Oh the Wonderful Cross...

We sang with our Christian brothers and sisters at sunrise; many nationalities worshipping the one true God and thanking Him for Jesus, who is Risen, that we may have Peace, Purpose, and His Promise of Eternal Life (John 20: 19-30).  

“And the angels sang a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals, because You were slain, and with Your blood You purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”  Revelation 5:9 

“Na ol ensel i singim wanpela nupela song olsem: “Yu inap tru long kisim buk na rausim olgeta gris kandel i pasim buk. Long wanem, ol i bin kilim Yu i dai, na long blut bilong Yu, Yu bin baim bek ol manmeri, bilong givim ol long God. Yes, Yu baim bek ol manmeri bilong olgeta lain man, na bilong olgeta tok ples, na bilong olgeta kain skin, na bilong olgeta kantri.” Kamapim Tok Hait 5:9

Arrival in Ukarumpa!!

We arrived in Ukarumpa yesterday at 2:00 P.M.; some 91 days after coming to PNG.  We are now getting settled in, meeting new people and familiarizing ourselves with the layout of the centre. 

Our trip to Port Moresby was uneventful and the embassy personnel were exceptionally helpful. We now have the notarized documents in the mail and hope that we can expedite the closing of our home in Dover. 

We feel blessed to have arrived in time for Easter and look forward to jumping into our ministries. Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement.

Prayer Alert!

In our previous post regarding our village living experience, we mentioned prayer for baby Skot. We recently learned that he has passed away. Please lift up his parents and the the entire Aufan village community as they try to make sense of his death. Please pray that they would seek the peace that only comes from Jesus Christ.

Village Living and the final week of POC

We just returned from living in the village of Aufan for the last four weeks. We are now in our final week of the Pacific Orientation Course.  We depart from Madang on Tuesday and fly to Port Moresby, where we have an appointment at the U.S. Embassy to get some paper work signed and notarized so that we finalize the sale of our home in Dover. We should arrive in Ukarumpa on Thursday, just in time for Easter weekend!

We have been very blessed by our ex-pat and national teachers as well as our fellow students and all of you who have been praying for our ministry. The village living phase of the course was especially enlightening.  Not only did we get to see first hand what it is like to live without electricity, running water, a stove or the internet, but, more importantly, we got to see the love of Christ expressed through our village wasfamili and others in the Aufan community. 

When we arrived in Aufan March 12th the entire village came out to welcome us. Over the next four weeks, we greatly enhanced our language skills, attended and spoke at the local church and elementary school and helped our wasfamili work in their gardens. Wasfamili is the Tok Pisin word for ‘host family’ who has the responsibility for caring for us.  ‘Was’ means ‘watch’ in this case.  Other family members are then called ‘wasbrata’ (host brother), ‘was susa’ (host sister), etc. We cooked our dinner over an open fire, gathered water from local spring, bathed in a nearby river and spent many, many hours “storying” with our Papua New Guinean brothers and sisters. 

Here are some brief highlights:

* We visited numerous relatives and friends of our Waspapa and learned first hand about their lives, perceptions of the world and local history. 

* One of our wasbratas named his child after me. This child was born premature and, as a result, has serious health issues. The week before we left Aufan we took a PMV (Public Motor Vehicle) into Madang and visited the child, his mother and father in the hospital. Please keep baby “Skot” in your prayers.

* On the aforementioned PMV ride, the driver happened to be a Pastor and when he heard that we were missionaries he spoke to us the entire way into town about the importance of missions. The cost of the PMV was 12 Kina (6 dollars). When we arrived the driver handed each of us a10 Kina note and refused to accept payment for the ride as he wanted to donate to our mission. 

* We took a trip up a nearby mountain where we visited relatives of our wasfamili, saw two Cassowaries (a very large prehistoric looking flightless bird, similar to an emu) and were presented with two hand-made Bilums ( a traditional Papua New Guinea string bag) that easily took over a month’s work to complete.

* We were present for the annual taro festival (akin to our Thanksgivng). Our wasfamili and their extended family killed and cooked a pig in our presence and served it with taro grown from their gardens.

* Kathy taught people how to make bread and cake over an open fire, as well as introducing them to pasta and curried rice dishes. We weren’t sure how the pasta and curry would go over, but they liked it and requested that she make it again and again. 

* We attended the local church each Sunday and saw first hand how our brothers and sisters in PNG worship. On the first Sunday we were asked to introduce ourselves , which we did in somewhat broken Tok Pisin. On the last Sunday, we were thankful that our Tok Pisin had greatly improved, because just before church started we were asked to give a thirty minute presentation at the end of the service. My mind instantly went blank, but the Holy Spirit told me what to say. I spoke about our call to missions, read the parable of the talents and then related how God can and does prepare people for His work. We finally encouraged the local congregation to use their God given talents to further the work of His Kingdom, all in Tok Pisin. 

* We visited and spoke at the local elementary school where we saw first hand the challenges faced by the two teachers who, with very little educational materials and minimal facilities, are teaching over one hundred students. 

* Our wasfamili killed a chicken a few nights before we left, cooked it with taro and coconut milk, and had a large gathering to say good bye to us.

* We had plenty of opportunities to talk about our different cultures and, more importantly, the common thread that binds us together as brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Some prayer requests:

* The continuing improvement of health for baby Skot, strength for the family and wisdom to the medical staff.

* The Aufan elementary school teachers, who, despite having little resources, are dedicated to their mission of educating children.

* Our wasfamili and others in Aufan who so graciously opened their homes and their lives to us over the last four weeks.

* The Church in Aufan; that they would be strengthened and blessed as they bring the Gospel to more and more people.

* Our travel to Port Moresby; that we would have a safe and productive trip, so that our house could finally be sold.

* Our travel to Ukarumpa and getting settled into our new ministries.

We have approached village living and all of the Pacific Orientation Course as learners. It is as if we became small children again for a while to learn how Papua New Guineans view the world. While there were some difficulties adjusting to a new culture, we have come away with a deep and abiding respect for our brothers and sisters in this part of the world. We are thankful that God, in His mercy and grace, chose to send us here and look forward to starting our ministries in Ukarumpa.

Why are we hiking, swimming, and building fires?

Have you wondered how our physical regimen of hiking, swimming and learning to cook outside helps to support the work of Bible translation in Papua New Guinea? In short, because it prepares us to serve and gives us a much needed, deep empathy and understanding of the people and culture here. We now have a whole new respect for the challenging lives many of the nationals live. We will hike for many kilometers, on steep, slippery bush trails to a village this week, cook supper, stay overnight, and hike back as part of our training. Our PNG sisters will do this every day as part of going to their gardens, from which they get almost all their sustenance, or to the market, where they sell their surplus produce. We strive to swim a mile in the ocean, to build our stamina, while our PNG brothers need to be strong swimmers if their banana boat ferry capsizes. We learn to cook outside so we can eat for the month we live in the village, but our wasfemilis will cook all of their meals over an open fire their entire lives. We have learned to admire the strength, ingenuity and perseverance of the people here, and their incredible faith. Our desire is to serve God and reflect Christ to the people around us even now as we are still new learners in PNG, the Land of the Unexpected.

 

Classes are winding down & Village Living is about to begin...

We have learned so much in the Pacific Orientation Course, and are grateful for the expertise of our instructors, both expats and nationals. We have spent the last 6 weeks in intensive language classes, learning Tok Pisin, and we look forward to our upcoming immersion time during Village Living. This is when we will “connect the dots” from what we have learned in the classroom and small groups, and really put our language skills into practice. Right now, we understand a lot more Tok Pisin, both spoken and in writing, than we can speak. It is not unlike being a small child again, when you hear a language and can respond, but cannot actually form meaningful sentences yet. We are just starting to speak conversationally, but our vocabulary is still very limited, and the best way to increase it is to be with native speakers around the clock. So, we eagerly anticipate this opportunity to live in a village with only Papua New Guineans for the next four weeks. There will be challenges, like having no plumbing or electricity, but the relationships we will form and the skills we will develop will be well worth any momentary discomforts. 

A day in the life...

Friends and family have asked us what our days look like now, so we wanted to share what a typical day entails. On weekdays, we are often up at 5:30 am, especially if it is our week to start a fire in Martha, the wood-fired furnace that heats our water for bucket showers (literally, a pail with a shower head on the bottom, on a pulley system, that you fill with water heated by Martha, providing about a 4 minute shower). Then, it’s on to kitchen duty, if it is your day, to help set up plates & utensils for morning breakfast or prepare fresh fruit, oatmeal, or granola. We soak our fresh fruit and veggies in a bleach water solution before peeling and cutting them, to kill any bacteria on the surface. We have a scheduled rotation for kitchen duties, so some days we’re on set up, and some days clean up, for the 35-40 people eating each meal. By now, it is 8am, and time for language class. We meet for devotions, singing and Tok Pisin lecture, and then break out into small groups with our national PNG language teachers. These times we spend listening alot and trying to speak the language in a variety of settings, from story telling to watching traditional craft demonstrations and asking questions. Then, after tea-time, we often have an anthropology lecture to help us understand more about Melanesian culture. After lunch, we have physical conditioning two days a week, consisting of several hours of hiking or swimming, or preparation for meeting with our wasfemilis. Last week, we walked to our wasfemili’s home and share a meal with them, and this week we will go again for a meal but also sleep overnight there, in preparation for village living in a few weeks. On weekends, we now cook meals for ourselves over an open fire in our “haus kuk”, which is an open air kitchen structure, with a table and bench seats we built from bamboo poles. We learned bread making yesterday, so we have yummy rolls to eat this weekend with the food we cook over the fire. Sundays, we go to church either in the village or town, to expose us to more spoken Tok Pisin and give us the opportunity to worship God among the PNG people. Sunday afternoons, we have gone snorkeling a couple of times, which has been a huge blessing. At night, we work on our reading and writing assignments, and meet with a fellowship group once a week. It is all of these new experiences, shared in a wonderfully multi-cultural environment with other families learning the same new skills with us, that are stretching, growing and preparing us to serve the PNG people better, for God’s glory, and we are grateful to be a part of it!