him, we will fail, but with Him, we can and will persevere to the end.-Kathy
 

I may have not run, but I did get my first UISSC sport shirt, so I will be ready for next Sports Day! 

Learning what “normal” really means...

This week I found myself speaking on risk management and security at the PNG Orientation Course, a similar program to the Pacific Orientation Course we participated in when we arrived in January of 2014. I am comfortable with the subject matter, but it felt odd to be on the other side of the podium teaching new missionaries about PNG. After all, it seems like we just got here and yet so much has happened over the last 16 months that has forced us to learn and adapt. For example, the basics of life take 30% more effort here. Doing laundry is an all day affair and cooking, shopping and basic repairs take considerably longer, so we've adapted our expectations accordingly. Professionally, people rarely make appointments here; instead, they show up unannounced and it is considered perfectly normal. Flying is by far he safest and most efficient way of travel here; in contrast, the road conditions are generally poor and become much more so when it rains. There is no national EMS system, first aid is illegal unless you have a license, and the police don't patrol the roads in the same way they do back home, so driving is much more dangerous overall. There are many other differences as well, but even in our relatively short time here we have adapted and some of the additional steps we need to take to get things done have become second nature. The really interesting part of all of this is that life here is far more representative of what the vast majority of people on the planet deal with every day, as opposed to what we were blessed with back in the U.S. So, in a sense, we did not know what normal was until we lived in PNG.-Scott