Bible Storytelling Impact in the Are

This past week (June 3-5) I had the opportunity to travel by plane, truck, boat and foot to meet the Are (pronounced Aray) People on the southern tip of Papua New Guinea. A few years ago four Are people completed an oral Bible Storytelling program sponsored by The Seed Company. Now, we wanted to see if this type of program had any impact in the local villages.

As we walked into the first village we were greeted by tribal dancers wearing headdresses and carrying either spears or kundu drums. We learned that the song they were singing was about the birth of Moses. The village had stopped doing traditional dances about 70 years ago, but over the past few years the young people had developed a growing interest. The Bible stories that they were hearing were a great place for them to start developing new songs.

They are planning on going to a festival in the local capital in November to perform their Bible stories. They will also have some of the storytellers on hand to translate the songs into English for the audience. The storytellers love having the opportunity to tell their stories in public settings, where many listeners might not get another chance to hear about God in their own language.

While we were in the villages we interviewed several people about the Bible storytelling program. It was interesting to hear so many people that remembered the first story they heard from the group even if it had been years earlier.  A few of the children even recounted the stories that they had heard.

Among the conversations, we heard several stories of lives that were changed.  We met a man that had been an assistant pastor in his church, but had backslidden and left the church. He heard one of the Bible stories and was convicted and had recently returned to church. I was also told about a sorcerer who heard a Bible story at a local literacy class.  After hearing the story he repented and got rid of all the tools of his trade.

Bible storytelling has also had an impact on Bible translation among the Are people. Currently, they only have the book of Luke in print in their language. As people hear the stories in their language they understand how much they have missed or misunderstood using the English Bible. We heard about a woman who had been a Christian for many years, but had never understood what a manger meant. When she heard it in her language she became excited to hear more of the Bible in her language.

Later this year we will begin storytelling projects in eight languages that don’t have a single verse of Scripture in their language. Our prayer is that people in these villages are also changed by hearing God’s Word. We are also praying that some of these groups will go on to translate God’s Word into their own language.

Life in Ukarumpa

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We’ve been in Ukarumpa a month and we have all settled in pretty well.  We quickly found a house to rent and a dog to borrow. Someone at POC prayed Connor would be so excited when he saw his bedroom for the first time since he’s had trouble adjusting to PNG.  That was the case when he saw his room, which has a baseball comforter and bunk beds.  The rest of us really like it too.  We didn’t realize rats came with the deal, but we’ve borrowed a rat trap and have already caught two!

After picking our home on our first full day in Ukarumpa we hurried over to the grocery store, which was closing the next day for a week of inventory.  We were pleasantly surprised by the variety of food available.  I (Sarah) left most of my recipes at home thinking I couldn’t get many ingredients here.  I wish I had my recipes now, but it’s been okay as there is a cooking forum on our intranet where people share recipes.  I’ve also asked friends in America to email me some favorites.  The store carries some food from Papua New Guinea but not much is made here, so they mainly import food from Australia, New Zealand and California.  You never know what will be there and we’ve heard if you see it and like it, buy it.  You might not see it again or at least for a very long time.

We have a very nice market on center every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning where there is a wide variety of fresh organic produce!  Some things available are lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, onions, peppers, eggplant, avocado, pumpkin, bananas, pineapple and various citrus fruits.  The only problem has been if we don’t feel like jumping out of bed early, as it’s only open 6-8am.  The market also has arts and crafts.  If you didn’t hear, I received my very first pig tusk necklace from Josh for our 13th wedding anniversary last month.  He got it at the market.

We all love the flowers and plants growing in our yard.  We heard one of the previous owners was quite the gardener.  We have bananas, loquats, lemons and cherry guavas.  We had passion fruit until our yardman cut the vine.

Both kids are finishing the school year in Ukarumpa this month.  We arrived on a Monday and the kids started school Friday.  At the elementary school parents go to school on Fridays to have lunch with their children so it was a great day for them to start!  This term ends June 14 and the next term begins July 24 so there’s a short break before we have a 2^nd grader and Connor moves up to the next pre-school class (3 mornings a week).  They have both adjusted extremely well and enjoy their classes.  It’s been nice that they can see friends they know from POC at recess.

I have mostly been busy unpacking, organizing, cooking and cleaning.  The house is fully furnished and stocked with linens and kitchen items so I’ve also been looking through to figure out what’s in the kitchen and where it is. Even though our store has more than I thought I am cooking just about everything from scratch.  We ate pizza tonight.  In America pizza is an easy meal for us.  It’s much more of a process here.  When I buy my big bag of flour I put it into the freezer to kill the bugs.    I then sift the flour and discard the bugs (I have come such a long way!).  Then I make the pizza dough, shred the cheese and assemble the pizza.  I have not had to make sauce yet, but I know that’s in my future.  The store has had it a couple times so I got a few bottles, but they go fast.  When it’s taco night, I make the tortillas, salsa, guacamole, and add vinegar to the boxed cream (no fresh dairy here!) to make sour cream.  I’m learning how to cook in Ukarumpa and appreciate tips from others who have lived here longer than me!

Josh just left for his first business trip yesterday so the next blog should be about his trip!

Looking Back On Village Living

It has been a few weeks now since we got back to “civilization,” which has given me time to think a little more about the whole experience. If you’ve seen the slide show or read any of our other posts or updates, you’ve probably already guessed that we had a good time and built some deep relationships, but there are also some obvious questions with perhaps not so obvious answers that came out of the experience.

The first question that I think many people might have (and one that I wondered about before going into the village) was, “What did I miss the most?” When you live without electricity and running water, there are a lot of things you can miss. I would have guessed before going that I would miss my computer and internet access the most. Another big thing that I thought I would miss was a flush toilet in the room next door.

Surprisingly, I rarely missed the internet. Besides being stumped by questions about population density, the U.S. Congressional system and salaries of athletes, which always made me want to jump online for the answer, I didn’t really think about my computer, facebook or even this blog. There were a few times when I felt totally deprived of news headlines and even tried to read a newspaper over a strangers shoulder on the way into town one day.

The other thing that I thought I would miss was the flush toilet; however, all things considered, our liklik haus (out house) was one of the nicest that I’ve ever been in. It had a lock on it, so only we could use it.   Since Connor had been afraid of liklik houses, we brought a toilet seat from POC and our was famili built a frame for it!  The hole was very deep, and they vented it with some pvc pipe.  It was a bit of a walk to get to, but it was very close to the ocean.

What I missed the most was a sink and an oven. Dipping your hands in a bowl of disinfectant and water before eating just isn’t the same. It was hard to feel like your hands were ever really clean. The other difficulty was cooking. Getting a fire going and keeping it going was always a challenge.  The wood was often just a little too wet (it was still the rainy season) and fires seemed to smoke more than blaze. It also took a lot of wood to cook just a few things each day.  It was nice that our friends and wasfamili (watch family) kept bringing us wood, but it also made me feel inadequate.

Another interesting dynamic is the unwritten understanding of gift giving. It seemed like two or three times a day at least someone was giving us a plate of food or bag of produce from the garden. The problem was that we knew it was customary to return the plate or bag with more food in it. Everyone loved Sarah’s banana bread (which takes forever to cook on an open fire). This meant that we would typically make a meal for ourselves, followed by a few batches of banana bread followed by another meal. This meant an almost constant fire and me sitting by the fire fanning it and adding more logs every so often. After the second meal, I was usually hot and sweaty and in need of a swim. Thank the Lord for the ocean close by.

A second question about village living is “What did you learn about yourself and your own culture?”  In Papua New Guinea villages are made up of family members. In larger villages it could be a couple of families, but they are still related in some way.  The people in our village (and in most of PNG) live and work together with their family members every day. They say that no one in Papua New Guinea needs to be homeless or without food because they have family, and if you don’t have your own family for some reason, people here are always willing to bring you into theirs (as we saw first hand).  I tried to explain to many of them how far away we lived from our family in the US and they couldn’t understand it.  It challenged me to really think about where I would like to live when we move back to the US.

Another thing I learned is how much fun you can have with people. In the US we never stop by another persons house without being invited. At night, many people come home and watch TV or surf the web until they are tired and go to bed. In Papua New Guinea, it isn’t like that at all. At night, the real fun happens. Papua New Guineans will stay up all night and story with friends and family. If they are home alone, they will walk around and find out where everyone is. They can’t imagine waiting for an invitation, and if you don’t visit them they might wonder what was wrong.  Most Papua New Guineans will also stay up late into the night if friends are around. They often joked that we were early to bed and late to get up because we would go to bed at around midnight and get up after 7am.

The reality is that we learned a lot during our time in the village. Much of what we learned will be useful to me as I travel to other villages for my work with The Seed Company, but there were also a lot of lessons that I think will be invaluable for our life here in Papua New Guinea and even our life in the U.S. after we finish here.  I’m sure that there may be other questions (feel free to post them here if there are) and other lessons learned, but no one wants this post to go on that long!

Photos From Village Living

Here is a video we made of pictures from our five week stay in the village of Kusen. We took way too many pictures to fit in one video, but hopefully this helps you see what it was like through our eyes. One Thursday night there was a worship service under the mango tree, and we recorded some of the music. We used some of these recordings for this video.

 

Village Living in Kusen

We survived the five weeks in the village of Kusen!  The very first day our was famili took us for a walk around Kusen and showed us the ocean with a gorgeous view of the island Kar Kar!  After seeing that view and sitting on the beach a while we wondered if this might actually be a vacation!  We were reminded that this wasn’t vacation when they walked us further to the fresh water where we would bathe and wash our dishes and laundry.  On the way we passed a lik lik house (outhouse) that was over the ocean straddling two large pieces of the dry reef!  No, this was not vacation!

The people of Kusen welcomed us with open arms!  Our family told the village members to come to our house to story with us and help us learn Tok Pisin and the PNG culture.  I think we had people at our house storying, playing games and coloring almost every night.  If we had our light on, they would come.  We were amazed at the generosity of the people as we received many gifts of seafood, fruits, vegetables, and other cultural items.

Many prayer requests were answered!  I was nervous about making friends and learning Tok Pisin.  I prefer to form relationships more naturally and not feel forced to do it quickly since we only have five weeks.  We were blessed to be in a village full of outgoing, fun and friendly women who embraced me and became my friends!  I know I improved my Tok Pisin, but I still have a long way to go.  After first arriving I didn’t see anyone making bilums.  One of my goals for village living was to complete my bilum and I needed someone to help me.  A few days into our stay, I met Bevlin who was working bilum!  I told her I’d love it if she could help me and she did.  Not only did I finish my first small bilum, but Bevlin’s sister, Sara, helped me make a second bilum which Connor has claimed as his.  I taught various women to bake in a large pot “oven”.  I baked banana bread, chocolate cake, pumpkin scones and cinnamon rolls and shared them all.  After giving our neighbor banana bread she gave me a huge bunch of bananas (to make more bread?)!

Connor had struggles with adjusting to the village and quickly got the name “big head,” which they seem to commonly call little boys.  It’s not a good nickname.  Let’s just say there were some behavior and obedience issues.  However, Connor was very happy when we went swimming, snorkeling and playing in and around the water.  So, we are very thankful for our ocean village allocation!  He also enjoyed playing soccer with the kids and loved going into the bush.  He never got to go on hikes at POC so he felt like he was finally hiking.  That was the only time he actually enjoyed walking and didn’t want us to carry him.  Once he saw our very own new lik lik house, which had an actual seat, he was comfortable using it (as long as he didn’t see any big spiders or crabs inside!).

Makenna was fast to make friends with her was susa (sister), Sisel, and was brata (brother), Jude, as well as was cousins Florentina, Daniella and Wenetia.   However, she was more hesitant to make friends with the rest of the village kids.  She gradually became more comfortable with them and had a lot of fun playing games, coloring, collecting shells and playing in the sand with her new friends.  One of Makenna’s favorite things to do was find hermit crabs at the beach.

Josh was able to help complete the walls of the house we stayed in and helped put up the walls on Bevlin’s haus kuk (kitchen).  The people of Kusen love sports, and so Josh was able to spend a lot of time playing basketball and soccer. Another favorite pastime of the men was diving for fish. Before leaving POC Josh made a spear gun, which he was happy to get a chance to use. He managed to shoot three fish and an eel.

We ate more seafood in these five weeks than we have in the past five years, which we really enjoyed.  We ate various kinds of fish, shark, octopus, squid, lobster, snail, crab and eel.  We quickly realized that Connor loves fish and even enjoys eating fish eyeballs!  He usually won’t touch chicken on his plate, but fish eyeballs he will eat!

All in all, we had a good time and we are excited to have people in PNG that we call family. We are already planning to go back for our first vacation, and some of our new family have asked to come and visit us in Ukarumpa.

Making Bilums

Making bilums (string bags) is a big pastime for girls and women in Papua New Guinea! If you have downtime you sit, story and work bilums.  The style and pattern of bilum varies by region so you can tell where a bilum is made.  Here in Madang bilums are now made with a thin plastic string, which is perfect since things mold very quickly here.  Before plastic was available women would make string out of natural materials found in the bush.  They would die it using fruits, etc. and then roll it on their leg for a long time to make the string.  The process became much more simple with the introduction of the plastic string!  In the highlands (where we will live after POC), it is colder and less humid and bilums are made with yarn.

In Papua New Guinea everyone seems to carry bilums.  Bilums are used to carry fruits & vegetables from gardens, water bottles up from the river or even babies while they nap.  It’s been fun to watch the national employees here at POC make bilums.  We have bought a couple of them.  Makenna used one to hold her water bottle on hikes and we use a bigger one to carry all of our swimming stuff to the ocean.

As you read this we are in the village living phase of POC and I am hopefully finishing my first bilum.  I started making it with my Nobnob was mama (watch mother) one of the times we had dinner at her house, but took a while to make any real progress on it.  We started it at night so I only got a little bit made before it was too dark to see it.  They kept us pretty busy at POC so I didn’t make working my bilum a priority.  I started feeling a little embarrassed that I didn’t have more to show mama.  During our 3-day hike she was one of our guides.  I used this opportunity to have her help me more with my bilum and became much more comfortable doing it on my own.  Almost all of the women on our 3-day hike were working bilums.  One of our host’s nephews commented on how happy he was to see all of us white skins working bilums.  They love to see us learning their pastimes and enjoying it.

Our Nobnob was mama and susa (sister) made us all bilums and gave them to us at our last dinner with them.  We gave them each gifts to thank them for all they taught us, but we didn’t expect anything in return.  Our was susa made Makenna one in the style of the Sepik region, which was fun.  Our was mama made the rest of us bilums in the Nobnob style.  Mine is the true Nobnob pattern so it feels very special.  I know how long it takes to make a bilum so we felt very honored to receive these gifts!  Josh talked about buying a man bilum after he left for one of his hunting trips carrying his stuff in a plastic shopping bag.  Next time he goes hunting he’ll look like a Papua New Guinean with his bilum around his neck!

(Please note this post was written before we left for village living, so if you leave a comment we will not see it until the end of April)

Village Living and Worship

Our Home for Village Living

This is a busy week at POC. This Friday we will be loading some of our things, including food, mats, bug nets and other necessities onto trucks and heading for our five-week village living assignment. We won’t have electricity or running water, so this limits what we can bring, and they call our “stuff” cargo and we are encouraged to bring as little as possible so it doesn’t put up barriers between us and the people we will be living with.

Despite the busyness and anxiety of the week, we took time out today for a half-day of prayer and worship. While the prayers mostly revolved around safety, language learning and fitting in with our new was familis (watch families), the worship songs were equally meaningful. It was amazing how songs that are so familiar have new meaning as you think about moving into a village and living with strangers.

Our Was Famili

One of the first songs we sang in English was “Mighty To Save.” One of the verses of this song says:

So take me as You find me
All my fears and failures
Fill my life again
I give my life to follow
Everything I believe in

Now I surrender

We have plenty of fears, and know that there will be failures as we learn the language and culture, but we are following a Lord that can use us, and our failures, to bring Him glory as we seek to follow and surrender our lives to Him.

I won’t even try and translate some of the songs that we sang in Tok Pisin, but other songs that we sang that were particularly meaningful were “I Surrender All,” “Give Me Jesus” and “Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus.” The lyrics are below. As you read through them, try and imagine singing them to God as you prepare to leave all that is comfortable and all that you know and live for five weeks amongst complete strangers that speak a different language and have different customs. Imagine living in a home with no electricity and running water.

I Surrender AllAll to Jesus I surrender All to Him I freely give I will ever love and trust Him In His presence daily live CHORUS:I surrender all I surrender all All to Thee my blessed Savior I surrender all All to Jesus I surrender Humbly at His feet I bow Worldly pleasures all forsaken Take me Jesus, take me now All to Jesus I surrender Make me Savior, wholly Thine Let me feel the Holy Spirit Truly know that Thou art mine All to Jesus I Surrender Lord, I give myself to Thee Fill me with Thy love and power Let Thy blessing fall on me

Tis So Sweet to Trust in JesusTis so sweet to trust in Jesus And to take him at his word Just to rest upon his promise And to  know, “Thus saith the Lord.” CHORUS:Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him! How I’ve proved him o’er and o’er! Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus! O for grace to trust him more! O how sweet to trust in Jesus, Just to trust his cleansing blood And in simple faith to plunge me ‘neath the healing, cleansing flood! Yes, tis sweet to trust in Jesus Just from sin and self to cease Just from Jesus simply taking Life and rest, and joy and peace I’m so glad I learned to trust thee Precious Jesus, Savior, friend And I know that thou art with me Wilt be with me to the end

Give Me JesusIn the Morning, when I rise In the Morning, when I rise In the Morning, when I rise Give me Jesus Give me Jesus Give me Jesus You can have all this world Just give me Jesus When I am alone When I am alone Oh, When I am alone Give me Jesus

Hunting in the Bush

My Was Papa (watch father) has decided to teach me about what it means to be a Papua New Guinean.  He made me a bonaro (bow) and some spears (arrows) and then I made one for myself. He then took me out hunting in the bush (jungle). Hunting takes place here in the dark of night, when the kapul (tree kangaroos), marmot (like a small ostrich), flying foxes (large fruit bats) and malelo (fresh water eels) all come out to eat.  While I carry a bonaro, my was papa carries a hand made spear gun (I’m still working on mine).

Our first night of hunting was supposed to be an all-nighter, beginning with a two-hour walk to his garden house followed by a night of hunting. It was clear that it was going to be a wet night (we got over 2” of rain that night) so we decided to stay close to home and go out between downpours and look for game.

The rain finally broke at around 9 pm (I got there at 2:30 pm) so we started out on the trail. All of the trails here are very steep and muddy, so the added rain and the fact that it was pitch black made it tough. After a few minutes it started pouring again, so we took shelter under a banana leaf and then an unfinished garden house that someone was working on.

We ended up soaking wet, muddy and covered from head to toe with termites (they swarm on certain nights here and this was one of them).  By about 1 am we made it home to our little mountain peak we call Guntabag and I decided to go home and shower and sleep in my own bed, because it was clear that the only thing we could catch that night was the bugs.

A few nights later, my was papa, Yag, decided to give me a second try and we went out again. Since it is the rainy season, and I had to get home to help Sarah with our kids and two other kids we were watching, we decided to hunt close to home again. This time the weather was great when we set out and the stream that runs nearby was perfectly clear. While we didn’t see any big game, we did manage to find four malelo, catching three of them, and a few small fish.  Malelo are really hard to kill, and Papa Yag was actually bit by one eel that had already been cut in half. The back half of the eel was equally hard to bring to land as it managed to wiggle and fight free for several minutes and hits with a bush nipe (machete).

Another cool part of the hike was the surroundings. We started in the village at the top of the mountain and hiked down to their water source. We hiked further down the mountain and reconnected with the stream and started walking up river fishing as we went. Before I knew it, we were in a ravine with about a 25’ rock wall on either side. At the end of the ravine was a waterfall that fed the part of the stream we were hunting in. Sadly, I didn’t have my camera and it was probably too dark for a picture anyway. Papa Yag did offer to bring me back in the daylight for a picture, so that might come later.

Papa Yag gave me the two larger malelo and the fish to share with the staff and students of POC.  One of the staff in the kitchen helped me clean it and cook it in three different ways and serve it the next day for lunch. Connor actually ate a lot of it, even though he wouldn’t eat the chicken on his plate. Some of the PNGan staff have started calling me the abus (animal) hunter.

Makenna’s Video Journal #2

Back by popular demand, Makenna has created her second video (the first from Papua New Guinea). I think it is pretty clear that she is enjoying it!

Nobnob Was Famili

Was Mama and Papa

Over the course of our 14 week POC training, we will have two different Was Familis (Watch Families). One was famili here in Nobnob, who help us to slowly acclimate to village life, and another famili that will be responsible for us during our five-week village living. Last night, we spent our first full night in the village with our Nobnob was famili.

Was Famili’s Haus

We hiked the 15 minutes to their village with backpacks loaded with food, mosquito net, sleeping pads, flashlights, hand sanitizer, toilet paper etc.  The kids couldn’t wait to get there and kept running ahead.  The food was to help feed us and our extended family and the rest was to survive the night in the stick house, not to mention the liklik haus (literally translated little house or outhouse). Our goal was to get there before dark so we could set up our mosquito net and mats by light of day.  Our was mama told us to go pilai (play) while she prepared dinner. For Josh that meant volley ball and the kids joined in a game of marbles.

Haus Kuk (Kitchen)

Several dishes were served with dinner included two types of rice, taro, some type of canned fish and a chicken dish. Over dinner stories were told (one of the favorite pastimes of Papua New Guineans) as we became more and more comfortable with the language and the company (this was now our third time seeing our was famili). The stories continued long into the night, ending sometime around 11pm.  Sarah and the kids also played go fish and a memory game with the pikinis (children).  They love the Toy Story memory game and laugh at all the pictures.  They don’t know anything about the movie so they think the pictures (especially the cowboy Woody) are very funny.

Lying down under our net for the first time in a village stick house was an amazing experience. I (Josh) had a hard time falling asleep not from the uncomfortable sleeping arrangement, but because of the excitement. I just kept thinking, “I’m actually spending the night in a village in Papua New Guinea.” There was also a great light show from some distant lights shining through the woven walls and then through our mosquito net.

Learning how to make a bilum (string bag)

Our was mama was up by 5am to start the fire for breakfast. Sarah and Makenna got up at 6am to help with the preparations.  Connor and Josh rolled out a little later and watched the animals (dog, cat, pig and chickens) flutter around the yard. After breakfast, Sarah got to try her hand at washing dishes using a kind of grass as a sponge and a specific leaf for a brilo pad.  Our was mama also started showing her how to make a bilum (string bag).

Josh is planning to go back to the village to try his hand at hunting with our was papa, Jag (making me the envy of many of the POC students and staff).  We don’t know what that entails or if it will be an all-night affair, but that will have to be another post for another time.

Breakfast