PNG Diamonds - by Nancy

"Each one of these people is worth more than a bag of diamonds. Every one has the potential for spending eternity in heaven. I wouldn't come to Papua New Guinea for the butterflies, or the Birds of Paradise, or the gold, or the oil, or the timber. I come for the people."
Neil Anderson, Folopa Bible Translator

Here are some images of "diamonds" from Papua New Guinea:

Whatever country you are from, you are worth more than a bag of diamonds to God, too!

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16

Church in the Village - by Nancy

I’m back home in Pennsylvania, after another amazing trip. All of my commercial flights were on time again! I think I may have set some kind of a record. No delays on the way to PNG or on the way home! Thank you to all my prayer warriors and to the Lord for His blessings. (My SIL flight was slightly delayed because of fog, but that was a good thing because Sara and I were invited to go on a tour of the hanger and got to spend a little more time together.) And I didn’t have to worry about missing a connection because I was spending the night in Port Morseby before my Air Niugini flight.

Being back in my home church this morning felt good. So many people welcomed me back with greetings, handshakes, and hugs. Thank you all! It made me think about our wasfamili’s church in the village at Mus so I thought I would share some of those photos with you.

Here we are heading to church, which is located near the school.
The children have Sunday School outside under a huge Mango tree.

Sara’s Uncle Paul from her wasfamili is the leader of all the area churches and was our preacher this week in our local village church. It was only about a 10 minute walk from home.

This is the inside of the church, taken from near the back doorway. The women sit on the left and the men on the right. For the service, the front of the sanctuary was decorated with flowers, as you can see in the previous photo. The church was very full on Sunday morning.
Here are Ireme and me after church. She was my helper and companion most of the time while we were at the village. She sat next to me in church and her eyes got really big when I sang along (by reading the Tok Pisin in the hymnal) to “My Jesus I Love Thee”. She knows my Tok Pisin is not really that good! I am wearing the meri blouse I bought in Madang and she is wearing her Sunday dress.


This is the new church the congregation is building. It is almost finished. I’m kind of glad I got to attend church in the older building.

Here is the inside of the new church.

More Kodiak Pictures

To see more pictures of the Kodiak's arrival in Ukarumpa, you can visit Kahunapule Michael Johnson's Flickr page.  

Enjoy!

The Kodiak has arrived!

Some of you may remember the following blurb from the back page of my April newsletter:

After years of planning and preparation, the Kodiak has finally arrived! Many people from Ukarumpa went out to the airstrip to await and celebrate the arrival of the plane.

After it landed, to much cheering and clapping, everyone gathered around to see it close up. With thankful prayers, the Kodiak was dedicated to service in PNG.

Join us in praising God for this long-awaited day!

(Photos by Kahunapule Michael Johnson)

She's on her way...

This is Sara again...

Mom's PNG trip is over and she's on her way back to the US.  She left Ukarumpa around 9:15 this (Wednesday) morning and should arrive back in PA on Saturday!  She'd appreciate your prayers for her during her long trip.  Thanks.

Look for more picture-and-story posts from mom once she's back home and over her jet lag.  She's got a lot more to share about her trip.

PNG Culinary Delights

Food in PNG is definitely different than I'm used to!  I guess if I had any concerns before I arrived about how things would be, food was one of them.  I'm not a picky eater, but I wouldn't do well on one of those reality shows where they have to eat creepy-crawly things.  Food at Ukarumpa is pretty similar to home (though I doubt Sara would agree with me, since she misses a lot of the food we have plenty of in America, because it is just too expensive here, like meat, cheese, eggs, and fresh milk.)

Here are some of the grocery items we bought at the store in Ukarumpa.  Some are PNG-made and others are imported from Indonesia

Bread and other bakery items are not readily available here, but Sara has learned how to bake delicious breads and bagels. 

Out in the village, we ate many traditional foods.  They used the inside of the Sago Palm trees to make Sago flour which is then prepared in various ways. Here is Sago flour being dried in the sun. 

This is 'Sago soup' with greens and noodles (we brought the noodles with us).  

Maggie cooked some Sago Coconut Cakes and Sago pudding for us.  The pudding was nice, similar to Tapioca pudding.  The cakes were quite chewy, but tasty. 

This next photo shows the breakfast we were given one morning.  Our wasfamili lives right next to the ocean, so the fish was fresh Mackerel, and it was delicious!

Another PNG treat we enjoyed a couple of times was Kulau (coconut milk).  You hack the top of the coconut off and drink the liquid right from the shell.  The coconut meat is also very good.  But on a hot day in Madang, the slightly "fizzy" liquid is very refreshing! 

While we were in Madang, we ate at Eden Restaurant for lunch a couple of times.  Then we took our leftovers back to our motel room for dinner, since we couldn't go out after dark.  Here is Sara enjoying the delicious Chinese food! 

Sara introduced me to something here in PNG that we can't get in the states - Schweppes Orange-Mango Soda.  It's a favorite of hers, and now of mine, too! 

Land of Contrasts

Sara and I arrived back in Ukarumpa late yesterday afternoon from our trip to Madang. Thank you for your prayers. We had a safe trip and experienced many blessings during our 10 days of travel.

Once again I am finding it difficult to sum up our adventures in one blog post. There are so many stories I could tell, not to mention oodles of photos I've taken! PNG is called the "Land of the Unexpected" but after being here for a few weeks and seeing some of the country, I think maybe it should be called the "Land of Contrasts".

In PNG, I have seen some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever encountered. Flying from Ukarumpa to Madang in a Cessna 206, we passed over gorgeous, rugged green hillsides and spectacular mountain ranges. In contrast to that, PNG cities can be quite dirty and littered with garbage.

Crime is rampant in PNG - though thankfully we didn't have any personal experiences with raskols on our trip, we heard many stories of people who have. In contrast, while we waited on sidewalks for our PMV rides, we had people come up to us and ask if we were alright or needed help. People in the village we visited for 5 days were extremely friendly and welcomed us like we were family (they were Sara's wasfamili for 5 weeks during her orientation, so I guess we were!)

Another interesting comparison we've seen here is the difference in clothing. We were lucky to be at the village during a weekend when there were two Sing-sings. At these, we got to see the wonderful native style costumes worn by the dancers.

Many of the ladies here wear "meri blouses" which are quite colorful. But most of the people wear Western-style clothing bought at second-hand stores. So, you see people with all sorts of t-shirts - such as with rock band or sports team logos. I couldn't resist taking a photo of this child wearing a shirt which read "Chaos, panic, disorder... my work here is done"!


One of the biggest contrasts in PNG is between the "old" and the "new". In the village, it was not unusual to see a man carrying a small log, smoldering on one end, stuck into the tip of his machete. This is a primitive cigarette lighter! It was also not unusual to see a man pull a cell phone out of his pocket to send a text message or make a call!

Most Americans would look at the way the people in the village here live and feel sorry for them. It's true that they have few possessions and live a primitive lifestyle compared to us. But they have good food - raised in their gardens or caught in the ocean or bush. They can build their houses literally for free from the materials at hand. They have large, close-knit families. When they hear how Americans have to work hard for money to buy food, cars, and houses... they feel sorry for us!

Hello from vacation

Greetings from an internet cafe in hot, humid Madang!

Mom and I flew down to this coastal city on Monday and have been enjoying a nice, distinctly PNG vacation since then. We spent a day in Madang, walking around to the shops and market and enjoying a nice lunch. Another day we went to POC, the orientation course I did last fall, and stopped at a resort on the way home to swim and cool off after a long, hot day of walking on dusty roads. Yesterday we traveled to Rempi, a beautiful cottage right on the ocean, and enjoyed the beautiful snorkeling and scenery.

Today we're going to travel to Bunabun to stay with my wasfamili (from POC) for a few days. Look for more news about our trip after the 17th when we fly back to Ukarumpa.

Fun Things

Sara has been working every weekday in the Language Survey office since I've been here, but we've also done some things for fun. What do we do here in Ukarumpa for fun?

Friday nights are "Burger Night" at the Teen Center. Most of the missionaries living here come to Burger Night to have dinner out (there is no other place to go to eat out!) Since I arrived on a Friday, I got to go to Burger Night my very first night here. I enjoyed meeting a lot of people and a pretty good meal, which included a chocolate milkshake!

One of the things Sara enjoys a lot is the Ultimate Frisbee game she plays in on Sunday afternoons. They usually play on the high school football field, although today a PNG Rugby game was being played on that field, so they had to move to an alternate spot. It was fun for me to watch the games the past two Sunday afternoons - no, Sara couldn't convince me to play!

Sara and her housemate, Jen, like to entertain at their house. Last Wednesday night they had a pizza party (homemade pizza of course!) and about a dozen people came. Sometimes when they get together they play games or watch a movie on someone's laptop, but this time we just talked.

One of the other things Sara and I enjoy is bird watching. We've been keeping an eye out for birds whenever we walk somewhere (and we have to walk pretty much everywhere we go). Saturday afternoon, we took a walk just to look for birds on the road just inside the fence which surrounds the missionary center. Since I've been here, we've seen 14 different kinds of birds, including the beautiful Rainbow Bee-eater in the following photo.

Another fun thing was talking on the radio to one of Sara's friends, Joy, who is working out in a village now. You have to sign up ahead of time for a time slot on the radio. Then you have 15 minutes to talk. With so many people out in remote locations this is the best way to stay in touch and ask for prayer requests.

Sara and I will be flying to Madang tomorrow morning and plan to spend 10 days there. We hope to visit her wasfamili (the family she lived with during her village living part of her orientation course) and also do some swimming and snorkeling at the beach. Please pray for safety and good health for us while we travel and spend time there.

Tok Pisin Adventures

Finally, a mother-daughter picture! This is the only one we have taken so far... from the Tok Pisin ladies' Bible study.

I'm glad I bought a Tok Pisin/English dictionary when I started to plan this trip to PNG. I had a chance to use my (limited!) knowledge of Tok Pisin three times in the past few days.

The first time was on Thursday morning at a Translator's Training Seminar, which I sat in on for a few hours. There were 8 translators from various language groups in attendance. Most of them also had 2 PNG helpers with them. They worked thru 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, a verse or two at a time, discussing ways in their particular language to help make the verses "Natural, Accurate, and Clear". The teacher and participants spoke in both English and Tok Pisin. I was able to follow along pretty well. That was a fascinating experience!

The next time I used my Tok Pisin was at Sara's Bible Study on Thursday afternoon. Five local ladies and a number of their small children came as well as two other American ladies. The whole study was done entirely in Tok Pisin. I was certainly not able to understand all of it, but I was impressed by how much the PNG ladies shared with each other, and by Lillian's closing prayer. While we sat on blankets on the grass, one of the lady's 8 month old baby hung from a bilum on a tree nearby. When we were finished, Rose hung the bilum back on her head with her still-sleeping baby inside, and walked back to Sara's house with us. She also had a 4 year old daughter named Kusiri. Sara had to go back to work at the office, so I stayed home and visited with Rose. Kusiri ate biscuits and baby Ryan continued to sleep for awhile. Then he finally woke up and Rose took him out of the bilum He is quite a cutie, as you can see from the photo!

Ryan in his bilum, hanging in our basement ping-pong room

Rose, Kusiri, and Ryan

The third time I spoke Tok Pisin was when Nato, Sara's yard meri, came to work on Friday morning. She came to work on the flowerbeds. Sara and Jen were both at work, so when it was time for Nato's mid-morning break, I gave her tea and a snack. We talked about our families. She has two girls, a second grader and a fourth grader. I gave her a little gift and some stickers for her girls. We looked at my photos from home. When we came to the snow photos, she said ais pundaun (literally, "ice falling down". So, there's the answer to the question of how to say "snow" in Tok Pisin!

First Impressions

How to boil down the events of the past week into one blog post?  It seems almost impossible but I'll try.

My trip from Pennsylvania to PNG went amazingly well.  All six of my flights were on time and both of my checked bags arrived with me!  I was not even feeling tired when I arrived at Ukarumpa, thanks to a great night of sleep at the Mapang Missionary Guesthouse in Port Morseby.  There were 12 people flying to Ukarumpa on the same day I was, so we flew in a King Air, which only took an hour of flight time instead of the usual two hours it would have taken in a smaller plane.  Sara was waiting for me as I got off the plane.  It was so good to have the hug that I'd been looking forward to for months!

Sara has a long list of "things to do while mom is here" and we've already done a number of them.  My first night here was "Burger Night" at the Teen Ceter.  Since then I've gotten to see a lot of Ukarumpa, attended church, visited Sara's office and toured the LCORE Building (LCORE stands for Language Collaboration Opportunities Resources Encouragement), helped Sara work at the library, watched her Ultimate Frisbee game, shopped at the center store, and had a PNG ice cream cone.  I've really enjoyed meeting a lot of interesting people including both missionaries and Papua New Guineans.  I'm also enjoying the many beautiful flowers, trees, and birds here.  Today we went to the nearby town of Kainantu and I enjoyed seeing some of the "real" PNG on the ride there and at the shops and market.  It's been a very interesting time so far and it's only been a few days since I arrived.  In many ways, it's kind of like what I expected and yet you can't really know what it's like until you are actually here!  I'm so thankful to have the chance to find out!

I'd like to thank you all for your prayers for my travel here!  God answered them in a wonderful way.