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Dear Friends, Family, and Faithful supporters, Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! July Activities Well the month of July was a month of firsts. I had my first language evaluation, in which a member of the NTM Consultants Committee came to my village and evaluated the progress that I am making in learning the language here. I want to thank all of you that were praying for me during this time. The Lord truly showed Himself faithful, despite my own nervousness and frailness. And the good news is...I get to keep my job! :-) The road to learning a tribal language is indeed a long one and I am encouraged with every step closer that I come to the goal, far off that it may be at the moment. The other event in July was my first official break out of the bush. My entire team was out of my village for three weeks and I was able to visit with friends in Madang, Goroka and Wewak. It was a much needed time of rest, refreshment and renewal. Thanks to all of you that gave me a place to hang out and chill out during this time. You were truly a huge blessing to me.
August Adventures
After returning to my village the beginning of August , my team went on a boat trip down river to visit some other villages that speak the same language as in my village. We figured it would take us about 4 hours or so by boat and shortly before we left we heard that we would have to leave the boat at one village and hike about an hour or so to get to the village we were wanting to go to. Well, the day went on and on and we just kept going and going and around 1 pm we came to a village called Siyo. They are also in our same language group and from that village on the river splits and we had to go on a smaller river then. Before we got to Siyo, though, I saw for the first time marks on the riverbank made by crocodiles. They leave a mark when they slide from the banks in to the river and we passed a place where there were two big slides we could see. At one point one of the my village guys with us got all excited and pointed to something, which he said was a crocodile but it was under the water before the rest of us saw it. I have yet to see one in a river here. Okay, so after we left Siyo we started up this smaller river and it was really slow going. We had to stop several times and the guys chopped through trees in order to get the boat through and a few times we were able to slip underneath some trees that were laying across the river. The worst part about going by boat is that there are often trees under the surface of the water and you run in to them with the motor. Several times we just totally dug the motor in to trees or gravel bars under the surface. We had a spare propeller for the motor but by the time we got to the place where we would leave the boat and start to hike, we had pretty much destroyed both propellers, the one we started with and the spare. And it was just after 5 pm when we arrived at Saronapi, the village where we would leave the boat. We quickly got unloaded and started out hiking. The people from the village that we were going to had sent a welcoming party out to meet us at the river so it was nice that we had people to help carry our stuff and lead the way to their village. We hiked about an hour and a half and got to Patinapi just before dark. The trails here are for the most part pure mud. The mud reminds me of something you would see on Saturday afternoon TV where they show mud wrestling. I was wearing my Teva sandals but shortly in to the hike I took them off and just went barefoot. The mud was just pulling too hard on my shoes and I wasn't getting anywhere. Besides that, the mud was totally caked on the shoes, which made walking across log bridges even more terrifying. These tribal folks here are amazing the way they hike the trails. I even use a walking stick to help me keep my balance, which everyone likes to laugh at. So anyway, I was the slowpoke, but we all made it there eventually. We stayed two nights in Patinapi but when we went to leave we had a change of plans. Given the condition of the two propellers and the amount of fuel that we still had left, we weren't so sure that the boat would make it back to my village with all of us in it. Even if the props got us along the river, being damaged the way they were, we would use up way more fuel than if they were in good shape. There is another village in our langauge group that the people told us was only a short hike(in their terms) away and that village had an airstrip in it. So we decided that we would all hike over to this other village called Moropute. They had a radio there and we figured we could contact someone at our base and they could send the airplane in to get us at that airstrip. So myself and Miriam and the Schroder family all hiked over to Moropute. It took about 1 1/2 hours of hiking. It wasn't bad though other than the mud. There are a lot less bugs and thorns there than the area around my village. It was really pretty and had a really nice river that was smaller than ours and more like a mountain river you would see in California. There was a German couple there in that village, missionaries with another church, and they took us in and fed us for the weekend. They were surprised, of course, to see us come walking up the t rail, but seemed genuinely delighted to have us there. They are doing ministry there in the trade language of Melanesian Pidgin and were trying to run a youth program the way you would run one in North America(or Germany, in their case). We could see a lot of the frustrations that they were having and knew that the cause of them was that they hadn't taken the time to learn the language and culture of the people, but we really couldn't just come out and say, well here's the reason why these things aren't working for you. They only plan to be here for another year and have no plans to learn the tribal language, so we figured it would only discourage them more to dwell on it. The wife did say to me, though, after we had only been in the village for a couple of hours, that she really noticed a difference in the way the people responded to us rather than to them. The people really smiled and greeted us happily and would hold our hands and talk to us like we were old friends. There's really a whole other world that these people live in that you can't reach by using the trade language. It just doesn't go past the surface. I don't know that much of the language yet, but I know enough for them to know that I'm trying to speak it and every little bit helps to get past the barriers of being a stranger to them. So then after staying in Moropute for the weekend, our pilot flew in on Monday and took us back to my village. The two my village guys that we brought with us brought the boat back and made it okay with just the two of them in it. We had such a warm welcome at all the villages that we visited, and many expressed an interest in hearing God's word in their own language and in learning to read and write. Unfortunately, they were not interested in hearing it from the my village Believers, but rather wanted the "missionaries" to move there to their village and teach them. Evidence again of Cargo Cult mentality and the typical PNG thinking that the Western missionary has the key to the "stuff". As the my village church grows, our desire is to see them reach out to the neighboring villages in their language group and carry on the work that we have begun here. PLEASE PRAY THAT WHEN THIS HAPPENS, HEARTS WILL BE OPEN TO HEAR THE MESSAGE THAT THEY BRING. Thank You Words can hardly express how much I appreciate the financial support, prayer and encouragement that so many of you have faithfully provided. Thank you for being part of my team here and part of the Lord's work here in my village. Furlough Oh, and I almost forgot. I'll be home for Christmas! I'm excited to say that I will be coming home for my first furlough this December and will stay in the States through July of next year. I can't wait to see everyone again and would love to share with you all in person all that God has done these past two and a half years in PNG. Please let me know if you have a small group or Sunday School class that you would like me to share in. Because of His Wonderful Grace, Mary
website: www.maryinpng.com <http://www.maryinpng.com> |