Bush Orientation

Our house for the next 6 weeks

We are now gearing up for Bush Orientation. What's that you say? It is where we go live in an tribe with an established church to make sure we are really up to this task of living in such a remote location before we drop $30,000 to move into said remote location only to find out we just can't hack it. I am pretty excited. I know I joke a lot about this craziness that is missionary life, but that is all it is really. Just jokes. I am seriously having a lot of fun. Plus, could you honestly say that you would read this blog if it was all, "I am a holy missionary who prays for the ants on my wall" instead of making jokes about them before grabbing the bug spray and sending them to hell where they belong? No. you wouldn't. And if you would, I probably would not be your friend. (do ants go to hell??? there is a deep theological question for you to ponder, forget predestination or amillennialism, spend 3 hours debating antsinhadesim and see how far you get)

Making jokes about all the things that could be frustrating if you allowed them to be and sharing them on this blog actually keeps them from being frustrating. It helps to know that you are laughing with me. Or at me. Because when all is said and done, it really doesn't matter if people are laughing with you or at you, as long as you are not a laughing alone.

Ok, back to bush orientation. We are going into a tribe that I have been in before. Remember when I went to clean the missionaries house? Yeah we are going back there. Also, if we spoke at your church and you saw the video that we show where the missionaries are presenting the Gospel for the first time, then you have also seen where we are going. It is going to be awesome.

Right now we are ordering medicines, and making lists of all the food we need to take. I will have to plan for at least 4 weeks, and then we will order more when a flight comes back our way. There are lots of sweet potatoes and pineapple, fish and grub worms to eat there if we run out of food, so you don't have to worry about us starving.

Northerners have deep freezers so they can shop at SAMS, southerners have deep freezers so they can hunt deer, and missionaries have deep freezers so they can survive

While we are there we will learn how to operate and live with the solar power system, how to take care of any medical needs that come up, how to use a short wave radio to communicate (we won't have internet, but we can email through the radio), and hopefully will dramatically improve our Tok Pisin (everyone in this tribe speaks Pidgin along with their tribal language... that's right, the entire tribe is bilingual).

Solar Panels will provide all our power

We have heard that the tribal people have already planned to take us on lots of "adventures"- one of them being taking my husband crocodile hunting at night. Johnny George, I wrote that so you would know and could give Jr. a call and remind him that he has a wife and 3 kids and that if he gets eaten by a crocodile I will be furious. Maybe you can convince him that just because it sounds cool doesn't mean he should do it. You have about a week and a half. That is actually the whole point of this post. To tattle on my husband. The End.